Home COMSC-171 <- Prev Next ->

BSD history

origin

Berkeley Software Distribution began in 1977 at UC Berkeley as a modification of AT&T UNIX.

features

TCP/IP, sockets
C shell, vi editor
virtual memory
binary compatibility layer for other UNIX applications

major variants

FreeBSD
1993, server oriented
NetBSD
1993, highly portable
OpenBSD
1996, security oriented
Mac OS
1999, Apple

other variants

Dragonfly BSD
2004, distributed filesystem, different multiprocessing model
OPNsense
2015, firewall/router

licensing

BSD license
permissive

what BSD is for

servers
web, email, etc.
compute servers
network attached storage
small/embedded computers
routers/firewalls
IOT devices
desktops
not so much, only for hardcore users