BSD versus Linux question

[awakatanka]

I have tested some linux distro's now and my new project will be mepis soon to see if its better then my choose for the moment ,kubuntu.

I have learned a lot in the last months, but a while ago someone posted a link of pcbsd and it made me curious and of course i tryed it out.

It had a good installer and everything worked out the box even network-manager with wep and wpa. Also i liked there way of installing, i understand that it was not the normal way of installing things but it felt like windows. I instaled kubuntu again because pcbsd was in beta and i had some very nasty bugs and i was to new to solve them.

Now my main question is :

1. What is the difference of linux and BSD?
2. Whats up with all those freebsd,openbsd etc.
3. Why is BSD more secure ( atleast that's the info i get )

Because I'm always curious to learn new things it gives me back the feeling of my early PC days when everthing was new.

http://www.pcbsd.org/ i was falling in love of it and will follow it. Maybe time to do a windows,kubuntu,BSD and test boot on my main desktop PC to feed my curiosity itch

[endersshadow]

1. Linux was developed at the University of Helsinki, with a top layer of GNU, which was developed at MIT. BSD was created at the University of California at Berkeley. Linux got its name from its creator, Linus Torvalds. BSD got its name from its creator, LSD. Okay, just joking, BSD means Berkeley Software Distribution. The two are very similar, as they are both based on Unix/Minics. Linux (more appropriately referred to as GNU/Linux, but I'm lazy) was released under the GPL or GNU Public License, whereas BSD was released under the BSD license (confused yet?). Apple's OS X uses Darwin, a BSD distribution, under the hood. Apple could not have done what it has with OS X with the use of a GPL base, as per the licenses.

2. Same thing with Linux. Ubuntu, Mepis, Linspire, Debian, Slackware, Fedora, Arch, Gentoo, and other things from the Star Wars universe.

3. Not sure if it is more secure, but there are more attacks/viruses for Linux. However, that may only be due to Linux's popularity over BSD. I don't know enough about the discussion from the BSD side to make a full and accurate judgement

[KingBahamut]

BSD, specifically OpenBSD spends a lot of time code auditing and so forth to protect against stack and buffer overflows. If memory serves correctly they use GCC specific extensions to defend against stack overflows ,etc. Additionally they spend an excessive amount of time integrating as much crypto as possible into the OS. If you want to have an even more rare look into the security features of BSD, look closely at Open and Net-BSD , they are , at least according to Theo (De Raadt) , very difficult to crack.

[awakatanka]

One thing made me confused because i did know they where both based on unix, but not everything is working on bsd side it has to be remade for it.


is the base that different that i can't configure sources?

Also i read bsd is closer to unix then linux.

And why do some choose linux above bsd and the otherway around.

And isn't freebsd another sort of kernel then openbsd? Because freebsd has different distro's so does openbsd.

I'm confused. hehe

Edit : kingbahamut answered the last part thxs.

[ComplexNumber]

Also, linux is written in pure C, so its portable across the different processors. BSD is partly written in assembly, so its not.

[KingBahamut]

While not making it nessecarily better than Linux as a whole, BSD and its variants have a certain place in the hearts of many. I find it hard to differentiate the differences between the two. At one time SunOS (that which would become Solaris, and the initial system that I learned on as my first computer) was based on BSD, though it had some aspects of SystemV (dev'ed by AT&T in '83 approx). Solaris would eventually become totally SystemV, and the next major embracing of BSD would come from Steve Jobs with NeXtStep(this was after Apple booted him from the company) , the precursor to darwin, and eventually OSX. While not as portable and Linux might be, its liscensing requirements are much more open, allowing for greater extensibility of it as an OS. At least that was the idea back in the 70s.....

[awakatanka]

While not making it nessecarily better than Linux as a whole, BSD and its variants have a certain place in the hearts of many. I find it hard to differentiate the differences between the two. At one time SunOS (that which would become Solaris, and the initial system that I learned on as my first computer) was based on BSD, though it had some aspects of SystemV (dev'ed by AT&T in '83 approx). Solaris would eventually become totally SystemV, and the next major embracing of BSD would come from Steve Jobs with NeXtStep(this was after Apple booted him from the company) , the precursor to darwin, and eventually OSX. While not as portable and Linux might be, its liscensing requirements are much more open, allowing for greater extensibility of it as an OS. At least that was the idea back in the 70s.....

If this from a company perspective seen a better license system why isn't it embraced more then linux? Because some company's are afraid they have to give there spec's/codes free because of the gpl license if they use a part of a gpl code.
Is bsd license maybe a better license to wright closed drivers for those company's? And there for make it a better base to build a desktop on?

Damn i hate my limited English, can't express and translate all my question.

[IYY]

If you're looking for an OS for a server, you may be interested in OpenBSD's security (even though it could be a dying project).

If it's for the desktop, however, you can pretty much see the BSDs as Linux distros. There really isn't much difference from a user's point of view: same commands, same programs, same file structure. I prefer GNU/Linux over BSD because of the GPL; the BSD license is nice, but it allows freedom to be lost, and lets people take things from OSS without giving anything back.

[KingBahamut]

I wouldnt say that the liscense is more or less restrictive. If I get what your asking. The BSD liscense is somewhat similiar to the GPL. Actually GPL would seem to be a lot less restrictive than the BSD liscense, as the BSD liscense (memory serving me again) requires a certain amount of recognition of the Berkeley Software Distribution , where as GPL does not.

[KingBahamut]

If you're looking for an OS for a server, you may be interested in OpenBSD's security (even though it could be a dying project).

I wouldnt nessecarily call OpenBSD a dying project, just a slow one. They take such great stake in code changes and functionality that one can only assume it takes forever for them to make releases, additionally, the theme songs they release are just a riot to listen to even though they sound REALLY bad. =)