BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) is a derivative of UNIX originally created at the Californian University of Berkeley. Your free software licenseso permissive that it is close to the public domain, has allowed it to remain active through various open source distributions and has even facilitated the use of part of its code in proprietary software as well.
UNIX is one of the most important operating systems in the history of computing and surely the most influential. It was born at the end of the 60s and although its use has decreased, remains the basis of multiple derivatives for all types of machines, from supercomputers to smartphones. Here we must point out Linux as a great reference in variants that use it, but also others such as Android, iOS or macOS.
BSD is another group of derived operating systems. In the early years of UNIX, its creators at AT&T’s Bell Labs licensed the use of their source code to Berkeley University (and others), and its developers used it for research purposes. When AT&T withdrew its use permission for commercial reasons and in an absurd decision that ended up becoming a court battle. The University finished creating its own version and thus a BSD was born who has made notable contributions in various software components, file system, TCP/IP stack, virtual memory or others.
Today the original version is no longer active, but there are other open source community developments using its (very permissive) license. they have continued it. Furthermore, as it allows its use in proprietary software, part of its code is present in commercial developments such as Mac OS TCP/IP networks.
BSD Distributions
As always when we talk about these alternative operating systems, it must be said that They are not complete and direct replacements as main version of use to the big three (Windows, macOS and Linux). They are not updated with the same frequency, nor are they suitable for everything and for all users. But they are free, open source, they can be installed on independent machines or virtual machines and at a consumer level, it is good entertainment for the user who wants to try other things by getting into BSD and by extension UNIX.
FreeBSD
Maybe the best known of this group of systems and like the rest, although it cannot be called as such for licensing reasons, it is a full-fledged UNIX. It has been on the market since 1993 and the latest FreeBSD 13 version arrived last year with significant performance improvements for 64-bit Intel, PowerPC and ARM CPUs. It also increased hardware support and improved all networking and EFI booting, while AES-NI encryption was included by default for generic kernel builds.
It is used for networks, servers, storage, security, embedded platforms and in general on any machine with x86, IA-64, MIPS, PowerPC and UltraSPARC architecture. It has thousands of free-to-use applications and is compatible with UNIX-type system binaries such as Linux. The latest versions in production are 14.1, 13.4 and 13.3, which are available on its web portal.
NetBSD
Another of the best known and oldest (1993) stands out for its multiplatform support since it is available for -no less- than 56 of them, x86, ARM, PowerPC or the new RISC-V, among others. Those responsible focus on the quality and portability of the code, implementation of new technologies, security and stability.
NetBSD includes the GNU development tools and other packages that are covered by the GPL and other open source licenses. One of NetBSD’s most interesting projects is its powerful packaging system, pkgsrc, a meta system in itself. This development has been used in machines as diverse as servers, the SEGA Dreamcast console, and in various NASA space projects. The latest version is 10 available on its web portal.
OpenBSD
Another of the best-known BSDs, it specializes in cybersecurity and cryptography tasks and it arrived as a variant of NetBSD due to the “differences in approach” between the founding members, common in these community developments. Self-rated as “safe by default” for its extreme code review and monitoring of its versions, while activating the fewest possible services on production machines.
It is widely used in the computer security segment as an operating system for firewalls or intrusion detection systems. Cross-platform and highly portable (it can run on almost twenty different hardware platforms), it includes binary emulation for FreeBSD, Linux, BSD/OS and others, and its code bases are also used to extend the functionality of Windows and macOS. The latest version available is 7.6 released this week.
DragonFly BSD
Less known than the previous ones, it is a fork of FreeBSD that arrived in 2003 with the aim of rewrite all concurrency management, SMP and most kernel subsystems. Noteworthy as its own contribution is its installer, BSD Installer, which has been adopted by other distributions in this group and its HAMMER file system.
DragonFly includes a powerful core with efficient SMP mechanisms to deliver high-performance, server-side transactional computing. Like the rest of BSD, it directly provides users with access to many applications in binary and source code form. The latest version available is 6.4.
GhostBSD
Another created based on FreeBSD. If DragonFly is more intended for servers, it focuses on the user who approaches this platform and look for a BSD that is easier to use.
To this end, it offers GTK-assisted desktop environments (KDE, GNOME, etc.) and a “out-of-the-box” design right out of the box, with pre-installed applications for common computing and office needs and standard MATE packages. The latest version is 24.07.3.
MidnightBSD
A distribution that mixes code from almost all of the above and includes GNU modules such as X.org and GCC and a default Xfce environment that will be very familiar to Linux users. It is committed to the average user with ready-to-use development, although there is no shortage of advanced software with a variety of server development and implementation tools for network engineering.
The latest version available is 3.2 for 64-bit x86 versions, and it also serves images prepared for virtual machines on VMWare.
NomadBSD
Another of those that use the FreeBSD base confirming that it is the most important development of the platform today. Nomad is focused on serving as a “portable UNIX” on USB bootable media for system repair, data recovery, or software testing.
With an attractive interface, it is ideal for testing BSD from a USB without touching the main system, although most of the above allow this too. The latest version is version 141R-20240711 and can be saved to the pendrive with applications such as Rufus.