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Old 31st May 2009
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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You're very ignorant of how different each BSD project is, the major 3 BSD's OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD have been around for over a decade.

Each of them have worked on their systems separately, they do not share the same kernel or user-land.. they've diverged over the years.. dramatically.

It is wrong to call them distributions of BSD, because they aren't just distributing an unmodified version of 386BSD or 4.4BSD-lite.. they've each made unique changes to the code based on their independent views and philosophies.

In the Linux world, distributions are simply the same kernel.org kernel and a few things listed on gnu.org.. customizations typically include fancy initializations scripts and silly branding.

OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD are separate entities.. each of them may have started out as 386BSD/4.4BSD-lite.. but today they're 3 entirely different operating systems.

DragonFlyBSD is also a separate project, they may not have been around as long as the other 3.. but they're maintaining and developing their kernel and user-land independently.

MirOS/BSD is a fork of OpenBSD 3.1, comparatively I know little about it.. but it isn't a carbon copy of OpenBSD anymore, 7 years of being a separate project.

FreeBSD has always been a project trying to make life easier for people running in a world full of i386 boxes.. some people have attempted to make life easier by providing novice users with a pre-configured environment and OS X inspired package management system, examples being PC-BSD and DesktopBSD.

A lot of Desktop oriented BSD projects are around as of recently.. that they're not full fledged derivatives of BSD, most of them don't claim to be.. some even try to emphasize the fact that they use an entirely unmodified kernel.

It might be a way to publicize various BSD derivatives, I know for example one of this forums members, jggimi, creates his own OpenBSD based LiveCD images, no doubt his overall goals include making it easier for grandma to try out OpenBSD in a somewhat user friendly manner.

If you don't like the pretty boxed versions meant to lure people who like boxes.. go to the source and get the real deal.

Whining helps nobody, take the time to research the differences between each project.

Take care.

Last edited by BSDfan666; 31st May 2009 at 02:13 PM.
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