USING BSD FOR LINUX USERS

If you’re reading this magazine, then you have at least a passing interest in free software. Maybe it’s limited to Linux, but the FOSS community is bigger than that. There’s plenty of software projects that run on other operating systems, and also a variety of open source Un*x clones.

The BSD family of operating system is an important example, representing some of the first systems truly free from legacy Unix code, and can be seen as at least an uncle to Linux as we know it today. What started as one system, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) went through a variety of versions (a book in itself), with different projects and vendors. Today’s family of BSD systems include NetBSD, OpenBSD, and TrueOS. Of these, FreeBSD is considered the most ‘general purpose’ and is arguably the most popular. Notably, Apple used FreeBSD code as the basis for the Darwin project, an OS that became Mac OS X (and now macOS).

If you’re looking for a desktop system to install and immediately be productive with, there’s better options for you (see the sidebar for some other members of the BSD clan). But this article intends to be a learning exercise to see how this little Unix-y devil stacks up. And FreeBSD offers that learning opportunity by being more hands-on than other desktop-oriented systems, whether Linux or BSD.