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Overview of the BSDs

Posted by michael on from the don't-want-to-go-on-the-cart dept.

zeekiorage writes "A good informative article about the various BSD OSs, their legacy, philosophy and importance on the ExtremeTech web site. Excerpt from the article: 'Nowadays, the term 'The BSDs' refers to the family of operating systems which were derived, to a greater or lesser extent, from BSD. The five best known BSDs are FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, and Darwin (which serves as the foundation for Apple's MacOS X). But virtually all modern operating systems -- from Windows to BeOS to Linux -- rely on crucial BSD code to run.'"

1 of 399 comments (clear)

  1. Holy crap by theNeophile · · Score: 5, Funny
    Now i know why i don't visit ExtremeTech much.

    What is BSD? If you ask a typical computer "expert," he or she is likely to reply
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    (incorrectly!) that it is "an operating system." The correct answer, however, is more complex than that.
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    BSD is -- among other things -- a culture, a philosophy, and a growing collection of software, most (though not all) of which is available for free and with source code.
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    Here are the origins of BSD and the operating systems it has spawned.
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    BSD stands for "Berkeley Software Distribution," the name first given to the University of California at Berkeley's own toolkit of enhancements for the UNIX operating system.