In the last 7 days we’ve seen a new version released by each of the 4 major BSD operating systems: OpenBSD 4.5, NetBSD, FreeBSD 7.2 and a “minor” DragonFlyBSD release (2.2.1).
Who said BSD was dying? Video 1 - “BSD is dying” (2007) - Video 2 - “BSD is still dying” (2009).
NetBSD 5
NetBSD, well-known for its high portability has arrived at version 5, which has been worked on for about 2 year. This release seems pretty interesting from a performance point of view. It’s claimed that NetBSD 5.0 now outruns NetBSD 4, FreeBSD 7.1 and Fedora 10.
In addition to scalability and performance improvements, a significant number of major features have been added. Some highlights are: a preview of metadata journaling for FFS file systems (known as WAPBL, Write Ahead Physical Block Logging), the ‘jemalloc’ memory allocator, the X.Org X11 distribution instead of XFree86 on a number of ports, the Power Management Framework, ACPI suspend/resume support on many laptops, write support for UDF file systems, the Automated Testing Framework, the Runnable Userspace Meta Program framework, Xen 3.3 support for both i386 and amd64, POSIX message queues and asynchronous I/O, and many new hardware device drivers. [source]
Release Notes - NetBSD Website
OpenBSD 4.5
OpenBSD, renowned for its focus on security (incl OpenSSH), has released version 4.5. The latest version comes with improved hardware support, new tools and functionalities and upgraded ports.
Oh yeah, and there’s also a new release song.
Release Notes - OpenBSD website
DragonFlyBSD 2.2.1
The new 2.2 release includes Hammer, a file system that includes instant crash recovery, multi-volume file systems, data integrity checking, fine grained history retention, and the ability to mirror data to other volumes. It has undergone extensive stress-testing and is considered production-ready!
Release Notes - DragonFly website
FreeBSD 7.2
Read here about the release
7.2 review: improved virtualisation (nixcraft)
Alan Bueno has begun a project translating FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD man pages into Brazilian Portuguese.
Information about the project can be found in the FAQ. [Google Translation - EN)
Translated MAN Pages:
This blog, FreeBSD - the unknown Giant, as the title suggests, covers only FreeBSD related stories and updates. However, over the last few months, I have received emails from my some readers asking why I don’t write about the “other BSDs”, such as OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonflyBSD.
Well, the answer is quite simple: “There’s no need to!” No, not because they’re not worth writing about, they certainly are, but because there are already some quality blogs dedicated to each of these BSD operating systems. Hence my reason for not, or only occasionally, writing about then. Since these blogs are regularly updated with news, howtos and information on made progress, I’ve decided not to just copy, paste and republish what’s on those blogs.
To find out more about OpenBSD, visit the OpenBSD Journal. The DragonflyBSD digest is updated regularly with news relating to DragonflyBSD, and lately a lot on the progress of the newly created and much promising Hammer File System (HammerFS), whilst Hubert’s NetBSD blog brings the latest and greatest with regards to NetBSD.
Of course there are more many blogs and websites tracking the “big four”, but these are the best as far as I’m aware.
I blogged before that there were plans of creating a FreeBSD Magazine. Just to let you know that the first issue can be expected around April 2008. It won’t be just about FreeBSD, but also about other BSD OSses, incl. OpenBSD and NetBSD, hence the name BSD Magazine. The website is now live at bsdmag.org. If you want to contribute or find out more about BSD Magazine, visit the website or contact Kate or Caroline.
Dru Lavige, Jan Stedehouder and myself will be writing something for the 1st issue.
The FFS File System driver for Windows enables you to read BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) FFS partitions from Windows 2000/XP/2003.
More info, downloads and source code on this SF site.
Trollaxor has written up an interesting piece about the history and future of the major BSD systems: FreeBSD, netBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD and Darwin.
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.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD 5 was the darkest period in this operating system’s history and morale and marketshare were at an all-time low. The problem originated from merging BSD/OS into FreeBSD; though the two systems shared a lot of code, the difference of just a couple years was staggering. FreeBSD’s virtual memory and multi-processing code was immature, while BSD/OS’s libraries were archaic. Mating the two was a mess that cost FreeBSD face and kept users on an older branch from the Nineties, 4.11.
…
Now, with FreeBSD 7.0b on the horizon promising to wrap it all up, FreeBSD is once again taking the free Unix world by storm. It’s a tight, efficient codebase leveraging the best of BSD/OS, Darwin, and FreeBSD that users have been clamoring for. FreeBSD users and sites now have a shining future ahead of them.
… [discusses NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD & Darwin]
With all of these great improvements to the Berkeley operating system family in the last few years, BSD is clearly where it’s at. Linux is a throwback to when Open Source was a hot buzzword and sharing code was a novel idea. Now, Apple and company use it as standard coding procedure to share and improve the tech they have and leverage their individual strengths.
Even when taking the few commercial Unices that still exist into account, like AIX and Solaris, BSD still owns the arena in its frantic steamroll to the top of the supercomputing mountain. Whether you want the general wholesomeness of FreeBSD, the KGB-like security of OpenBSD, the more experimental NetBSD or DragonFlyBSD, or the utter perfection of Mac OS X, BSD has your bases completely covered with room to grow in the future.
Read the whole article here
As the BSD projects (DragonFlyBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD) have grown in size, a number of persistent myths have grown up around them. Some of these are perpetuated by well meaning but misguided individuals, others by people pursuing their own agendas.
This page aims to dispel those myths while remaining as dispassionate as possible.
This is an interesting blog post looking at the BSD as a viable alternative to Linux. The BSDs are less hyped and are in some areas superior to Linux:
“The BSDs have been around for a long time - longer than Linux. But they have received much less attention than Linux in the press because they have fewer noisy supporters. Nevertheless, they continue to thrive, because of their similarities to, and differences from, Linux. Like Linux, the BSDs are free, fast and have a variety of software available for them. In addition, BSD kernels tend to be more stable than Linux kernels, BSDs run on a wider variety of hardware and have fewer security issues.
But where the BSDs tend to really shine is in networking. TCP/IP speed tests run on identical hardware often show the BSDs to be faster than Linux. While the Linux community has focused on enabling Linux to use more esoteric hardware, the BSD community has worked on making the network infrastructure faster and easier to extend. This has caused a number of network hardware vendors to use customized versions of BSDs, particularly NetBSD, as the internal operating systems of their commercial products.
As the lesser-known players in the free operating system market, the BSD development groups have had more opportunity to work on the core of their products. FreeBSD has the largest market of the BSDs and gets the most development interest. NetBSD runs on an incredible variety of CPUs, including some systems that leave even the fastest Intel chips in the dust. OpenBSD’s main focus is security, and it attracts developers for whom that is the main concern.
…
It is well known that many large Internet service providers use one of the BSDs (FreeBSD) to run their production mail and Web servers. It is common to find BSD-based Internet servers that have not crashed or been rebooted in years.
… any shop that is considering Linux should also take a look at the BSDs, particularly if they want stability and less excitement in their operating system.”
Source: ravisblog.com (01/11/2007)
This website deals mostly with FreeBSD and systems derived from or based on this superb operating system. However it’s also good to be aware of other BSD systems that are around and the reason why they exist or why have been developed: OpenBSD (secure by default - the world’s most secure OS), NetBSD (runs on nearly every platform imaginable, including a bread toaster! and in some sense Apple’s MacOS X. (See Unix family tree here)
There’s a good article on Serverwatch.com explaining the history, the differences between and common features of the 4 main BSD systems.
Organizations that want to use a public Unix variant have two solutions from which to chose: Linux and BSD. The much talked about Linux camp contains a variety of distributions that include different utilities and tool sets. The same is true of the less frequently covered BSD camp. This article compares and contrasts the four main BSD variants and offers recommendations for both server- and desktop-based solutions.
There are four main BSD variants. Three of these (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD) are totally free; the fourth (Mac OS X) is technically the core part of an operating system that most wouldn’t even consider a BSD variant. To understand the differences between the various versions, let’s briefly recap the history of BSD to understand how the different versions have developed.
Read the whole article here.
Recently I came across two interesting websites that show an up-to-date family tree of Unix and BSD operating systems, and thought that those of you who are not too familiar with the different Unix and Unix-like systems might find these pages interesting.
My name is Gerard van Essen, and I'm the founder of this site. 
