BSD For Linux Users

Dru LavigneCommunity Manager, PC-BSD ProjectOCLUG, December 7, 2010

This presentation will cover...

What exactly is BSD?

How is it different from Linux?

Does release engineering matter?

Any features unique to BSD?

Additional Resources

What exactly is BSD?

aka What exactly is Linux?

kernel?

distro?

What is BSD?

Began as a series of patches and contributed applications for Unix from the University of Berkeley

Forked into several projects when Berkeley stopped working on BSD

Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix: From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable

http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/

book/kirkmck.html

What is BSD?

Projects originally differentiated by focus:

NetBSD: clean design and portability (57 supported platforms)

FreeBSD: production server stability and application support (22,431 apps)

OpenBSD: security and dependable release cycle

Dragonfly BSD: filesystem architecture

PC-BSD: anyone can install and use BSD

How is BSD different from Linux?

Gnome on Ubuntu

KDE on PC-BSD

device names

startup (no runlevels)

one config file philosophy

kernel configuration

consistent layout (man hier)

BSD vs GNU switches

working examples

Release Engineering?

Release Engineering

Complete operating system, not kernel + distro: one source for security advisories, less likelihood of incompatible libraries

Integration of features not limited by copyleft: e.g. drivers and features are built-in

High “bus factor”

Consistent separation between operating system and third party and between BSD and GPL'd code

Release Engineering

● commit bit indicates write permission to code repository

● FreeBSD 446 commit bits● NetBSD 264 commit bits● OpenBSD 132 commit bits● plus thousands of contributors for

software, docs, translations, bug fixes, etc● Linux has 1 committer, 638 maintainers

Release Engineering

Principles used by the BSD projects reflect their academic roots:● well defined process for earning a

“commit bit” includes a period of working under a mentor

● code repository from Day 1 and can trace original code back to CSRG days

● no “leader”, instead well defined release engineering, security, and doc teams

Release Engineering

● development occurs on CURRENT which is frozen in preparation for a RELEASE

● nightly builds (operating system and apps) help ensure that upgrades and installs don't result in library incompatibilities (safe for production)

● documentation considered as important as code

Features unique to BSD?

securelevels

FreeBSD jails

NetBSD build.sh

pkgsrc

PC-BSD PBIs

VuXML and portaudit

or pkg_admin audit

for pkgsrc systems

NetBSD veriexec

binary emulation

FreeBSD netgraph

ZFS support

FreeBSD dtrace suport

CARP

FreeBSD superpages

OpenBSM

FreeBSD snapshots

ALTQ

DragonFly HAMMER

Automated Testing Framework

Non-GPLd Toolchain

Additional Resources

How the FreeBSD Project Workshttp://2007.asiabsdcon.org/papers/P08-slides.pdf

FreeBSD Developmenthttp://www.freebsd.org/projects/index.html

The NetBSD Wayhttp://www.fosslc.org/drupal/content/netbsd-way-0

NetBSD Developmenthttp://www.netbsd.org/developers/

Questions?

http://www.slideshare.net

/dlavigne/oclug-2010

dru@freebsd.org