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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.'"

3 of 399 comments (clear)

  1. MOD DOWN! by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1, Troll
    He said something bad about linux and *BSD and thefore has to be lying! Since we don't agree with him, lets mod him down. Linux and netbsd can not crash. Ask any slashdotter.

    I have never heard of a linux or netbsd system crashing. Have you?

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  2. Re:BSD by MobyTurbo · · Score: 2, Troll
    The Linux community is larger. I'm guessing that this is because Linux was written for x86 origionally, and was therefore available for the platform just about everybody has before BSD was. Obviously this is not true now, but momentum is a hard thing to overcome. I'm not confident on my timeline here, so if someone could prove that BSD was available for x86 prior to 1991,
    386BSD and it's commercial cousin BSD/386 (now BSD/OS) existed at around the same time as Linux kernel version 0.95 as I recall from Usenet posts. (A Linux user since 0.95 who has since migrated to Free and NetBSD.)
    I'd happily concede the point.
    Happily concede the point then. :-) At the most Linux was available on the 386 in a useful form a few months before BSD; if it weren't for the AT&T lawsuit during a crucial period you might have not made this statement:
    Anyway, that's my take on it. For the record, I'm a Linux guy. To my knowledge I have never used a BSD.
    Because you'd be running BSD. (Linus himself said that *he* would have run BSD if it weren't for the timing and the lawsuit.)
  3. Re:Yes by scrytch · · Score: 1, Troll

    MS doesn't have a problem with the BSD license, because it allows for incorporation into proprietary applications, like the TCPIP code in Windows.

    Doesn't matter how many times you repeat it, it doesn't make it true. The only BSD code in MS's TCP/IP stack is the header file.

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