It seems that there's some confusion around the Berkeley Software Distributions and where they came from. It's a bit difficult to keep track amidst all of the infighting and forking caused by various personal, political, and legal issues. I've covered the BSD family quite a bit, but never its history. I'll do so now so that we can all get on the same page.
The history of the Berkeley Software Distributions all starts with 386BSD…
While FreeBSD and Linux are hard to shake, I gave NetBSD a glance recently and found some serious problems that not only made me secure in my choice to stay with FreeBSD and Linux, but also compelled me to write this mini-review of NetBSD.
Hot on the heels of their NetBSD 5.0.1 release, the NetBSD organization is gearing up for NetBSD 6.0, due in about half a year ("The sixth major release for the six month of 2010!").
To make that happen, NetBSD is asking its industry partners, users, and anyone with spare change to contribute US$60,000. Matt Thomas, of NetBSD's core group, says the money will allow for "network performance improvements and embedded and realtime optimization," meaning NetBSD can finally move onto specialized hardware, an area NetBSD has struggled with in the past.
But is the ultimate goal of $60,000 appropriate for the BSD family's middle child? Is NetBSD a good long-term investment of that kind of money? Is NetBSD even worth the nearly $8,000 raised so far? Why invest in a bankrupt operating system?
In the new year the Berkeley Software Distribution family of Unix-like operating systems is growing at a phenomenal rate and excitement over the possibilities for this operating system family is in the air. After unprecedented development and adoption as well as major shifts in the marketplace, it's time to take a look at what's new with this demonic family of operating systems. Don't fear, the word demon means Unix goodness at just the right price.
For my senior project, I chose to design my own Unix distribution tailor-built for running web logs like Slash and Scoop. I had my choices of operating systems to build on, and after several false starts and unforeseen roadblocks, I'm well into this project. I felt it may benefit future computer science majors to document my progress so far, so here's my story.
It's an exciting era in the Berkeley Software Distribution world; indeed, things started off with a litigious bang over a decade ago, but now BSD solutions are more varied than ever before and offer the user heretofore unprecedented choice and power. So many are the options today that it's time for a roll call from the various distributions. Each of the four major BSD projects are pushing forward with development and experiencing growth, diversifying the Open Source playing field's offerings Let's take a look at what each project is up to these days.