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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: What is BSD
Message-ID: <AMOSS.95Jul16184021@picton.cs.huji.ac.il>
From: amoss@picton.cs.huji.ac.il (Amos Shapira)
Date: 16 Jul 1995 15:40:21 GMT
References: <3ta683$ujm@newsflash.hol.gr> <3tur0n$7tt@park.uvsc.edu>
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Organization: Inst. of Comp. Sci., Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
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In-reply-to: Terry Lambert's message of 11 Jul 1995 21:38:31 GMT
Lines: 58
Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu> writes:
jliabot@prometheus.hol.gr (Ioannis D. Liampotis) wrote:
]
] Hi!! I wanted to know what type of Unix BSD is ( System V ? ) or something
] like that.
BSD is Berkeley Standard Distribution.
Berkeley *Software* Distribtion, as far as I remember.
] Why BSD is not so popular?
Mostly historic reasons - back in the days when UNIX wasn't as known
as it is today - UCB couldn't support it commercially while AT&T's
SysV was supported commercially. So vendors got on the SysV wagon
earlier, while universities - which had to pay only for the 9-track
tapes and got full source code, "played" with 4.* BSD.
You mean "Why don't DEC, Sun, Gould, Pyramid, Motorolla, USL,
Novell, etc., etc,, sell UNIX derived from BSD source code"?
DEC's "Digital UNIX" ("the OS formerly known as OSF/1", "Ni!!") is
based on Mach, even though it has some feel of BSD (there are still
fragmants of the format of the kernel configuration files! :-) I don't
think Mach is based on BSD (is it?) (and DEC's main involvment with
BSD is just because their VAX superminis were the standard platform
used at UCB)
USL - Unix Systems(?) Labs? That's AT&T SysV, isn't it? Weren't they
bought by USL?
Sun - Up to SunOS 4.* (aka "Solaris 1.*") their use of BSD was the
main reason I liked to work on their platforms, but alas they
converted to SysVr4 (no religious wars please, I like SGI IRIX too,
but NOT what I've seen on Solaris 2 so far)
Novell?? - Didn't they buy USL (SysV)? Do they have another,
BSD-based, OS?
You forgot IBM's RT - don't remember what exactly was the name of the
OS but it was definatly a BSD 4.[23]+ (Tahoe?) machine. About the only
thing from "back then" I liked in IBM's products.
They do. BSD is immensely "popular", not that this is a popularity
contest or anything.
Nope, it isn't. But I suppose it is legitimate of people to wonder
"what should they learn".
Cheers,
--Amos
--
--Amos Shapira | "Of course Australia was marked for
133 Shlomo Ben-Yosef st. | glory, for its people had been chosen
Jerusalem 93 805 | by the finest judges in England."
ISRAEL amoss@cs.huji.ac.il | -- Anonymous