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The Roots Of BSD
drix was the first to write in with this "Standard fare roots of the BSD/hacker movement piece over at Salon. The picture of the FreeBSD devil guy is pretty cool." This is actually another chapter in Andrew Leonard's Free Software Project online book. Well written, but occasional errors (FreeBSD and BSDI have not merged, for example) cast doubt on some of the facts. Informed comment from people who were there would be appreciated.
His name is not Chuck. This is not informative.
ever installed obsd? I have, the average user WOULD be better off installing obsd and leaving it alone than installing redhat (which I use also) and trying to "harden" it for hours... Sure I could mess with redhat for hours and almost have a theoretically secure machine, but has the code been audited? How long has RH gone without a remote exploit... The two are completely different animals...
Well, at least Walnut Creek, the distributor of FreeBSD has merged with BSDi. That is generally perceived as a merger between BSDi and FreeBSD.
Oh lord. Not only do we have ill-informed posts, we have ill-informed moderation. If /. is ever going to stop the egress of truly technical folks, this type of nonsense has to stop.
Repeat after me:
BSD != Solaris
early SunOS came from BSD, V7 and SysIII
Bill Joy was the primary architect of 1BSD
Bill Joy left in the early 80's to form Sun
SUN == Stanford University Network, fwiw.
BSD is not some freak "fork" of Solaris, its the other way around.
Perhaps you mean Slate? Microsoft is listed as a premier advertiser on Salon, but that's it.
it's a cartoon. who cares?
Anyone know what the word is on the "new" fee-free Ancient Unix hobbyist licenses from SCO? I'm itching to get my hands on Kirk McKusick's CSRG archive, and have waited patiently for the new license to show up as an offer.....
..topic says it all.
But the sad thing is that most /. readers are in group (4). Get over the shock value of that statement. It's true.
How many here can do their own "from scratch" build?
Just a minor clarification:
Everyone on slashdot should know by now that the penguin/Tux/flightless bird and Daemon/devil/beatific background process are by now.
If it bugs you, well, go hit your head into a wall a few times. Because that's what I do every time someone points out a stupid correction to some commonly-used slang for an informal mascot that we all already know about in the first place.
Can I read slashdot with -Wall -pedantic disabled now, or do I have to recompile with -DNOT_ANAL -DNO_MORONS too?
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
The reason that I got into Linux over FreeBSD in 1995 when I decided to give the Free Unixes a whirl was quite simple. FreeBSD didn't support my cd-rom drive and Linux did. All of my friends were staunch BSD supporters. They weren't interested in Linux because it was a "toy" OS. As far as I could tell the BSD folks were not even interested in patches that would allow better support of my ATAPI CD-Rom drive. Real production systems used SCSI kit after all.
Which is funny, because, if Salon is to be believed, part of the reason that BSD Unix was so popular was that it ran on inexpensive "junk" hardware. Nowadays, of course, BSDers scoff at Linux because of all of the weird hardware it supports. Of course, it's only weird if you don't own it.
It is also quite true that Linux is geared more towards the UNIX initiate. This could be fixed easily enough. Heck, even setting the default shell to something other than sh would make FreeBSD more palatable to the newbie. However, from what I have gleaned from BSD advocacy sites like Daemonnews.org, there is very little effort to change the different flavors of BSD so that they are more user friendly. They are content to let Linux bring them converts to the *NIX way of thinking.
Which is just as well, I suppose. However, many Linuxers find that the benefits of the BSDs don't quite warrant leaving.
Next time, don't use "-pendantic" when using your brain.
NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD all have different variations of the daemon. You wouldn't put up the OpenBSD daemon that looks raytraced and call it the FreeBSD daemon, would you?
-jason
Thank you.
> Take voting in an election as a good example.
> People want most of all to vote
> for the winner. So, whether they
> understand, believe in, or agree with, a
> candidate is moot. They will vote for
> the candidate that they believe will win.
Uh? I vote for the man which I think is capable and has some "nice" idea.
Polls says that he won't be the winner, so what ?
I can vote as a reaction if the polls says that someone that I really don't like, I may vote for his direct opponent even if I like better a "smaller" candidate.
But voting for "the winner" ?? It sounds ridiculous, I think that you'd better ask around other peoples opinions before saying things like this.
That's bullshit, BSD has plenty of hippies working on it, and did in the past. And, fyi, I don't know many hippies who are drug addicts, have VD, or any magnetization problems. I quote from the FreeBSD FAQ:
Q. Has anyone done any temperature testing while running FreeBSD? I know Linux runs cooler than dos, but have never seen a mention of FreeBSD. It seems to run really hot.
A. No, but we have done numerous taste tests on blindfolded volunteers who have also had 250 micrograms of LSD-25 administered beforehand. 35% of the volunteers said that FreeBSD tasted sort of orange, whereas Linux tasted like purple haze. Neither group mentioned any particular variances in temperature that I can remember. We eventually had to throw the results of this survey out entirely anyway when we found that too many volunteers were wandering out of the room during the tests, thus skewing the results. I think most of the volunteers are at Apple now, working on their new ``scratch and sniff'' GUI. It's a funny old business we're in!
rm -fr /*
from netcraft ... www.salon.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) mod_perl/1.23 mod_oas/4.65 on Linux.
Non impediti ratione cogitationis.
Actually, far as I know, Salon is independent. I do believe you're thinking of Slate, which is a part of MSN.
Mike
This article got me thinking about how I got into linux in the first place. I mean, no matter how I look at it, and without getting into open-source ideology/licencing wars.... bsd and it's derivatives are great. FreeBSD is great. NetBSD is great, and was far more cross platform than linux (still is I bet).
.96 or so, sometime in mid 1992 I believe...though I'm not sure. I never heard of BSD until much later.
So.. what got me into linux in the first place? I'll tell you what.
The problem, I think, with the 'free' BSD implementations, was that, although it was available, it wasn't really there for people outside of it's own little circle. Nobody was 'spreading the wealth'. Or at least, nobody that I came into contact with. Linux, on the other had, seemed to be growing and spreading by people who were getting their first glimpse of unix. I got into it around
So who leads Linux? I think from a marketing aspect, which is the reference you seem to be giving, it would be the companies controlling the distributions. RedHat, Corel, and Caldera are probably in the front there right now.
Given the current status of Linux as a whole, not just the kernel part, I don't think that loosing any key player would stop its momentum, even though it might sting a little.
Actually, I think this has been one of Linux's best points. Software projects that aren't as good as others seem to have a way of dieing out, and the great software projects change hands when the original author is tired. (Look at Moria as an example of that.) :)
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
Actualy, Joy isn't a billionare. And while you may injoy the fortunes of owning some SUNW, Joy dosn't. He cashed out as soon as he could, and is only worth 10 million or so. Ellison, on the otherhand is a billionare.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
i'd go with openBSD if you must go with a BSD but consider sticking with redhat. remember that its the admin who determines the security of the machine - the OS just provides the tools to do so. i'd choose linux over BSD any day if only because its what im familiar with (and something i *know* how to secure thru lots of experience). your security on your firewall depends on the firewalling rules you write more than anything else (since bad rules can have insecure machines inside your network compromised no matter what OS you run the firewall on). im happier with ipchains than BSD stuff anyway, so thats what i use.
>and a pair of Z8000-based machines, possibly the
>first microprocessor-based
>machines on the Internet.
Were they by any chance Onyxes ?
That was very interesting. I would suggest that Linux's (3) is currently quite active from the kernel mailing list. Hmm, d'y'have an opinion as to how HURD measures up with that model?
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
"I say we change the Linux mascot to a Dinosaur who wears shades and flys an airplane."
Yeah, that did wonders for Netscape *cough*. Who wants their software associated with a dinosaur? I prefer this fox logo: http://www.early.com/~emackey/linux/
At least a fox is agile, fast, and cunning. A penguin is just fat and slow (well, except in water), and just hobbled about. Yeah, that's what I want to think of my software as...
Please adopt the fox...hey, maybe someone should make a distro just to gain popularity for this logo...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Penguins live in Antarctica man, how can you get any cooler than that?!
Chill out man!
Have you been reading too much Ayn Rand lately or watching too much of the 700 club?
I'm interested in knowing how you coaxed linux into doing such things as randomizing the running ID's, getting a truely (very very close) random urandom bit for key generation, ridding redhat of every buffer overflow in the main source among other things.
Thanks for your informative response.
Rod Taylor
Fail, what failure? Until one or another side gives up, no victory is permanent. This will be rammed home when the Netscape 6 Mozilla variant ships (as if the rebirth of Apple wasn't enough to beat this point to death).
BSD is likely to have more penetration on the desktop by mid 2001 than Linux because Mac OS is going to start counting as a BSD install come 1/1/01. Where it will stand on the server end is going to be the interesting question.
DB
The survivor in a proprietary world of closed "standards" indeed is not necessarily the best. In the examples you mention, the loosing of the best has to do with installed base, and incompatability of the better one, which still looses because of the larger installed base. Users are locked into one alternative.
OTOH with open standards, open source and interoperability, things are different. Here there is no locking out of the better alternative, since the two (better and worse) alternative can work together and noone is forced to use the worse alternative for the sake of compatability. Even if one of them implements a different API/standard/protocol, the other one can look at it and copy it.
Alas, w.r.t. Linux there is more and more non-open source (commercial apps). Still, since Linux itself is open, FreeBSD can build a almost 100% perfect Linux emulator (unlike Wine, which cannot work very well since Windows' source is not available).
Note that I do not claim that BSD will win in the end, since I don't claim that it is better. It's internals may be better, but in other respects (support for crappy hardware, easy-to-use packaging) Linux may be better.
But I am convinced that in the end the best one (in perception of end users) will win, and both will evolve to improve further in a darwinian 'struggle for life'.
Just a minor clarification:
Tux is the Linux Penguin
Beastie is the BSD Daemon
enough with "the bsd devil" or
"freaking penguin"...
-- "This is my sig... there are many like it but this one is mine"
An animated paperclip?
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
He had an article in NewsWeek a few months ago. It pretty well followed the 'this will change everything' model the mass press uses about anything technical. It really was a disapointment. Lumanaries that proclaim paradigm shifting changes don't seem to have enough left over to make anything happen.
Technically, he is not BSD's, either. He is Kirk McKusick's. Probably escaped, full grown, from his forehead after a 36 hour coding binge.
"What's the point of going abroad, if you're just another tourist..."
Linux is justa kernel, so everything else came either from BSD, GNU/FSF and a other random places/people.
What I want to know is, if BSD is so fucking great why did Sun dump it and go AT&T-ize Solaris/SunOs?
Maybe the article is just badly written/biased, but it lends support to my belief that BSD is where it is relative to linux is because BSD seems to have too much ego-centrism and elitism. I'm don't believe I am nor ever will be as good at programming as Bill Joy is/was (does he still code?) but that "must people suck/fuck them" attitude presented in the article alienates the very users he's trying to court. Maybe that's why solaris doesn't come with a compiler anymore, too keep us "losers" from even trying.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
That mascot is way too "horny 13 year-old"-ish.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Ok, No bsd software ever had a buffer overflow bug. Bwuuuuhahahahahahahahaha!
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Because they're filthy child-molesting communists!
Just kidding!!!
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Yeah, screw those freaking lusers, why do they even use computers, they hardly even understand the detailed core of the OS. I mean shit, I can quote kernel source by memory. I mean, all these lusers trying to run businesses and crap like that. You should have to get a liscense to own a computer! And you could only get it from Bill Joy, in person. That way computer users will all be pure BSDer's with out wacky ideas that non-conform to my very specialized worldview.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Microsoft doesn't have one mascot. It reserves the mascots for its product lines. Like the e-with-an-orbit for IE, usually done in animations as the e under the Earth (perhaps implying where they got their inspiration from?); and the stained-glass-house four boxes for Windows (which everyone throws stones through)...
Bull. There was discussions about that on FreeBSD mailing lists and someone pointed out that majority of their systems are running 3.x version and they are in process of upgrading to 4.0 since 4.0 is so surprisingly stable. Jordan Hubbard even wrote that 4.0 is the most stable .0 release FreeBSD had ever. Besides, what "sixty" machines are you talking about? Last time I checked, Yahoo was running at least 2000 FreeBSD boxes.
Now? Linus started working for Transmeta in January 1997 . A lot has happened in the Linux world since then, Mr. Rip Van Winkle.
Linux has been under active development spearheaded by Linus (who maintains his day job, too). Linus is integral to the direction of Linux kernel development (he decides what is officially in the kernel) but he is not the only interested party -- many expert developers around the world participate. Why do they let Linus determine the direction of the kernel? Is it a licensing arrangement? No! It is something more binding: Respect.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
is surely not that it enlightens anyone or introduces new perspectives or insights
this story relates to the editorialization of technology reporting, completely ignoring all the facts and events and private cultures which is exactly what /. is supposed to be about
hell, salon should be damned pleased that the story here was posted, given that no doubt a fair few threads here will actually TRY to introduce th edetails that a real good piece of reporting could have originally covered
so somehow this is an honor system - and i just curse the nth beer cut in and took away my BSD memoriesyep, Joy wrote a whole deal of that OS, and the only thing that really shocks me about this brilliant man is how he got beholden to a company that would never show anything to anyone if they could help it - and then he cashed out early, and never spoke
Joy is crucial to our understanding of open_source_like OSS *because* he was an idealist, completely unlike the "leadership" of Linus - who comes across as a quiet home boy pragmatist (dammit mod me down for that comment, but wasnt Joy's argument against technolgies the swan song of a true idealist?? and so you see the real difference trying to show out)
all for now, thanks for reading . . ."Bill Joy, now a billionaire capitalist"
you must be joking - Joy sold his SMCC stock for about 10$mln very early on - he was so naive this guy is never what you just implied
I'm interested in how all these people come to the conclusion that solaris is slow. Did you untar a large file on a sparc20 with a *SCSI2* drive? Well thats why its slow. A cheap upgrade for the new Ultras is to get a 7200 rpm IDE drive and dump the stock 5400 rpm. According to benchmars Solaris x86 outperformed linux and NT on transactions per second. I find FreeBSD to be much more zippy than linux. Why do large sites such as yahoo, apache, hotmail, sony japan and cdrom.com use FreeBSD?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Go to www.openbsd.org and www.freebsd.org and read the FAQ. Then make your decision.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
BSD comes from a free release of SysV. BSD is what one would call, the real deal UNIX.
Eh...
Sure it is! You're just examining the wrong criteria. "the best" at doing what?
I think its great that we're getting an open source side of the origins, instead of the dam-ned Pirates of Silicon Valley, Conglomerrates (sp?) rule view. Though Tux COULD whip the BSD Devil. -Absy
Slashdot: I came for the news, I stayed for the McRibs.
------
"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
Actually, I haven't confused the two. I haven't evaluated Linux' quality, only its success in the market place.
I'm not saying that BSD is bad and Linux good, I am saying that BSD must make the market aware or die. That is the reality of the world, quality does not rise to surface by itself, it must be pushed weedled and dragged there.
Later . . . . . . WebBug
What is the real diffrence (from a security standpoint) between Free BSD and OpenBSD.
/. purity, but at least I know a little Linux. :)
The reason I ask, is that we are about to launch an app where users will be connecting through our Firewall. We currently run a Linux (redhat) server which acts as lan/web/firewall/UT server, and we are about to do a MAJOR upgrade. So I'll get to the point. We have been advised to go with a dedicated machine running *BSD as our firewall, which seems logical and secure, but we are unsure as to which BSD Variant to go with.
I apologize in advance for my lack of
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Also, I thought I remembered hearing, not that long ago, that salon.com switched to a Linux host.
Linux isn't 'ahead' on my home network. I have two NetBSD-x86 boxes, one NetBSD-Mac68K box (SE/30), and only one Slackware box. Slackware has the feel of BSD which is probably why I still have it around. Dual-boot is not permitted on any of my machines.
Howzabout you make some hardware/software predictions today, and we'll check back in 15 years and see how accurate they were? This business doesn't lend itself to easy prognostication.
DC Airbag
My ancestors evolved from primordial ooze, and all I got was this lousy Existential Angst!
A monitor with a blue screen?
It looks like he was just trolling. Looks like you were just trolled.
If the scenario you describe ever happens it will fork. Alan or someone else will assume the control position and things will continue otherwise much as they have before.
FreeBSD ships with a BSD Family Tree / Unix History chart located in /usr/share/misc/bsd-family-tree:
i smo v .#366 + -------------* | .............| | .............| | .............| | ...........BSDI.1.0 S D.Alpha......| | .............| S D............| | .............| | .............| | .............| | .............| | .............| S D.Lite.-->.BSDI.2.0 | .............| | ...........BSDI.2.0.1 | .............| S D.Lite2.->.BSDI.2.1 | ....|.\......|
m l
...
/ src/share/misc/bsd-family-tree
First.Edition.(V1)
.....|
Second.Edition.(V2)
.....|
Third.Edition.(V3)
.....|
Fourth.Edition.(V4)
.....|
Fifth.Edition.(V5)
.....|
Sixth.Edition.(V6).-----*
.......\................|
........\...............|
.........\..............|
Seventh.Edition.(V7)....|
............\...........|
.............\........1BSD
.............32V........|
...............\......2BSD---------------*
................\..../...................|
.................\../....................|
..................\/.....................|
.................3BSD....................|
..................|......................|
...............4.0BSD...............2.7.9BSD
..................|......................|
.......*------.4.1BSD.-------------->.2.8BSD
....../...........|......................|
Eighth.Edition.....|.................2.8.1BSD
.....|............|......................|
.....|........4.1aBSD.-----------\.......|
.....|............|................\.....|
.....|........4.1bBSD................\...|
.....|............|....................\.|
.....|........4.1cBSD.-------------->.2.9BSD
.....|............|......................|
.....|............|...................2.9BSD-Se
.....|............|......................|
.....+----.2.10BSD
.....|............|.............../......|
Ninth.Edition.....|............../.2.10.1BSD
.....|.........4.3BSD.Tahoe-----+........|
.....|............|..............\.......|
.....|............|................\.....|
.....v............|..................2.11BSD
Tenth.Edition.....|......................|
..................|..................2.11BSD.re
...............4.3BSD.NET/1..............|
..................|......................v
...............4.3BSD.Reno
..................|
...*----------.4.3BSD.NET/2.-------------------
...|....................|......................
386BSD.0.0..............|......................
...|....................|......................
386BSD.0.1.------------>+......................
...|.....\..............|..................4.4B
...|.....386BSD.1.0.....|......................
...|....................|..................4.4B
...|....................|..................../.
...|....................|...4.4BSD-Encumbered..
...|.................NetBSD.0.8................
...|....................|......................
FreeBSD.1.0..........NetBSD.0.9................
...|....................|............-----.4.4B
FreeBSD.1.1.............|........../.../.......
...|....................|........./.../........
FreeBSD.1.1.5........---|--------'.../.........
...|.............../....|.........../......4.4B
FreeBSD.1.1.5.1.../.....|........../....../....
...|............./...NetBSD.1.0.
Time
----------------
Time tolerance +/- 6 month, depend on which book/article you read; if
it was the announcement in Usenet or if it was available as tape.
[44B] McKusick, Marshall Kirk, Keith Bostic, Michael J Karels,
and John Quarterman. The Design and Implementation of
the 4.4BSD Operating System.
[DOC] README, COPYRIGHT on tape.
[QCU] Salus, Peter H. A quarter century of UNIX.
[U25] Peter H. Salus. Unix at 25.
[USE] Usenet announcement.
[KSJ] Michael J. Karels, Carl F. Smith, and William F. Jolitz.
Changes in the Kernel in 2.9BSD. Second Berkeley Software
Distribution UNIX Version 2.9, July, 1983.
[KB] Keith Bostic. BSD2.10 available from Usenix. comp.unix.sources,
Volume 11, Info 4, April, 1987.
[KKK] Mike Karels, Kirk McKusick, and Keith Bostic. tahoe announcement.
comp.bugs.4bsd.ucb-fixes, June 15, 1988.
[SMS] Steven M. Schultz. 2.11BSD, UNIX for the PDP-11.
[FBD] FreeBSD Project, The.
[NBD] NetBSD Project, The.
[OBD] OpenBSD Project, The.
[dmr] Dennis Ritchie, via E-Mail
Multics 1965
Unix Summer 1969
DEC PDP-7
First Edition 1971-11-03 [QCU]
DEC PDP-11/20, Assembler
Second Edition 1972-06-12 [QCU]
10 Unix installations
Third Edition 1973-02-xx [QCU]
Pipes, 16 installations
Fourth Edition 1973-11-xx [QCU]
rewriting in C effected,
above 30 installations
Fifth Edition 1974-06-xx [QCU]
above 50 installations
Sixth Edition 1975-05-xx [QCU]
port to DEC Vax
Seventh Edition 1979-01-xx [QCU]
first portable Unix
Eight Edition 1985-02-xx [QCU]
VAX 11/750, VAX 11/780 [dmr]
descended from 4.1c BSD [dmr]
descended from 4.1 BSD [44B]
scooping-out and replacement of the character-device
and networking part by the streams mechanism
Ninth Edition 1986-09-xx [QCU]
Tenth Edition 1989-10-xx [QCU]
1BSD late 1977
1978-03-09 [QCU]
PDP-11, Pascal, ex(1)
30 free copies of 1BSD sent out
35 tapes sold for 50 USD [QCU]
2BSD mid 1978 [QCU]
75 2BSD tapes shipped
2.7.9BSD ?? [SMS]
2.8BSD 1981-07-xx [KSJ]
2.8.1BSD 1982-01-xx [QCU]
set of performance improvements
2.9BSD 1983-07-xx [KSJ]
2.9.1BSD 1983-11-xx
2.9BSD-Seismo 1985-08-xx [SMS]
2.10BSD 1987-04-xx [KKK]
2.10.1BSD 1989-01-xx [SMS]
2.11BSD 1992-02-xx [SMS]
2.11BSD rev #366 1997-02-xx [SMS]
32V 1978-1[01]-xx [QCU]
3BSD late 1979 [QCU]
virtual memory, page replacement,
demand paging
4.0BSD 1980-10-xx
4.1BSD 1981-06-xx
4.1aBSD 1982-04-xx
alpha release, 100 sites, networking [44B]
4.1bBSD internal release, fast filesystem [44B]
4.1cBSD late 1982
beta release, IPC [44B]
4.2BSD 1983-09-xx [QCU]
4.3BSD 1986-06-xx [QCU]
1986-04-xx [KB]
4.3BSD Tahoe 1988-06-xx [QCU]
4.3BSD NET/1 1988-11-xx [QCU]
4.3BSD Reno 1990-06-xx [QCU], [DOC]
4.3BSD NET/2 1991-06-xx [QCU]
386BSD 0.0 1992-02-xx [DOC]
386BSD 0.1 1992-07-xx [DOC]
4.4BSD Alpha 1992-07-07
NetBSD 0.8 1993-04-20 [NBD]
4.4BSD 1993-06-01 [USE]
NetBSD 0.9 1993-08-23 [NBD]
FreeBSD 1.0 1993-11-xx [FOO]
4.4BSD Lite 1994-03-01 [USE]
FreeBSD 1.1 1994-04-xx [FBD]
FreeBSD 1.1.5.1 1994-07-xx [FBD]
supersedes 1.1.5 3 days after release.
NetBSD 1.0 1994-10-26 [NBD]
386BSD 1.0 1994-11-12 [USE]
FreeBSD 2.0 1995-01-xx [FBD]
FreeBSD 2.0.5 1995-06-xx [FBD]
4.4BSD Lite Release 2 1995-06-xx [44B]
the true final distribution from the CSRG
NetBSD 1.1 1995-11-26 [NBD]
FreeBSD 2.1 1995-12-xx [FBD]
FreeBSD 2.1.5 1996-08-xx [FBD]
NetBSD 1.2 1996-10-04 [NBD]
OpenBSD 2.0 1996-10-18 [OBD]
FreeBSD 2.1.6 1996-12-xx [FBD]
FreeBSD 2.1.7 1997-02-xx [FBD]
FreeBSD 2.2.1 1997-04-xx [FBD]
NetBSD 1.2.1 1997-05-20 [NBD] (patch release)
OpenBSD 2.1 1997-06-01 [OBD]
FreeBSD 2.2.2 1997-06-xx [FBD]
NetBSD 1.3 1998-01-04 [NBD]
FreeBSD 2.2.5 1997-11-xx [FBD]
OpenBSD 2.2 1997-12-01 [OBD]
FreeBSD 2.2.6 1998-03-xx [FBD]
NetBSD 1.3.1 1998-03-09 [NBD] (patch release)
OpenBSD 2.3 1998-05-19 [OBD]
NetBSD 1.3.2 1998-05-29 [NBD] (patch release)
FreeBSD 2.2.7 1998-07-xx [FBD]
FreeBSD 3.0 1998-10-16 [FBD]
FreeBSD-3.0 is a snapshot from -current,
while 3.1 and 3.2 are from 3.x-stable which
was branched quite some time after 3.0-release
FreeBSD 2.2.8 1998-11-29 [FBD]
OpenBSD 2.4 1998-12-01 [OBD]
NetBSD 1.3.3 1998-12-23 [NBD] (patch release)
FreeBSD 3.1 1999-02-15 [FBD]
NetBSD 1.4 1999-05-12 [NBD]
FreeBSD 3.2 1999-05-17 [FBD]
OpenBSD 2.5 1999-05-19 [OBD]
NetBSD 1.4.1 1999-08-26 [NBD] (patch release)
FreeBSD 3.3 1999-09-17 [FBD]
OpenBSD 2.6 1999-12-01 [OBD]
FreeBSD 3.4 1999-12-20 [FBD]
Bibliography
------------------------
Leffler, Samuel J., Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J Karels and John
Quarterman. The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating
System. Reading, Mass. Addison-Wesley, 1989. ISBN 0-201-06196-1
Salus, Peter H. A quarter century of UNIX. Addison-Wesley Publishing
Company, Inc., 1994. ISBN 0-201-54777-5
McKusick, Marshall Kirk, Keith Bostic, Michael J Karels, and John
Quarterman. The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating
System. Reading, Mass. Addison-Wesley, 1996. ISBN 0-201-54979-4
Doug McIlroy. Research Unix Reader.
Michael G. Brown. The Role of BSD in the Development of Unix.
Presented to the Tasmanian Unix Special Interest Group of the
Australian Computer Society, Hobart, August 1993.
URL: http://www.dpac.tas.gov.au/~mgb/papers/bsdrole.ht
Peter H. Salus. Unix at 25. Byte Magazin, October 1994.
URL: http://www.byte.com/art/9410/sec8/art3.htm
Andreas Klemm, Lars Köller. If you're going to San Francisco
Die freien BSD-Varianten von Unix. c't April 1997, page 368ff.
URL: http://www.heise.de
BSD Release Announcements collection.
URL: http://www.de.FreeBSD.ORG/de/ftp/releases/
BSD Hypertext Man Pages
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi
Acknowledgments
---------------
Josh Gilliam for suggestions, bugfixes, and finding very old
original BSD announcements from Usenet or tapes.
Steven M. Schultz for providing 2.8BSD, 2.10BSD, 2.11BSD manual pages.
--
Copyright (c) 1997-1999 Wolfram Schneider
URL: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current
$FreeBSD: src/share/misc/bsd-family-tree,v 1.21 2000/03/12 21:54:18 wosch Exp $
Isn't is illegal to try and get root of a BSD system (at least, one that isn't your own)...
But there are four things that the Salon article missed that I'd quite like to see a "central" presentation on:
Back in the late '80s, I saw some folks in Ottawa playing around with it, with some paranoia going on over whether the lawsuit-happy would be stamping it out.
These started as varying approaches to the use of the "ashes" of BSD 386. I'm sure there's more of a story to it than that.
Perhaps with further commentary as to the "splits."
Which had pretty big plans, notably including filesystem efforts (journalling FFS, tmpfs, and such).
It's not clear what, of the final efforts on the academic side, have headed into active versions.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
beta survives as ``betamax'' and is used heavily in the broadcasting industry, and DATs are still used by tapers and for mastering in the pro-audio world. the algorithms developed for digital radio survive in MPEG2 layer III...
and btw... walnut creek and BSDi merged back in March, so FreeBSD is effectively backed by BSDi now.
NetBSD: the cathedral vs the bizzare.
To which CSRG work are you referring here?
STREAMS is a System Vism (influenced by the "streams" done by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs Research.
...as well as merging a fair bit of SunOS 4.x (the VM system, the VFS layer, the NFS code, and the dynamic linking mechanism, for example, although the versions in SVR4 had some additional changes, including renaming the as_hole() routine as_gap(), as I remember - yes, as_hole() was intentionally called that...) in as well.
OK -- I did goof. I should have written that BSDi had merged with Walnut Creek CD-ROM. I just got off the phone with Kirk McKusick and he straightened me out.
There is the expectation, according to McKusick that there will be some merging of the code bases between BSD/OS and FreeBSD. McKusick says that the source code to BSD/OS will be made available to FreeBSD committers, who will be able to take pieces of code, and once having integrated them into FreeBSD, change the license to a BSD-style license.
I'll make a change in the text ofmy story and log the correction in my revision log.
Editor, Salon Business & Technology
Salon.com
On the other side of things, Linux might not exist
;)
:), but it's a nice learning tool (even more so than minix, IMHO), and it was/is fun working on it. "
either if the FSF hadn't gone with Hurd running on Mach, but something "simpler".
The snowball might have started rolling several years earlier. Whether it would have ended up in a better result or not is impossible to say.
Same thing with BSD really; without the lawsuit it would have been quite possible that Linux would have a BSD-based TCP stack (sure there would have been licensing issues, but at that point they would have been pretty easy to solve,
Linux didn't even start as GPL)
Or maybe Linux wouldn't have started at all and we'd have a GPLBSD for those who don't believe in the BSD license (with a GPL-style license that allowed the BSD advertising clause)
Btw., you just gotta love embarassing quotes from the past
"/I/ think it's better than minix, but I'm a bit > prejudiced. It will never be the kind of professional OS that Hurd will be (in the next
century or so
- Linus in December 1991
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, this process is pretty much Darwinian. In the context of biological evolution "best" really has no meaning other than "survivors". The best survive, because they're best at surviving. Tautological, but there you go.
So publicity is a survival mechanism that companies use in the Darwinian world of the marketplace. There are many different successful strategies, and many niches to occupy. Just like in biology.
Not that there aren't differences between technological and biological evolution. Heredity isn't quite as clear in technology, for example.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
Well, you got closer, but still no cigar.
System V R4.0 was the result of merging a few parts of BSD into System V R3.2 plus providing a compatability layer for much of the rest. It was done by AT&T USG (Unix Systems Group) and Sun (under contract). (STREAMS was already part of System V R3.2, and actually had grown out of the "packet driver" work Bell Labs had started years before Berkeley sockets; Dennis Ritchie himself had devised STREAMS as a way of accommodating a variety of different proptocol stacks and network drivers, though he wasn't happy with the USG's adaptation of it.) This formed the basis for Solaris 2.x. But the USG continued, adding security and SMP features to System V and improving the VM system, resulting in System V R4.2. There was actually a considerable divergence between this system and Solaris 2; Sun did their own SMP and security enhancements starting from the System V R4.0 code base (which they ultimately bought the rights to). Unix and the OS development part of USG was sold to Novell, which marketed System V R4.2 as "Unixware." It was, IMHO, a much better system than Solaris (at the time), but Novell simply couldn't stand to support a product that competed with NetWare, and after a few years of letting Unixware wither on the vine, sold what was left of the USG and System V R4.2 to SCO. SCO wisely dumped their own System V R3.2-based technology as fast as they could, but by that time Linux was becoming a strong competitor--and we all know what's happened since.
I've used professionally every product mentioned above (with the exception of NetWare), and I've used BSD from release 2.4 (which ran on PDP-11's).
It's sad when posts composed of guesswork and half-truths get moderated up by moderators who have even less of a clue. Like one of the earlier posters on this topic, I'm just about ready to abandon Slashdot as the noise has simply drowned out the signal at this point.
Sun became a company in 1982 (when Bill Joy left Berkeley for Sun). BSD was there Waaaaay before that.
SunOS 4.1.x and before (Solaris 1.x) descended from BSD. SunOS 5.x and above (Solaris 2.x) is SVR4, which was developed mainly by Sun and AT&T by merging the best of both codebases (BSD and SVR3).
Get your facts straight before posting, please.
-Kevin
My posts don't reflect the opinion of my employer, and my employer's opinion doesn't influence the content of my posts.
The missing piece in aleonard's chapter is about the erratic course AT&T took regarding UNIX during the 1980s. When it finally decided that it was worth promoting as a salable commodity, licensing and use restrictions tightened considerably, but they failed to extend the OS in the directions that it needed to go to meet the burgeoning needs of local and connected networks (which then became known as the Internet).
Perhaps most important was the development of NFS, which was introduced formally by Sun but based directly on work by the CSRG. Another important building block was Berkeley sockets/STREAMS. These are the things that distinguished Berkeley from AT&T UNIX in the mid-1980s and caused sysadmins who were not encumbered by AT&T purchase requirements to go with the Berkeley flavor during that foundational period. In Cuckoo's Nest, Cliff Stoll alludes to some of these differences from his work as a part-time sysadmin at LBL.
Finally seeing the commercial potential in the late 1980s, particularly driven by corporate markets moving to Oracle and other UNIX-based business applications, and the growing importance of Sun, Apollo, HP and other entrants in both the server and workstation markets, AT&T was faced with two facts in its pursuit of a payoff for its languishing UNIX product: (1) its inability to succeed in the retail systems market against more experienced competitors like HP and more eager ones like Sun; and (2) the ongoing breakup of the Bell System under MFJ III.
Consequently, AT&T sold UNIX off to Novell, in one of the classic examples of the "greater fool" theory of marketing, since Ray Noorda and his merry band in Utah had not Clue 1 about what to do with it. Novell's Univel subsidiary was set up to put together a repackaging called Unixware which never really got a foothold. The only good thing about all this for Novell was that they eventually enticed Eric Schmidt over from Sun to run the company. Schmidt, Berkeleyite to the core, flung the doors wide open to IP and eased away from IPX, and Novell has been able to find a role in the modern corporate market for servers and directories when it was almost guaranteed that the company would sink without a trace in the mid-1990s otherwise.
But the fight over the intellectual property rights of the AT&T and Berkeley flavors was heating up even in the late 1980s. Probably the best coverage of the ensuing battle was in UNIX Review columns over those years, and I hope aleonard will review those as his book project goes forward.
Through a rather complex and messy process, there was a showdown between Novell and UC Berkeley, the very end of which is described in the FreeBSD handbook capsule history.
For about 18 months, it was entirely unclear whether an open UNIX would be possible; this was the period when 386BSD was basically frozen and Linux and other now-forgotten "free U**xlike" things were being worked on. And the reason that those were happening was the continuing expansion of the DOS and Windows 3.x market which brought about decreasing costs and increasing capabilities to desktop machines. Desktop UNIX on the Intel platform only really became usable with the faster late-1980s 80386, and was still basically a toy before 1990; most desktoppers were running SunOS 4.x boxen or maybe AT&T, HP or Apollo workstations to do local development and the very earliest forays into what became ISPs.
The legal battle over the status of UNIX allowed a critical mass to converge on development of Linux, which was far enough ahead in 1994 that even my Bay Area friends were probably installing it more than the BSDs (with the exception of Berkeley grads of course!). The "distribution" concept promoted most effectively by Yggdrasil and Slackware played a major role in this, because small-PC UNIX players no longer basically had to be kernel hackers by necessity.
There's also no question that the *BSD groups develop with more of the "cathedral" mode than the "bazaar" mode, but that may be an appropriate niche-ification as we go forward. Certainly those of us with more an affinity for the Berkeley flavor will continue to lean toward *BSD than Linux with its stronger SYSV heritage. But in reality, the differences really are a matter of preference, not capability.
Bill Gates Is My Evil Twin.
Let's just say that there's been a lot of claims made, and no real decisions yet, shall we? You know what media coverage can be like, even friendly media coverage.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
See also Keith Bostic's interview at O'Reilly's FreeBSD DevCenter. He is one of the BSDi founders and runs Sleepycat Software (BerkeleyDB - the base for Perl's DB_File Module).
--
Bill Joy was some kind of freakin genius and since he had access to AT&T UNIX he was able to run with it and create a greatly improved version. But then he dishoners the open source methodology because most of the eyes looking at it wouldn't see the nastiest bugs and wouldn't provide code that was good enough. That statement really illustrates how he doesn't understand open source (in the esr nomenclature since we are talking about the "many eyes" benefits in his essays) because the "many eyes" theory is NOT that thousands of eyes will together find the bugs... it is to make it POSSIBLE for that one genius out there who can fix the bug to do the job... just like Joy was that genius who could really get his head around BSD UNIX code. When I heard him give his opinions on open source at a Sun/Java conference last year in Seattle, even after going over how he was able to improve UNIX in the '70s I was really put off.
Agreed. I prefer this fox logo:
http://www.early.com/~emackey/linux/
At least a fox is agile, fast, and cunning. A penguin is just fat and slow (well, except in water), and just hobbles about. Yeah, that's what I want to think of my software as...
Please adopt the fox...hey, maybe someone should make a distro just to gain popularity for this logo...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
WTF are you talking about?? That's a /guy/ fox...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Well, no.
SunOS came from BSD. SunOS4 still pretty much looked like BSD.
Then Sun came out with Solaris 2 (and renamed SunOS4 to Solaris 1 after the fact) and began the
merger of BSD with SVR4.
Now SVR4 was the last gasp of the AT&T UNIX dynasty. Widely considered to be "The UNIX Standard" at the time. It, of course, was descended from SVR3 (3.2 to be specific) with the addition of some new technology from Bell Labs (STREAMS instead of Sockets--for the not-invented-here crowd).
Which is all well and good, as far as tangents go, but why do I mention it, you ask... Well the SVR3.2 (and subsequent SVR4) programming manual set was available in regular computer book stores and is written in a nice "standardsy" language. Just perfect for someone who had this idea to clone UNIX. Thus Linux has a System V base (which is part of the gulf between it and BSD).
But now the twist... Since we started the Sun, and talked about how Solaris was merging SunOS4 with SVR4... (which after the head on collision of Solaris 2.4 turned out alright from the point of view of Solaris (2.)8).
Think about this: Solaris is like merging FreeBSD and Linux! (As the BSD and Linux zealots run screaming back to their respective battle lines and hide.)
Pleasent dreams...
"What's the point of going abroad, if you're just another tourist..."
I think Leonard missed a major issue in why Linux has become "where the action is" in many ways, and that is the license. It's my impression that the ability to put one's work into software that will permanently be free is a major motivator for many people working on Linux, and they would not have the same motivation to work on BSD where their work could be incorporated into someone's closed proprietary software. And that this has helped create the great surge of development activity around Linux as opposed to BSD, which in turn is the main reason why Linux has become so popular (in spite of what may be the fact, and at least is my technically-uninformed impression, that BSD kernel still has many advantages). That is, if the best kernel won, BSD would have won, and perhaps would still win; but instead the best license has won (with the belief that the kernel will ultimately catch up). I'm an outside observer. What do those on the inside think? Is GPL vs. BSD a major (the major?) factor in the ascendency of Linux over BSD?
Yes. George Dinolt and I got our version of UNET up on his pair of Onyx boxes, connected over 9600 baud serial lines running SLIP.
John Nagle
He has no name... A lot of people think he's named Chuck though, apparently due to some misinformation from Walnut Creek. See this link
In 1985 Intel was preparing to release its first 32 bit processor. BSD's Keith Bostic was appoached by an Intel employee who requested that BSD be ported to the Intel 386. Whether through snobbery or stupidity, Bostic dismissed the request. Like his friend Richard Stallman, Keith Bostic was convinced that the future of personal computing was in the Motorola 68000 series processors. If Bostic had been a little more humble and accepted the Intel challenge, BSD would have had a six year headstart on the competition and Linux probably would never have been invented. It just goes to show that a swelled head doesn't imply extra gray matter. Quite the contrary. By the time Bostic came around the Intel side, it was too late. The lead time had been squandered and Linux was on its way to its legendary success.
Also, some things put off for 2.6 will help tremendously:
What I would like to see from the BSD community:
I'm sure I've missed lots of things... corrections are obviously welcome.
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
How Berkeley hackers built the Net's most fabled free operating system on the ashes of the '60s -- and then lost the lead to Linux.
:)
I don't know if "Lost" is an appropriate term. Sure, there are more Linux users out there than BSD (I am one of them.) I am installing OpenBSD on the system I am currently piecing together. If it was not for Linux I would never have known about BSD. True, if not for Linux BSD would probably be at the forefront where Linux is now.
Still, is that really important? The most important thing about free software perhaps (IMO) even more important than the "free" is the compatible file formats. BSD and Linux are pretty much cousins, file formats are not a problem. BSD is very much like Linux as we all know, but it is not Linux, and thats a good thing. Some buisnesses may not like the GPL, but they need the Unix model, and like free software ideals -just not the GPL- Enter BSD.
To all the GPL zealots out there, I think that we need both: The BSD licence and the GPL. This promotes competition, and that is good.
So wish me luck on the install!
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I know this is probably heresy, but I think the BSD Devil is way cooler then a freakin Penguin.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
3COM dropped support on UNET and TCP/IP around 1983, instead pushing their own, now-forgotten protocol suite for PC LANs. We finally switched to BSD's networking on the VAX when 4.3BSD came out, and even then, it had lousy interoperability with non-Berkeley TCPs. I had to fix the thing myself, for which I got a minor mention in the 4.3BSD release notes.
The big advantage Berkeley had is that they could give their work away. UNET sold for about $5000 per CPU, just for the protocol stack.
John Nagle
The current dominance of Linux over BSD leads to the interesting thought that Linux may be doomed to the same (relative) 3rd string status as BSD eventually. Both OS's were formed and are maintained in a similar manner, and both have the same weaknesses that has been killing BSD for the past 10 years.
It really is a question of strong leadership. When Joy left the BSD movement the problems really began, and now that Linus is working for Transmeta, how long will it be before he too drops his creation in favor of newer (and much more profitable) enterprises?
I hate to defend Micros~1, but Gates' leadership is the primary reason the company is so strong. Same for Apple & Jobs. You can not have long-term success w/out leadership, and no one took over that position with BSD. If Linus goes, who will replace him?
I work for an ærodynamics company, and despite our superior product, we may soon be filing chapter 11. Why? Because our brilliant co-founder left to work for a breakfast cereal company (of all things!), and despite the new CEO, nobody can take his place as a strong leader.
The prestige of parenting a brilliant idea is wonderful, but it seems to me that most will choose to use that prestige achieved to gain a more lucrative position for themselves, dropping their creation like a dirty diaper.
I actually never realized just how much BSD has influenced the free software movement until I started noticing just how many parts of Linux systems inherit from BSD. The whole socket abstraction to TCP/IP (and other protocols) came from BSD, basic utilities like renice, write, and others as well. This may not sound like much, but you just have to read the source for things like IRC clients or other net apps to realize just how pervasive that BSD idea of sockets is. Plus, I live on renice so much that I can't imagine life on Linux without that little contribution from BSD. :-)
---
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
There is no doubt that the importance of BSD to the free software movement has been vastly understated. What is disappointig about the article is that it focuses as much on Joy's personality rather than the incredible accomplishment that BSD was.
It proved that software projects could be distributed yet centrally managed--a fact that needed to be established before telecommuting could become mainstream. Sure, Joy is interesting, but the fact that a culture beyond open-source owes its existance to BSD is completely understated.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Well, if you want to know about factual errors, how about the one where the slashdot article refers to the Berkeley Daemon as "the FreeBSD devil"?
:)
1. He's a daemon, not a devil.
2. He's BSD's, not FreeBSD's.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Ah, BSD, looking back it is like looking into another world altogether. I remember other products from the same period that were "the best" and yet, those too are long gone.
History looks back not on the best, but on the survivor. Beta Video tapes, DAT Audio, Digital AM/FM Radio, all have been "the best" and all have simply died.
The causes are varied but they all share a common thread. Microsoft realized very early on that if you want to survive it matters not if you are the best, but rather that everyone recognizes that you are "it". Sony blew it with Beta because they did not allow general propegation of their standard. The VHS format was given away for free and adopted instantly by the pornography movement in the US and became the instant standard.
BSD never made themselves a public entity. Linux has fought tooth and nail to make themselves visible. Outside of the computer professional field I doubt if anyone has heard of BSD, free or not.
Unfortunately, it is the public's awarness that determines a products viability, and most importantly it is the public perception that a product is "used" that makes it indeed used.
Take voting in an election as a good example. People want most of all to vote for the winner. So, whether they understand, believe in, or agree with, a candidate is moot. They will vote for the candidate that they believe will win. MS was preceived as having "won" the OS wars way back in the late '80's, even though MacOS, OS/2 and others were far far ahead of Windows 3.0.
In Summary: Publicity Pays, big time
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