There are a number of Unix-like operating systems under active development, descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) series of UNIX variants developed (originally by Bill Joy) at the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Since the early 2000s [update] , there are four major BSD operating systems–FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and DragonFly BSD, and an increasing number of other OSs forked from these, that add or remove certain features; however, most of them remain largely compatible with their originating OS—and so are not really forks of them. This is a list of those that have been active since 2014, and their websites.
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). FreeBSD currently has more than 200 active developers and thousands of contributors. Other notable derivatives include DragonFly BSD, which was forked from FreeBSD 4.8, and Apple Inc.'s macOS, with its Darwin base including a large amount of code derived from FreeBSD.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| ClonOS [1] | Offers a complete web UI for easily controlling, deploying and managing FreeBSD jails, containers and Bhyve/Xen hypervisor virtual environments. |
| DragonFly BSD | Originally forked from FreeBSD 4.8, now developed in a different direction |
| TrueNAS | Previously known as FreeNAS. |
| GhostBSD | GhostBSD is a FreeBSD OS distro oriented for desktops and laptops. Its goal is to combine the stability and security of FreeBSD with OpenRC, OS packages and Mate graphical user interface. GhostBSD comes as livecd for users to test before installing. |
| HardenedBSD | HardenedBSD is a security-enhanced fork of FreeBSD. The HardenedBSD Project is implementing many exploit mitigation and security technologies on top of FreeBSD. |
| helloSystem | A desktop system for creators that focuses on simplicity, elegance, and usability. |
| Junos OS | For Juniper routers |
| MidnightBSD | Midnight BSD forked away from FreeBSD 6.1 Beta |
| XigmaNAS | Previously known as NAS4Free, is a network-attached storage (NAS) server software. It is a continuation of the original FreeNAS code. |
| NomadBSD | Persistent live system for USB flash drives |
| OPNsense | OPNsense is a FreeBSD-based firewall tailored for use as a firewall and router that was forked from pfSense. |
| pfSense | pfSense is a FreeBSD-based firewall tailored for use as a firewall and router. |
| CellOS | The PlayStation 3 operating system |
| Orbis OS | The PlayStation 4 operating system |
| Zrouter | FreeBSD based firmware for embedded devices |
| ULBSD | ULBSD is a Unix-like, desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD. It aims to be easy to install and ready-to-use immediately by providing pre-installed graphical KDE5 user desktop environment. |
| ravynOS (formerly airyxOS) | ravynOS is a FreeBSD-based OS aimed at providing "the finesse of macOS". |
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| AskoziaPBX | Discontinued [2] |
| BSDBox | Discontinued |
| BSDeviant | Discontinued |
| BSDLive | Discontinued |
| Bzerk CD | Discontinued |
| ClosedBSD | Discontinued |
| DesktopBSD | Discontinued. [2] Was a desktop-oriented FreeBSD variant using K Desktop Environment 3.5. |
| EclipseBSD | Discontinued |
| Evoke | Discontinued. Formerly DamnSmallBSD; a small live FreeBSD environment geared toward developers and system administrators. [3] |
| FenestrOS BSD | Discontinued |
| FreeBSDLive | Discontinued |
| FreeBSD LiveCD | Discontinued |
| FreeSBIE | Discontinued |
| Frenzy Live CD | Discontinued. A "portable system administrator toolkit". It generally contains software for hardware tests, file system check, security check and network setup and analysis. |
| FuryBSD [4] | Discontinued in 2020. Paid homage to desktop BSD projects of the past like PC-BSD and TrueOS with its graphical interface and adds additional tools like a live, hybrid USB / DVD image. |
| Debian GNU/kFreeBSD | Discontinued [5] |
| Ging | Discontinued |
| Gentoo/FreeBSD | Discontinued. Gentoo/*BSD was a subproject to port Gentoo features such as Portage to the FreeBSD operating system. |
| GuLIC-BSD | Discontinued |
| HamFreeSBIE | Discontinued |
| HeX | Discontinued |
| IronPort AsyncOS | Discontinued. security appliances |
| miniBSD | Discontinued |
| m0n0wall | Discontinued. [6] Successor is OPNsense. m0n0wall was an embedded firewall distribution of FreeBSD, one of the BSD operating system descendants. It provided a small image which can be put on Compact Flash cards as well as on CDROMs and hard disks. It ran on a number of embedded platforms and generic PCs. |
| NetBoz | Discontinued |
| Nokia IPSO | Discontinued. Nokia IP security appliances |
| PacBSD [7] | Discontinued. A lightweight operating system that aimed to bring the flexibility and philosophy of Arch Linux to BSD-based operating systems. The Project has been inactive since 2017. |
| Paxym | Discontinued. FreeBSD for Cavium Networks OCTEON |
| PicoBSD | Discontinued |
| RelaxBSD | Discontinued |
| RoFreeSBIE | Discontinued |
| Snarl | Discontinued |
| The Dark Star | Discontinued |
| TheWall | Discontinued |
| ThinBSD | Discontinued |
| Triance OS | Discontinued |
| TrueBSD | Discontinued |
| TrueOS | Discontinued. TrueOS (formerly PC/BSD) was a Unix-like, desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD based on ZFS boot-environments, Lumina (desktop environment), and the sysadm administration framework; reinvented as Trident OS on top of Void Linux, retained many BSD aesthetics. |
| TrustedBSD | Discontinued. Many of its extensions were integrated into FreeBSD. Only activity on trustedbsd-discuss mailing list is spam (as of 2020-12-22). |
| WarBSD | Discontinued |
| WiBSD | Discontinued |
| WiFiBSD | Discontinued |
| XORP | Discontinued |
| BSDTahoe | BSD 4.3 Tahoe for VAX |
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Gentoo/DragonFlyBSD | Gentoo/*BSD subproject to port Gentoo features such as Portage to the DragonFly BSD operating system |
| FireFly BSD [8] | Was a DragonFly based distribution. |
NetBSD is a freely redistributable, open source version of the Unix-derivative Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) computer operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. Noted for its portability and quality of design and implementation, it is often used in embedded systems and as a starting point for the porting of other operating systems to new computer architectures.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| BlackBSD | NetBSD-based Live CD, with security tools on it and fluxbox as a window manager |
| EdgeBSD [9] | NetBSD fork with main goal to be more modern in some aspects than NetBSD itself. Looks like some of the differences will be back-committed to the main project. |
| Force10 Networks FTOS | the operating system for Force10 TeraScale E-Series switches/routers |
| Debian GNU/NetBSD | Debian GNU/NetBSD was a project to combine Debian with the kernel of NetBSD. It was abandoned in 2002 and has not seen active maintenance ever since. |
| Gentoo/NetBSD | Discontinued. Gentoo/*BSD was a subproject to port Gentoo features such as Portage to the NetBSD operating system. |
| Jibbed | Live CD based on NetBSD |
| OS108 | OS108 is a desktop-oriented operating system based on NetBSD. |
| PolyBSD / pocketSAN | Multipurpose framework for building embedded systems based on NetBSD. |
| SEOS | The operating system for the Ericsson SmartEdge router series |
OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD in 1995. OpenBSD includes a number of security features absent or optional in other operating systems and has a tradition of developers auditing the source code for software bugs and security problems.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| ÆrieBSD | OpenBSD fork which tends to be free from GPL-licensed software. [10] |
| adJ | Distribution of OpenBSD for Spanish speakers, [11] since 2005 new versions are released around 3 months after OpenBSD's releases, source in GitHub, [12] to learn how to install there is a challenge with badge on P2PU [13] |
| Anonym.OS | Discontinued. |
| Bitrig [14] | Discontinued. [15] Was an OpenBSD fork with main goal to be more modern in some aspects than OpenBSD. |
| BowlFish | Customized OpenBSD installation script for embedded systems, intended to make OpenBSD fit into small media like compact flash cards. |
| BSDanywhere | Live CD featuring the Enlightenment DR17 window manager |
| ComixWall | A firewall with UTM features. Discontinued 2009 in place for UTMFW [16] |
| ekkoBSD | ekkoBSD was a Unix-like operating system based on OpenBSD 3.3, also incorporating code from other BSD-like operating systems. Its focus was on security and easy administration. |
| EmBSD | |
| FabBSD | OpenBSD fork with main application in CNC field. It is almost inactive. |
| FuguIta | Providing both LiveDVD and LiveUSB for i386/amd64/arm64. Highly customizable by user. Tracking errata on OpenBSD-stable. |
| Gentoo/OpenBSD | Gentoo/*BSD was a subproject to port Gentoo features such as Portage to the OpenBSD operating system. |
| MarBSD | LiveCD of OpenBSD |
| LibertyBSD | Discounted. Fork of OpenBSD with all non-free binaries removed. |
| MicroBSD | Fork of the UNIX-like BSD operating system descendant OpenBSD 3.0, begun in July 2002. The project's objective to produce a free and fully secure, complete system, but with a small footprint. |
| MirOS BSD | Core system based mostly on OpenBSD and some NetBSD code for 32-bit i386 and SPARC, updated via infrequent snapshots and by following "current". Additional packages via MirPorts and pkgsrc are no longer updated. |
| OliveBSD [17] | Was a live CD originally based on OpenBSD 3.8 |
| PsygNAT | Firewall and NAT router tool |
| Quetzal [18] | Was a live DVD/CD system, based on OpenBSD |
| SONaFR | SONaFR is a small system with router/NAT/firewalling capabilities that fits on a single floppy. |
| UTMFW | Successor of ComixWall, a firewall with UTM features |
| LiveUSB OpenBSD | LiveUSB OpenBSD is a project started around 2009 for creating OpenBSD based bootable USB flash images. There are 3 variants, one with Gnome, a minimal text only version and an XFCE desktop image. |
| LiveCD OpenBSD | LiveCD OpenBSD is sister project of LiveUSB-OpenBSD and this gives users a Live CD/DVD bootable distribution where the user gets to experience OpenBSD without installing to disk. There are 3 flavors, one with XFCE, one with MATE desktop and one with KDE. |
BSD was originally derived from Unix, using the complete source code for Sixth Edition Unix for the PDP-11 from Bell Labs as a starting point for the First Berkeley Software Distribution, or 1BSD. A series of updated versions for the PDP-11 followed (the 2.xBSD releases). A 32-bit version for the VAX platform was released as 3BSD, and the 4.xBSD series added many new features, including TCP/IP networking.
For many years, the primary developer and project leader was Bill Joy, who was a graduate student at the time; funding for this project was provided by DARPA. DARPA was interested in obtaining a programming platform and programmer's interface which would provide a robust, general purpose, time-sharing computing platform which would not become obsolete every time computing hardware was or is replaced. Such an operating system would allow US Department of Defense software, especially for intricate, long-term finance and logistics operations, to be quickly ported to new hardware as it became available.
As time went on, code was later ported both from and to Unix System III and still later Unix System V. Unix System V Revision 4 (SVR4), released circa 1992, contained much code which was ported from BSD version up to and including 4.3BSD.
There are various operating systems, particularly GNU/Linux distributions that attempt to imitate the design of BSD, but do not use the code base of any BSD Operating System.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Void Linux | Void Linux is a Linux distribution created in 2008 by Juan Romero Pardines, a former developer of NetBSD. It uses its own independent package manager, XBPS. It also has elements inspired by NetBSD, such xbps-src, a source package management system inspired by pkgsrc, an adaption of NetBSD's wtf utility, and also uses runit as its init system instead of systemd. |
| CRUX | CRUX is a Linux distribution mainly targeted at expert computer users. It uses BSD-style initscripts and utilizes a ports system similar to a BSD-based operating system. |
| Chimera Linux | Chimera Linux is a Linux distribution created by Daniel Kolesa, a semi-active contributor to Void Linux. It uses a userland and core utilities based on FreeBSD. |
vi is a screen-oriented text editor originally created for the Unix operating system. The portable subset of the behavior of vi and programs based on it, and the ex editor language supported within these programs, is described by the Single Unix Specification and POSIX.
386BSD is a Unix-like operating system that was developed by couple Lynne and William "Bill" Jolitz. Released as free and open source in 1992, it was the first fully operational Unix built to run on IBM PC-compatible systems based on the Intel 80386 ("i386") microprocessor, and the first Unix-like system on affordable home-class hardware to be freely distributed. Its innovations included role-based security, ring buffers, self-ordered configuration and modular kernel design.
Unix System V is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4. System V Release 4 (SVR4) was commercially the most successful version, being the result of an effort, marketed as Unix System Unification, which solicited the collaboration of the major Unix vendors. It was the source of several common commercial Unix features. System V is sometimes abbreviated to SysV.
XNU is the computer operating system (OS) kernel developed at Apple Inc. since December 1996 for use in the Mac OS X operating system and released as free and open-source software as part of the Darwin OS, which, in addition to being the basis for macOS, is also the basis for Apple TV Software, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS.
BSD/OS is a proprietary Unix-like operating system first released in 1993 as BSD/386. It was originally developed and sold by Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDi) and designed to be a Unix for 386-based PCs. It was built off the Net/2 distribution of BSD, on which the developers had previously contributed to.
Berkeley Software Design, Inc., was a software company founded in 1991 by members of the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG), known for developing and selling BSD/OS, a commercial and partially proprietary variant of the BSD Unix operating system for PCs.
In Unix-based computer operating systems, init is the first process started during booting of the operating system. Init is a daemon process that continues running until the system is shut down. It is the direct or indirect ancestor of all other processes and automatically adopts all orphaned processes. Init is started by the kernel during the booting process; a kernel panic will occur if the kernel is unable to start it, or it should die for any reason. Init is typically assigned process identifier 1.
TrueOS is a discontinued Unix-like, server-oriented operating system built upon the most recent releases of FreeBSD-CURRENT.
The history of Unix dates back to the mid-1960s, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bell Labs, and General Electric were jointly developing an experimental time-sharing operating system called Multics for the GE-645 mainframe. Multics introduced many innovations, but also had many problems. Bell Labs, frustrated by the size and complexity of Multics but not its aims, slowly pulled out of the project. Their last researchers to leave Multics – among them Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Doug McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna – decided to redo the work, but on a much smaller scale.
BioLinux is a term used in a variety of projects involved in making access to bioinformatics software on a Linux platform easier using one or more of the following methods:
There are a number of Unix-like operating systems based on or descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) series of Unix variant options. The three most notable descendants in current use are FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, which are all derived from 386BSD and 4.4BSD-Lite, by various routes. Both NetBSD and FreeBSD started life in 1993, initially derived from 386BSD, but in 1994 migrated to a 4.4BSD-Lite code base. OpenBSD was forked from NetBSD in 1995. Other notable derivatives include DragonFly BSD, which was forked from FreeBSD 4.8.
FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD—the first fully functional and free Unix clone—and has since continuously been the most commonly used BSD-derived operating system.
The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginning in 1978. It began as an improved derivative of AT&T's original Unix that was developed at Bell Labs, based on the source code but over time diverging into its own code. BSD would become a pioneer in the advancement of Unix and computing.
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-like application is one that behaves like the corresponding Unix command or shell. Although there are general philosophies for Unix design, there is no technical standard defining the term, and opinions can differ about the degree to which a particular operating system or application is Unix-like. Some well-known examples of Unix-like operating systems include Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. These systems are often used on servers as well as on personal computers and other devices. Many popular applications, such as the Apache web server and the Bash shell, are also designed to be used on Unix-like systems.
Unix is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others. Initially intended for use inside the Bell System, AT&T licensed Unix to outside parties in the late 1970s, leading to a variety of both academic and commercial Unix variants from vendors including University of California, Berkeley (BSD), Microsoft (Xenix), Sun Microsystems (SunOS/Solaris), HP/HPE (HP-UX), and IBM (AIX).
NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is available for many platforms, including servers, desktops, handheld devices, and embedded systems.
Michael J. Karels was an American software engineer and one of the key figures in history of BSD UNIX.
The history of the Berkeley Software Distribution began in the 1970s when University of California, Berkeley received a copy of Unix. Professors and students at the university began adding software to the operating system and released it as BSD to select universities. Since it contained proprietary Unix code, it originally had to be distributed subject to AT&T licenses. The bundled software from AT&T was then rewritten and released as free software under the BSD license. However, this resulted in a lawsuit with Unix System Laboratories, the AT&T subsidiary responsible for Unix. Eventually, in the 1990s, the final versions of BSD were publicly released without any proprietary licenses, which led to many descendants of the operating system that are still maintained today.
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