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Dual-Booting FreeBSD-STABLE and FreeBSD-Current
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Eugenia Loli
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how long has freebsd been around? i always thought it was lik 20+ years old. maybe i got my info mixed up and the original bsd project is that old. anyway, it seems that if it has been around for 20 years that would be farther along number wise in its version. just a thought.
The berkeley distribution (BSD) was forked from the original ATT System 3 sometime in the 70’s so BSD itself is over 20 years old. However, FreeBSD was started in 1993.
FreBSD is born in the beginning of 1993, and the first release, FreeBSD-1.0, was in december, the same year.
“how long has freebsd been around? i always thought it was lik 20+ years old. maybe i got my info mixed up and the original bsd project is that old. anyway, it seems that if it has been around for 20 years that would be farther along number wise in its version. just a thought.”
Berkeley UNIX has been around for over 20 years. (BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution). FreeBSD is based on Berkeley UNIX, but it is not nearly as old. BSD was actually designed to run on the PDP-11 originally. The x86 version of BSD is a lot younger.
the first version of freebsd was based on 4.4bsd, which was originally based on some version of the actualy original bsd. Basically, to get to freebsd, the numbering schemes have restarted several times.
FreeBSD came from 4.4BSD-Lite, the last release from Berkeley’s Computer Systems Research Group. The Encumbered releases are the ones that included UNIX, while the Lite releases were without any licensed UNIX software, using a proprietary kernel, along the lines of Minix and Linux before.
While the first release of 4.4BSD-Lite was in 1993, it was revised and re-released in 1994, after a lawsuit from AT&T which sought to expunge all traces of their UNIX software from it. All of the “baby BSDs”, as I like to call them are based on the later mid-1994 release, for legal reasons. None of the projects, including the commercial BSDI, licensed any UNIX code, nor have they complied with any of the UNIX specifications that determine what is UNIX and what is not.
386/BSD was the first product that sprang from 4.4BSD-Lite. IIRC, this project was dissolved amongst much infighting and swollen egos. Ditto for the split that gave us FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. FreeBSD has proved to be the best maintained of the three, although there was recently another round of fighting and resignations.
Berkeley’s BSD project was active from the late 70s until 1993. The CSRG’s last official act was to release the post-lawsuit release in 1994, but development had ceased long before then. There has been no BSD since 1993.
It’s important to note that BSD was not its own UNIX product. Far from it! The BSD releases were distributions that often included AT&T UNIX, and users were required to purchase a UNIX license from AT&T in those cases. Berkeley was never an originator of UNIX — it wasn’t even a UNIX vendor! So “BSD” never did mean “UNIX”. “Berkeley UNIX” and “BSD UNIX” are misnomers. BTW, “BSD” stands for “Berkeley System Distribution”.
“Ditto for the split that gave us FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. FreeBSD has proved to be the best maintained of the three, although there was recently another round of fighting and resignations.”
FreeBSD & NetBSD did _not_ split. They were two seperate projects from the beginning and had different goals (one of the reasons why they didn’t join).
OpenBSD split off NetBSD because of a dispute about the direction the project was heading.
Although FreeBSD has the largest following it does not mean it’s any better maintained than the other two. The resignations aren’t even relevant to this conversation.
I think some people who post on here should do a little more research before preaching their misunderstandings and confusing everyone else.
No.
Software Distribution as this was the name of the first i386 dist which later became BSD/OS which went off into BSDi and FreeBSD and later or at the same time (not sure) NetBSD and later OpenBSD emerged. If I read my stuff correctly.
Some may also call it Standard Distribution when referring to the 4.3/4.3 LITE original and in the light of that follow-ups like the current flavors mentioned above.
sorry meant 4.3/4.4 LITE there.
Although it does not matter there seems to be some confusion as to what BSD stands for. Let me be of some help here.
As quoted from “The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System” by McKuisick, Bostic, etc. [Published by Addison Wesley]
“Software from Berkeley is released in Berkeley Software Distributions (BSD) […]”, Page 8
“Berkeley Software Design Incorporated (BSDI) […]”, Page 3
Jim Strawberry, thanks for filling in some details where I was not altogether certain. As for your last paragraph, and other posts of yours that I’ve read, I suggest that you preach less and heed those very words. I know, you were saying it only to be a jackass, but nonetheless…
Dan, you’re confusing the BSD from the U of C with derivative products that came later on. There was only one BSD. The stuff that came later on might use the letters “B” S” and “D” to mean other things, but the BSD stood for “Berkeley System Distribution”. You can call it all kinds of things…you just wouldn’t be correct most of the time.
thanks for fillin me in on the details of *bsd. i knew had known a lil about the bsd history, but now i know more, and am a better person for it.
check out this interview will Bill Joy from 1999 (i know it’s old) but as he says (and he should know after all
“In a lot of ways, the Berkeley Systems Distribution (BSD) was on the road to being free with source available and many of the things that Linux is. But it got hung up in this legal fight between the University of California and Unix Systems Labs.”
It’s a good article especially if you want to know where vi got it’s command syntax from lol also he talks about BSD vs. Linux here’s the link
http://www.linux-mag.com/1999-11/joy_01.html
both doom and freebsd were both born dec 93, prehaps there was something fucking awesome about that period in time?
i think so
Interesting read. I wonder how things would have been different had AT&T asked for transistor royalties.
AT&T was quite liberal with UNIX; it was USL that wanted to exploit it as a commercial product, as was their right. (For those who don’t know, AT&T divested themselves of UNIX in the early 90s, selling the code to Novell and the licensing rights to USL.) UNIX would probably never have caught on if AT&T had tried to protect it. AT&T probably didn’t know what it was worth, just like Xerox with Ethernet, Alto/Star etc.
It’s Berkeley Software Distribution, you’ve quoted the interviewer, dubhthach.
Here, check this out:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/kirkmck.html
“Early in 1977, Joy put together the ‘Berkeley Software Distribution.'”