BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) is a derivative of UNIX originally created at the Californian University of Berkeley. Your Free Software Licenseso tolerant that it is close to the public domain, it has allowed it to remain active through various open source distributions and has even facilitated the use of some of its code in proprietary software as well.

UNIX is one of the most important operating systems in the history of computing and certainly the most influential. It was born at the end of the 60s, and even though its use was declining, remains the basis of multiple derivatives for all types of machines, from supercomputers to smartphones. Here we have to point out Linux as a great reference in the variants that use it, but also others like Android, iOS or macOS.

BSD is another group of derivative operating systems. In the early years of UNIX, its creators at AT&T’s Bell Labs licensed the use of their source code to the University of Berkeley (and others) and its developers used it for research purposes. When AT&T withdrew its permission to use it for commercial reasons and in an absurd decision that ended in a court battle. University is over creating his own version and thus BSD was born who made significant contributions in various software components, file system, TCP/IP stack, virtual memory, and more.

Today, the original version is no longer active, but there are other open source development communities using its (very permissive) license. they continued to do so. Furthermore, because it allows its use in proprietary software, some of its code is present in commercial developments such as Mac OS TCP/IP networks.

BSD distribution

As always when we talk about these alternative operating systems, it must be said that They are not complete and directly replace the main version of the use of 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, can be installed on standalone machines or virtual machines, and at the consumer level are good fun for users who want to try different things by getting into BSD and UNIX extensions.

FreeBSD

Maybe the most famous of this group of systems and like the others, although it can’t be called that for licensing reasons, it’s a full-fledged UNIX. It’s been around since 1993, and the latest version, FreeBSD 13, arrived last year with significant performance improvements for 64-bit Intel, PowerPC, and ARM processors. 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 networking, servers, storage, security, embedded platforms and generally on any x86, IA-64, MIPS, PowerPC and UltraSPARC based computer. It has thousands of free applications and is compatible with UNIX-like 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 most famous and oldest (1993) stands out for its multi-platform support as it is available for no less than 56 of them, including x86, ARM, PowerPC or the new RISC-V. Those responsible focus on code quality and portability, implementation of new technologies, security and stability.

NetBSD includes the GNU Development Tools and other packages 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 its own right. This development has been used in various machines such as servers, SEGA Dreamcast consoles and in various NASA space projects. The latest version is 10 available on its web portal.

OpenBSD

Another of the most famous BSDs he specializes in tasks in the field of cyber security and cryptography and came as a variant of NetBSD due to “differences in approach” between the founding members that are common in these community developments. Independently rated “safe by default” for extreme code control and version monitoring while running as few services as possible 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 nearly twenty different hardware platforms), it includes binary emulation for FreeBSD, Linux, BSD/OS, and others, and its codebases are also used to extend Windows and macOS functionality. The latest version available is 7.6 released this week.

DragonFly BSD

Less well known than the previous one, it is a fork of FreeBSD that came in 2003 with a goal overwrite all concurrent proceedings, SMP and most nuclear subsystems. Worth noting as its own contribution is its installer, the 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 provide high-performance server-side transactional computation. 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 built based on FreeBSD. If DragonFly is intended more for servers, it focuses on the user who accesses this platform and look for a BSD that is easier to use.

To this end, it offers desktop environments supported by GTK (KDE, GNOME, etc.) and an “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.

Midnight BSD

Distribution which it mixes code from almost all of the above and includes GNU modules like X.org and GCC and the default Xfce environment, which will be very familiar to Linux users. It is aimed at the average user with ready-to-use development, although there is no shortage of advanced software with a variety of tools for developing and implementing network engineering servers.

The latest version available is 3.2 for 64-bit x86 versions and also serves as virtual machine ready images on VMWare.

NomadBSD

Another one that uses the foundation of FreeBSD confirming that it is the most important evolution of the platform today. Nomad aims to serve as a “portable UNIX” on a bootable USB media for system repair, data recovery or software testing.

The attractive interface makes it ideal for testing BSD from USB without touching the main system, although most of the above options also allow this. The latest version is version 141R-20240711 and can be saved to a pen drive using apps like Rufus.