I've heard about it but still I dunno what it is and should I try it.
Plz answer these questions:
- How it differs from Linux?
- Are Linux apps able to run on it?
- Is it stable?
- Where it is mostly used?
- When it's development was started? By who?

BSD is a different version of linux operating system developed by students of Berkley university.It is more stable than linux. two BSDs are well known-FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Open BSD is considered as the most stable and secure system.

i don't know all the linux apps can be run on BSD but there is kde for BSD. It is more stable than linux. there is thread in this form discussing difference between OpenBSD and FreeBSD. that will help you verymuch.

At the beginning, there was only on Unix developped by people from Berkeley (not only students) and AT&T. The two projects used to exchange code but in the middle of 80's, as Berkeley was releasing its code source, AT&T decided to go in court in order to delete the AT&T code in the BSD Unix. o, people from Berkeley decided to rewrite the AT&T code and produced a light Unix (called 4.2Lite if I can well remember). Meanwhile, this Berkeley Unix was ported on Intel processor and 386BSD was born (in 1991). NetBSD followed then FreeBSD and finally OpenBSD.
Well, Linux is a System V (like AT&T Unix) while BSD is a BSD Unix (amazing, no . I differs from Linux for example in its initialization process.
You can run Linux applications on FreeBSD because of the binary compatibility (Netscape works that way). But usually, you compile the same code as Linux and it works.
And finally, it's very stable.

OK, you over spoke me. I will give it a whack sooner or later, then coming to post results.

Amazing tho, that Linux development began in the same year first BSD came out (386BSD)!!!

Yeah and there is a lot of flame war going on between the two :-)
My sysadmin has a wallpaper - linux tux is tighten with ropes to the ground and BSD daemons poking him with their satanic weapons
It is quite funny , and yeees poooor tux

BSD differes from Linux in that it's basically (except the trademark which belongs to a corporation) real UNIX rather than a UNIX clone like Linux. Another difference is that BSD has what is known as a "ports system". There are no dependencies to resolve like RPM; just change to a directory and type in "make install && make clean" and it grabs the program (if it's not on your CD) and all packages neccesary to resolve dependencies and compiles it. (You can do this also with binary packages using pkg_add if you want to skip the compilation bit; since I have a fast computer I usually don't mind the time needed to compile - and the result is a program tuned to my system.)

BSD is harder to install than Linux, but after the installation it is somewhat more easy to maintain because of the BSD init system (which Slackware has copied) and the ports system mentioned above (which Gentoo has copied).

BSD is used by many corporations who value it's stability. Yahoo uses it, even Microsoft uses it to power their Hotmail service. (Which is a bad place to get email but that's not BSD's fault. ) It is also often used in a university setting as BSD was originally developed at the University of California at Berkeley.

FreeBSD (and I think maybe the other BSDs) can run Linux binaries, and come with a ports tree that includes many programs that have Linux editions. FreeBSD has so many ports in their ports tree that it offered some programs that SuSE Pro didn't have on their 7 CD set (what I ran before) - and that says a lot.

BSD's development as a free operating system for PCs started around the same time Linux did. Before it was entirely free, BSD was developed in a university starting with the original version, the first version of Unix with virtual memory support for the VAX DEC minicomputer in the 70s. Later Sun Microsystems developed SunOS from BSD code with one of the original founders of the BSD project, Bill Joy, who you may know also as the author of the original vi editor. (Though if you prefer Emacs BSD runs that too. ) BSD's internet networking services (the TCP/IP stack) is the oldest and most thoroughly debugged and tuned in existence; it was the first internet operating system when this networking support was commissioned by ARPA.

http://www.lemis.com/bsdpaper.html

Herein contains your answers.



--==Relax and Enjoy your Shoes==---

Close.

In the beginning (mid 70's) there was only ATT Unix. Grad students and professors at the University of California Berkeley wrote extensions and improvements to ATT Unix and distributed them as the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). You were absolutely free to modify and distribute the BSD code, but you still needed a source license from ATT in order to run the original BSD.

By the early 80's, BSD was a unix unto itself, but still contained much ATT code. DARPA even chose BSD Unix to implement the first TCP/IP stack as well as the first "Internet" protocols such as DNS, FTP, SMTP, etc, which was all then incorporated into ATT Unix. In many ways BSD code was, and still is, the Internet.

By the mid 80's various commercial implementations of ATT Unix had sprung up (Xenix, SCO, Irix, HP-UX, et al), all of which still paid licensing to ATT since they contained mostly ATT code. BSD meanwhile had almost been completely rewritten and contained almost no ATT code. Yet you still had to obtain a license from ATT in order to run BSD.

Around 1990, a few of the original programmers of BSD left Berkeley and formed their own company - BSDI. They sold a commercial version of BSD (called BSD/OS) and competed directly with the commercial unixes based on ATT Unix, but they did not pay ATT licensing fees since they claimed not to contain ATT code. Around that same time an independent project called 386BSD was formed by Bill Jolitz to port the "last" of the official BSD releases from Berkeley (BSD 4.4) to the Intel 386 architecture.

In 1991 Novell sued BSDI and Berkeley for infringement of their intellectual propery, claiming that BSD/OS and all the Berkeley BSD releases contained proprietary ATT code which they had acquired sometime previous. Berkeley countersued, claiming that ATT Unix (System V) also contained BSD code (remember the original TCP/IP stack?).

The lawsuit put a dark cloud over all of BSD, and most people were afraid to have anything to do with BSD. Even Linus Torvalds has stated that had it not been for the lawsuit he probably would have used 386BSD instead of creating Linux.

By 1993 the 386BSD project was all but dead, both because of the lawsuit and because of Bill Jolitz's inability to keep up with patches and development. Two groups formed from the remains of 386BSD: FreeBSD, whose goal was to continue porting BSD to the i386 architecture, and NetBSD, whose goal was to continue to port BSD to many architectures.

In 1994 the lawsuit was settled. The terms of the settlement were that 6 files were removed from BSD 4.4 to form BSD 4.4-Lite, and that any code based upon BSD 4.4-Lite would be considered unencumbered of intellectual property claims. Both FreeBSD and NetBSD were re-based upon BSD 4.4-Lite, and the projects took off.

In 1995-6 one of the NetBSD developers, Theo de Raadt, left NetBSD and formed the OpenBSD project. OpenBSD's goal eventually evolved into creating a more secure BSD through auditing code.

The current crop of BSDs (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, and Darwin) are based on time-tested, proven, stable code whose origins date back to the very beginnings of Unix and the Internet, while continuing to develop and improve with modern features. The BSD license allows for modification and distribution of BSD code without limitations, so many projects and companies base their software on BSD code (such as Cisco, Juniper, and Apple). Meanwhile, the BSDs are used by many companies (such as Yahoo and most ISP's) whether they admit it or not (like Microsoft).

And yes, FreeBSD NetBSD and OpenBSD can run native Linux binaries via binary compatibility (not to be confused with emulation). However, almost any code that will compile and run on Linux will compile and run on a BSD, so any Linux application is also a BSD application.

i don't know if this has been answered....but why is linux more popular than BSD.....or is it not??

I think the lawsuit is a major factor. By the time it was cleared up, Linux had the momentum. Also BSD got a rep for being hostile to newbies, and many people have serious reservations about its licence.

You guys should check out the Netcraft surveys. Top uptime webservers on the Internet are running a BSD varient, mostly FreeBSD or BSD/OS.

Linux wasn't on the list last time I looked.

Statistics show BSD installations outnumbering Linux 3 to 1 - this is with the advent of OSX using a BSD kernel.

Most hardcore BOFHs prefer BSD because it's no-nonsense and server oriented.

Linux is good. It just doesn't have the history behind it and although it's used for servers, it gets pushed more on the desktop and gets more publicity and "word of mouth" that actually has little backing. You'll find a lot of the bigger corps sticking with BSD or another commercial UNIX. It's the Ninja working behind the scenes.