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A Linux distribution is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and often a package management system. They are often obtained from the website of each distribution, which are available for a wide variety of systems ranging from embedded devices and personal computers to servers and powerful supercomputers.
DNIX is a discontinued Unix-like real-time operating system from the Swedish company Dataindustrier AB (DIAB). A version named ABCenix was developed for the ABC 1600 computer from Luxor. Daisy Systems also had a system named Daisy DNIX on some of their computer-aided design (CAD) workstations. It was unrelated to DIAB's product.
QNX is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market.
BusyBox is a software suite that provides several Unix utilities in a single executable file. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, and FreeBSD, although many of the tools it provides are designed to work with interfaces provided by the Linux kernel. It was specifically created for embedded operating systems with very limited resources. The authors dubbed it "The Swiss Army knife of Embedded Linux", as the single executable replaces basic functions of more than 300 common commands. It is released as free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2, after controversially deciding not to move to version 3.
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is a specification that defines an architecture for the platform firmware used for booting a computer's hardware and its interface for interaction with the operating system. Examples of firmware that implement the specification are AMI Aptio, Phoenix SecureCore, TianoCore EDK II, InsydeH2O.
m0n0wall was an embedded firewall distribution of FreeBSD, one of the BSD operating system descendants. It provided a small image which could be put on Compact Flash cards as well as on CD-ROMs and hard disks. It ran on a number of embedded platforms and generic PCs. The PC version could be run with just a Live CD and a floppy disk to store configuration data, or on a single Compact Flash card. This eliminated the need for a hard drive, which reduces noise and heat levels and decreases the risk of system failure through elimination of moving parts found in older hard drives.
The USB mass storage device class is a set of computing communications protocols, specifically a USB Device Class, defined by the USB Implementers Forum that makes a USB device accessible to a host computing device and enables file transfers between the host and the USB device. To a host, the USB device acts as an external hard drive; the protocol set interfaces with a number of storage devices.
A diskless node is a workstation or personal computer without disk drives, which employs network booting to load its operating system from a server.
The NSLU2 is a network-attached storage (NAS) device made by Linksys introduced in 2004 and discontinued in 2008. It makes USB flash memory and hard disks accessible over a network using the SMB protocol. It was superseded mainly by the NAS200 and in another sense by the WRT600N and WRT300N/350N which both combine a Wi-Fi router with a storage link.
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.
In the context of free and open-source software, proprietary software only available as a binary executable is referred to as a blob or binary blob. The term usually refers to a device driver module loaded into the kernel of an open-source operating system, and is sometimes also applied to code running outside the kernel, such as system firmware images, microcode updates, or userland programs. The term blob was first used in database management systems to describe a collection of binary data stored as a single entity.
FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD and the current version runs on IA-32, x86-64, ARM, PowerPC and RISC-V processors. The project is supported and promoted by the FreeBSD Foundation.
muLinux is an Italian, English-language lightweight Linux distribution maintained by mathematics and physics professor Michele Andreoli, meant to allow very old and obsolete computers to be used as basic intranet/Internet servers or text-based workstations with a UNIX-like operating system. It was also designed for quickly turning any 80386 or later computer into a temporary, powerful Linux machine, along with system repair, education, forensic analysis and what the developer called proselytizing. In 2004 reviewer Paul Zimmer wrote, "Although there are several other single-floppy Linux distributions, none can match muLinux's extensive and unique combination of useful features." The last version update was in 2004, when further development of this "linux-on-a-floppy" distribution ended.
gPXE is an open-source Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) client firmware implementation and bootloader derived from Etherboot. It can be used to enable computers without built-in PXE support to boot from the network, or to extend an existing client PXE implementation with support for additional protocols. While standard PXE clients use TFTP to transfer data, gPXE client firmware adds the ability to retrieve data through other protocols like HTTP, iSCSI and ATA over Ethernet (AoE), and can work with Wi-Fi rather than requiring a wired connection.
The SheevaPlug is a "plug computer" designed to allow standard computing features in as small a space as possible. It was a small embedded Linux ARM computer without a display which can be considered an early predecessor to the subsequent Raspberry Pi.
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.
XigmaNAS is an open-source Network-attached storage (NAS) server software with a dedicated management web interface. It is a continuation of the original FreeNAS code, which was developed between 2005 and late 2011. It was released under the name NAS4Free on 22 March 2012. The name was changed to XigmaNAS in July 2018. On SourceForge, it was elected "'Community Choice' Project of the Month" twice, in August 2015 and March 2017.
OpenZFS is an open-source implementation of the ZFS file system and volume manager initially developed by Sun Microsystems for the Solaris operating system, and is now maintained by the OpenZFS Project. Similar to the original ZFS, the implementation supports features like data compression, data deduplication, copy-on-write clones, snapshots, RAID-Z, and virtual devices that can create filesystems that span multiple disks.
References
- ↑ "NanoBSD man page". The FreeBSD Project. Retrieved 24 Aug 2014.
