What is BSD?

[floyd27]

Is this another OS that is not related to linux..?
Or is it more like a distro of linux?
just wondering thanx

[DJ_Max]

Is this another OS that is not related to linux..?
Or is it more like a distro of linux?
just wondering thanx
http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux1.php more precisely, http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/bsd4linux2.php

[kzutter]

Find out for yourself.... :)

http://www.google.com/bsd?q=bsd

[bjweeks]

It is a flavor of unix.

[WebbyBabe]

Is BSD any good? tried puting it on my 1999 computer but it wouldn't take it. lol [-X

[plb]

BSD is great I used it for 4 years straight and I never had an issue with it....freebsd to be precise

[floyd27]

Hi...
Thanx for the link..That really opened my eyes to how the whole thing came together...

thanx again.
:)

[Artemis3]

Is this another OS that is not related to linux..?
Or is it more like a distro of linux?
just wondering thanx

BSD = Berkeley Software Distribution, another kind of "unix like" os.

Yes this is another OS, is not related to linux; and its popular (free) descendants have BSD alternatives for commonly bundled gnu software in linux distros.

[Freddy]

BSD = Berkeley Software Distribution, another kind of "unix like" os.

BSD is more or less UNIX and GNU/Linux is a imitation of it, at least it used to be.

[wdo_will]

My favorite Linux -vs- BSD quote:
"Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers try to port UNIX to the PC. BSD is what you get when a bunch of UNIX hackers try to port UNIX to the PC."

Or something like that.

It's also kind of funny when you think about BSD and GNU. Nowadays, BSD almost always uses many, many GNU programs. So, if you let BSD = Unix, then a modern BSD install = GNU's Not Unix Unix ;)

[Monsuco]

BSD is sort of like a sister project. It is very similar to Linux, both are unix-like and are open source, but there are differences.

BSD is licensed differently. BSD typically only requires that you mention the authors of the origional code. Linux requires that and in addition you must make your source code avalible and GPL your work under the same license linux carries. Programmers can use BSD code in Linux, but not the other way around (you can, but you can't legally redistribute it.)

BSD also tends to concentrate their efforts on specific aspects, where as linux is more general use. For example, FreeBSD concentrates heavily on being as stable as possible. FreeBSD hardly ever crashes. However one draw back to this is that since some updates would require reboots (and thus downtime), FreeBSD doesn't update their kernel quite as much. OpenBSD concentrates on security. In 8 or so years of development it has only had one major security flaw in the default install for the updated version. This is good considering Windows typically has about 30 per month or something. However, the default install on OpenBSD pretty much is on lockdown, most ports are blocked, and security is so tight you often have to configure it to allow day to day stuff through. PC-BSD concentrates on being easy to install and to install software. It is very easy to install software on PC-BSD. It uses a custom package managment system that is used in a manor similar to windows (with clicking and graphics to install), however, there is very little software avalible for the .pbi system.

If you want to try BSD, you might want to test PC-BSD, it is a good desktop distro, easy to set up and all, but I prefer Ubuntu. Another option is I think there is a Debian version that uses the BSD kernel instead of linux's kernel.

[3rdalbum]

The above poster forgot the other well-known BSD: NetBSD, which has a focus on running on as many platforms as possible, and embedded computing (i.e. in consumer electronics).

The three big BSDs often share code (for instance, I believe NetBSD's Bluetooth support ended off in the other two), and there are lots of other BSDs which are based on one of the big three.

[The Keeper]

Aside of PC-BSD, there is also DesktopBSD which does have pretty much same goals as PC-BSD but different approach. Instead of PC-BSD's completely new and seperate PBI-package managemet system, DesktopBSD builds on top of the FreeBSD's Ports-system with new Synaptic/Adept-like tools.

http://www.desktopbsd.net/