BSD (Berkeley software distribution) was initially (70s to 90s) a specially modified and improved version of the proprietary Unix operating system that was prepared by hackers at the Berkeley university, which later on came to be liberated from the proprietary Unix (by having the proprietary parts rewritten as free) and ended up spawning several forks, most notably the three major BSDs that we know today (all written in C with monolithic kernel): FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, which (being Unix-like systems) present the most well known alternative to GNU/Linux. In general the acronym BSD can either be interpreted as the single original BSD system or the whole family of its surviving descendants -- unless noted otherwise, we'll presume the latter and furthermore will use the term BSD as if it stood for "one of the three major BSD systems". For an introduction, a high altitude overview of the differences against GNU/Linux might look like this: BSDs use permissive licenses (in contrast to the preferred copyleft licenses of GNU/Linux), they remain closer to the original Unix (i.e. stay more minimalist, conscious of the Unix philosophy etc.), choose somewhat different philosophies (e.g. avoiding the "distro wild west" model), they've been used more commonly for servers rather than desktops (despite being perfectly usable in both) and well, they're less mainstream, which on one side manifests by lack of drivers for some hardware, fewer packages etc., but on the other hand this also means less bloat, less corporate pressure, avoiding influx of retards, cancerous communities etc. As of 2020s BSD is better than GNU/Linux and you should be using it. The mascot of BSD systems is Beastie the daemon.
It must be noted that BSDs are NOT a "cheap alternative" to GNU/Linux, the original system (1978) predates both GNU (1983) and Linux (1991) and bears various achievements and guarantees high quality in some specific areas: for example BSDs are known to have excellent documentation (check out for example NetBSD's comprehensive guide), well written code and OpenBSD is widely regarded as the "most secure" operating system in existence. These days there is truly something liberating and magical in hopping from GNU/Linux to a BSD, you see a system stripped of the bullshit you came to accept with GNU and suddenly begin to feel the joy of computing returning again, it's like traveling back in time. But let's not be prematurely optimistic, it's only rational to expect that BSD will eventually meet the same fate as GNU/Linux in the future.
The situation until around 2015 had been that Windows was the retard OS and GNU/Linux the comfy neckbeard system used by the smart, but during the following decade Windows finally turned absolutely unusable even for retards and everything poured over to GNU/Linux, including women, grandmas, corporations, "gaming" and everything else, so it became the "new Windows" now. The status of the comfy escapist operating system has now been passed on to the BSD. BSDs are still, at least mostly, relatively unknown to normies and written and used by straight white men.
Now let us continue by recounting a few more peculiarities of BSDs
and additional distinctions from GNU/Linux, as this will arguably be the
friendliest kind of introduction assuming a typical reader here. Like
previously mentioned, each BSD should be considered a whole operating
system project, NOT merely a "BSD distribution"
-- what this means is that despite the initial shared historical code
base, each BSD project is now on its own, with
full control and delivers a complete system, not just an assembly of
third party bricks. Each project maintains its own kernel, userland,
package management, ports and other stuff. Unlike in the GNU/Linux world
where any child can change a wallpaper and call it a new distro, BSDs
don't pop up like mushrooms in a forest. Traditional Unix utilities in
BSDs follow the POSIX standard and behave in familiar ways, but they are
distinct from GNU utils pimped with non-standard extensions and bloat --
BSD utils have been written independently from GNU utils, they have
different license, different man pages and traditionally stick to more
simplicity; at times they may not even behave the same, for example in
how they format their output. BSDs also choose different default shells (sh, ksh, tcsh, ...), so
all in all your GNU/Linux scripts may not work on a BSD unless you took
care to write them portably. Of course you can change everything and
make it almost indistinguishable from your GNU/Linux distro, but it'll
take some work, any also why would you do that? Then of course there is
no systemd (awesome!), so tough luck if you
ever relied on that piece of crap. What about
package management? In BSDs third party software is
naturally called a "port" and there are port trees for your given BSD,
along with simple CLI tools (e.g. pkg_add,
pkg_info, ...) for managing packages that work very
similarly to whatever you may be used to; NetBSD for instance uses
pkgsrc, a system of source packages that recursively compiles everything you install (a
very elegant but sometimes slow way), but it's also possible to use
pkgin that works the same, just with binary packages. As for
GUI: BSDs usually default to
command line and let you install whatever you want on top, often
offering some simple window managers for start.
Updates of the core
systems happen by the standard periodic releases, i.e. no rolling
releases for you Arch fans.
How libre are BSDs? Very much, but generally not 100% (legally speaking; in terms of practical freedom BSDs are far ahead of GNU/Linux) -- while OpenBSD for example actively works towards keeping binary blobs out of the kernel itself, sometimes binary drivers are needed for some hardware and other BSDs will be even more pragmatic. The userland/packages/ports are likewise not necessarily required to be fully free (like it is, at least formally, required in Debian for example). As an example OpenBSD contains shareware Doom and Sauerbraten in its ports tree. Generally the policies seem to only demand legality. However it's also the case that non-free packages are typically marked as such so that if someone wishes to exclude anything proprietary, he can do so. From LRS viewpoint this is possibly the most reasonable approach: no censorship, just classification and freedom for the user to do whatever he wants, even if what he wants is bad.
With the general stuff covered let's now take a look at all the three major BSD systems of today:
{ I have tried and now also been regularly using OpenBSD and NetBSD and my experience with both is very positive. Overall I had a slightly easier time with OpenBSD where everything somehow worked, while I saw some difficulties with NetBSD, but nothing major really, I am enjoying both very much. ~drummyfish }
Other BSD systems include DragonFly BSD (forked from FreeBSD), HyperbolaBSD (a sort of hybrid between OpenBSD and Hyperbola GNU/Linux), GhostBSD (desktop focused system), MidnightBSD (likewise a desktop one), NomadBSD (meant to be installed on a USB stick), MirOS BSD and others. It's also worthy of noting that proprietary BSDs exist as well, which was allowed by the permissive license. Perhaps the best known example is Apple's harmful proprietary MacOS derived from FreeBSD. The fact that BSD allows proprietary derivatives is what GNU fags criticize the most about BSD, but we say that FreeBSD did nothing wrong, only Apple did.
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