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BSD
BSD, standing for Berkeley Software Distribution, is a family of libre (BSD license) Unix-like operating systems.
The BSDs are a direct descendant of the original Unix operating system, unlike Linux which could be considered a clean room implementation of Unix.
Compared to Linux, BSDs have managed to keep the bloat in check and a reasonable codebase.
{ I've yet to try a BSD, so anything written here (as of now) is from an "outsider" perspective, forgive any erroneous statements ~tocariimaa }
Main BSD distros
- FreeBSD: the most popular, quite "Linux-like", plans to drop support for 32 bit architectures.
- NetBSD: focus on portability, main user of pkgsrc, supports Lua in the kernel for driver prototyping and kernel configuration.
- OpenBSD: quite hysterical with "security features", but functional as its contributors actually daily drive it. Was forked from NetBSD.
Historical BSDs
- 386BSD: first version of BSD for IBM PC like computers. It was ready before Linux was released but due to legal issues with AT&T it couldn't be released until 1992, a year later after Linux initial release. FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD were forked from 386BSD.