FreeBSD
The power to serf (capacity to be useful)-->
FreeBSD is a free Operating system UNIX . The name comes from the association on the one hand of free which means at the same time free (freedom) and free in current English, and on the other hand of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution), the UNIX® developed at the Berkeley University of California. Free takes a direction more connoted in this nom : it means that the software can be used free even for a regular commercial practice, that the complete sources are available and usable with a minimum of restrictions as for their use, their distribution and their incorporation in another project (commercial or not), and finally that no matter who is free to subject his Source code to remove a bug (bug) or to improve the software, this code being incorporated in the sources after agreement.
The objective of the FreeBSD project is to provide a software for any use, it with less possible restrictions.
Historically the developers were focused during a time on the platform I386 in the broad sense (x86) and the performances, i.e. the response times of the system for any request. Currently, FreeBSD usable and is supported by the community on a great number of punt-formes : Alpha (HP/Compaq - in the course of abandonment), AMD64, ARM, i386 (architecture i386 or x86, including Pentium®), ia64 (the family of processors Intel Itanium ® and Itanium® 2), MIPS, PC98 (architecture NEC PC-98x1), PowerPC®, SPARC (architecture UltraSPARC® de Sun Microsystem) and Xbox.
FreeBSD offers possibilities advanced in term of network, performance, safety and compatibility. There is in particular a binary compatibility Linux and Windows NT (XP included). The first allows the execution of compiled programs Linux, the second allows the use of the pilots Windows NT of the charts lan without wire Wi-Fi or AirPort (WiFi of Apple). The software is an industrial standard on the market of the waiters. Many suppliers of access, shelterers and organizations use FreeBSD, among which Walnut Creek CDROM, Yahoo! Inc. or Netcraft. May 24th, 1999, the team of the waiter ftp.cdrom.com mirror announced to have beaten the day before their record of transfer of information by a waiter: 1,33 will tera Octet S or 1359 giga Octet S of 24 hours.
History
FreeBSD draws its origins from the UNIX of Berkeley. Many the human organization, the ideology and the events of the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) remained in FreeBSD and are transmitted.
The time
Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie introduce to the first article on UNIX to the Symposium one Operating Systems Principles to the University of Purdue in 1973. The professor Bob Fabry of the University of California Berkeley (UCB), then in the audience, is immediately interested and in January 1974 Keith Standiford, student of 2nd cycle, installs the Version 4 with the UCB, distributed on magnetic band. Beginning 1975, Ken Thompson spends one year as professor invited to his alma to subdue, the UCB. With Jeff Schriebman and Bob Kridle, they set up the Version 6 . In the autumn of this year, Bill Joy and Chuck Halley, then in 2nd cycle, is interested in the new system and implements the editor in line ex in a PASCAL, and ends up exploring the operation of the core at the time of the departure of Ken Thompson. Beginning 1977, Bill Joy carries out the first Berkeley Software Distribution . Later, with the arrival of new terminals, he writes VI (the visual editor), a surcouche of ex . The summer 1978, the Second Berkeley Software Distribution or 2BSD is born. Then in December 1979, Bill Joy distributes the 3BSD, the first which supports the computers VAX of DEC.
The role of the DARPA
It is at this time that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) takes note of the projections carried out with the UCB. They intend to use UNIX for their projects. In autumn 1979, Bob Fabry proposes in the DARPA an increased version 3BSD to meet their needs. A 18 month old contract is signed in April 1980, and Bob Fabry gathers a team. Bill Joy, which has just passed its defense of thesis (Doctorat), proposes to take part. The versions follow one another until 4.1BSD. Satisfied, the DARPA signs for two years additional and the budget is almost multiplied by five. The number of implied people grows quickly. The steering committee is formed to help to define the evolution of the system.
This group meets twice a year between April 1981 and June 1983, and includes/understands:
- Bob Fabry, Bill Joy, Sam Leffler (UCB)
- Alan Nemeth, Rob Gurwitzn, Beranek, Newman
- Refusals Ritchie (Beautiful Laboratories)
- Keith Lantz (Stanford University)
- Rick Rashid (University Carnegie-Melon)
- Bert Halstead (Massachusetts Institute off Technology)
- daN Lynch (Information Institute Sciences)
- Duane Adams, Bob Baker (DARPA)
- Jerry Popek (University off California, Los Angeles)
From 1984, they are workshops bringing together much more people who take the relai.
TCP/IP: first implementation or birth of Internet
It is Rob Gurwitz which publishes the first implementation of protocols TCP/IP, the protocols of the Internet of today. Bill Joy integrates it into the system and adjusts the performances. This implementation is regarded by much as the implementation of reference. It is taken again later by Microsoft for its Windows.
Towards the end of the summer 1982, Bill Joy then announces that it joined Sun Microsystems, Sam Leffler takes the responsability to make succeed the project.
In August 1983, 4.2BSD is published, Sam Leffler leaves the UCB for Lucasfilm and Mike Karels replaces it. 4.2BSD is then very popular and is sold than all the other joined together distributions, and than System V of AT&T, in particular because this last had neither the communication by network nor filesystem FFS (Berkeley fast filesystem)
With the Usenix conference of 1985, 4.3BSD is announced. New material architectures appear, and the core is divided into parts dependant and independent of the material (4.3BSD-Tahoe).
Open source with freely the redistribuable
Until 4.3BSD-Tahoe, at&T license on the sources and the sources are always distributed. The users are not passive users but take an active part in the development. The license of AT&T on the sources having become excessively expensive, the sources are cleaned code of AT&T, and in June 1989, the first free BSD, the Networking Release 1 or Net/1 is published. The license is voluntarily very liberal: the software can be redistributed or sold, with or without modification of the sources, it in binary form (compiled) or not. The notes of copyright in the sources must be left intact, and documentation must mention the origin of code (the UCB). Net/1 then costs 1000 dollars the UCB for the magnetic band who transports it, and is placed at the disposal by connection ftp (file protocol transfer) anonymous (not of necessary password).
The system of virtual memory of the operating system MACH of the university Carnegie-Melon is imported, and 4.3BSD-Reno leaves beginning 1990.
NetBSD, FreeBSD
Bill Jolitz starting from Networking Release 2 publishes 386/BSD, intended for an architecture PC (386), but is quickly overflowed as for its maintenance. A few months after its publication, of the users of 386BSD form the group NetBSD, and gather their resources to maintain and increase this system. Their objectives are then to make so that NetBSD functions under any material. The target public of NetBSD is developer-administrators of high-tech.
Still a few months later, the FreeBSD group is formed and decided him to be focused on architecture PC. In December 1993, thanks to the support of Walnut Creek CDROM, FreeBSD 1.0 is published.
Lawsuits
Beginning 1992, Unix System Laboratories (USL), component of AT&T charged to develop and sell Unix, starts to continue Berkeley Software Design, Incorporated (BSDI), installation to develop and sell a commercial release. The lawsuit does not succeed as USL wished it which then launches another lawsuit against BSDI and the UCB. USL is sold by AT&T with Novell. In January 1994, an agreement is found:
- 2 files on: 18000 are withdrawn from Net/2
- a certain number of minor changes are made on other files
- a note of copyright is added to approximately 70 files (which remain freely distributable)
As of this time FreeBSD is ready for a use of production. The team of Yahoo! still seek a stable and powerful operating system. They find satisfaction with FreeBSD 2, qu ' they install on Pentium 100 then on the whole of their computers, which tells David Filo, cofounder of Yahoo! Since, the shelterer places at the disposal several waiters for the FreeBSD community.
Emancipation
FreeBSD 3 imports code of 4.4BSD-Lite release 2, which is the last publication made by the University of California Berkeley UCB. FreeBSD becomes particularly ripe and powerful with versions 4, the last (4.11) being always supported and being updated.
A great quantity of innovations appears with versions 5, but Matthew Dillon, in dissension with other members of the core TEAM (leader developers) decides to continue version 4 with a new team under the name of Dragon Fly BSD. Among these innovations, one counts: an architecture multiprocessors new generation (SMPng, Symmetrical Multi-Processor scheduler next generation) with shorter latency times, the possibility of carrying out in kernel mode several programs, filesystem UFS2, a system of security policies coming from Trusted BSD.
Versions 6 appear since November 2005. They continue inter alia work on system SMP (Symmetrical Multi-Processor scheduler), the threads, and safety. The filesystem is now multi-threadé, and processors 386 are not managed any more. There will be 3 releases (publications) in 2006 and one in 2007.
The plan for the year 2006 envisages:
- January 30th: freezing of the sources of the RELENG_5 and RELENG_6 (see Development for the nomenclature)
- March 20th: release of FreeBSD 6.1
- April 3rd: release of FreeBSD 5.5 (last release of series 5)
- June 12th: freezing of RELENG_6
- July 31st: release of FreeBSD 6.2 (officially left on January 16th, 2007)
- October 23rd: freezing of RELENG_6
- December 11th: release of FreeBSD 6.3 (delayed)
About June 2007, the developers will be focused on the 7.0 (release).
Development
Much remained time Berkeley Software Distribution and CSRG with - inter alia: most of the sources, sources are published with the system, decisions taken by a reduced group of developers.
The developers are dispersed in the whole world, and communicate by Email and Instant messaging such as IRC (Internet Relay Chat).
The sources of all the branches since version 2.2 until the last experiments of CURRENT are permanently available on the waiters. It is even possible to download the sources of a branch such as they were with an exact date.
The team
The development is done in an enough hierarchical way. The core TEAM gathers elected developers which decide general evolution of FreeBSD. They are currently 9, and 29 old are counted (since 1992) who continue to contribute. The elections are held every 2 years, the last was in July 2006.
The other teams are responsible for:
- safety (7 members)
- of the releases (a principal team and as many teams as of platforms)
- of documentation
- of the management of the ports
- of the gifts
Certain developers belong to several teams, eg core TEAM and release TEAM engineering.
FreeBSD counts in November 2006:
- approximately 370 developers (of which the members of the core TEAM) who have access in writing to the official sources. They are the FreeBSD committers , term coming from the order made program CVS (Competitor System Version), which makes it possible to transmit the modifications on the central server.
- 1905 contributors without privileges.
- a certain number of users and testers, among whom individuals, organizations, suppliers of access and shelterers in general.
There are regularly imports and exports of code between systems BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD). Consequently, developers BSD in general take part in the code of the BSD. There are several reasons with that: all have as a common ancestor 4.4BSDLite and have a close architecture - on average much more than two Linux distributions, and all have same license BSD. Other licenses close as that to Solaris also allow flows of code. Dtrace, a tool which makes it possible to see in an arbitrary way all that occurs in the system, is being carried on FreeBSD:
- Devon O' Dell began most of work (its blog)
- John Birrell mainly continues it:
- one can at the end of May 2006 follow advance on the page of the project
- , 793 out of 1039 tests that DTrace realizes under Solaris, succeed under FreeBSD
Apple used most of the system version 5, and took part in return to the addition of functionalities. There is thus a community of FreeBSD developers - in the broad sense - very important.
The organization
FreeBSD has three labels for the sources:
- HEAD, version under development without restriction (version 7 until the summer 2007).
- RELENG_x, version under development but with fixed architecture.
- RELENG_x_y is strictly equal to FreeBSD-x.y-STABLE, version of updated production.
To number X thus an architecture or a branch corresponds. To the number a release corresponds to it. All the 4 to 6 months, the sources of a branch are cold to prepare a release, labelled RELEASE.
For a compiled system:
- HEAD becomes CURRENT
- RELENG_x_y becomes FreeBSD-x.y-RELEASE at the time of the release, and FreeBSD-x.y-STABLE later (with the updates).
At the time of a release, RELENG_x_y FreeBSD-x.y-RELEASE and FreeBSD-x.y-STABLE is strictly equivalent. For a FreeBSD system of production, theSTABLE one are best indicated. FreeBSD-CURRENT is completely experimental and contains functionalities which are not that likely to be present in the next branch. The people who use FreeBSD-CURRENT are:
- developers active which work of manner specialized on sources
- testers of community which takes part in the cleansing of FreeBSD-CURRENT, which proposes also directions of evolution of FreeBSD, as well as patches (portions of source code).
- the people who rather follow the evolution of FreeBSD, which can be an activity full-time, and possibly propose patches.
The organization of the development and the community make that the support of FreeBSD is very reactive, in particular as regards safety. A few minutes or hours in general separate the discovery from a fault in safety and the moment when the sources are corrected on the principal waiter.
The system
FreeBSD is an operating system to whole share which includes/understands the core, a user part, and the sources. The programs not belonging to FreeBSD like Apache and Firefox are in the system of ports. Software important like the graphic waiter X11, the managers of windows like KDE and FluxBox are integrated like packages (precompiled port) in the cédéroms of publication of FreeBSD. FreeBSD is published in great majority under License BSD, and license LPG (GNU Public General License). The sources protected by license LPG are in a separate repertory.
Ports
It is about one of the great forces of FreeBSD. Each port is a whole of informative files specifying where to find the sources of an application, possibly which corrections to bring, how to compile, and which are the programs or libraries whose application depends (these programs and libraries are simply called dependences ). By extension, a port is an application related to FreeBSD. There is more than 15000 ports the summer 2006. Each port can be installed in binary format or package (system equivalent to the files .rpm, .deb, etc of the Linux distributions) or compiled since the last sources (equivalent of the pkgsrc of NetBSD). The system is made in such a way that with only one order, the sources of the application and the dependences are downloaded, compiled and installed on the operating system.
Since April 2006, the environment Java of Sun Microsystems is available for platforms PC 32bits (Java Runtime Environment/JRE and Java Development Kit/JDK) in version 1.5. The FreeBSD foundation negotiated a license at Sun Microsystems for a precompiled distribution of this environment.
Projects associated and personalizations with FreeBSD
-
TrustedBSD is created in 2000 by Robert Watson, member of the core TEAM. It is about a whole of extensions of FreeBSD and has for task to develop security services and of audit of the source code. Regularly elements of TrustedBSD are integrated into FreeBSD.
- NanoBSD belongs to FreeBSD. It is a FreeBSD system of very reduced size for a specialized use.
- PC-BSD is a release 6.1 personalized with an interface of " installation; more facile".
- DesktopBSD is another personalization of FreeBSD which is focused on a use of office, opposed to a use as waiter.
Penetration of the markets
FreeBSD is regarded as an industrial standard in the market of the waiters. There are no data maintained on the users of the operating system, but of the organizations of observation as Netcraft (which has all its waiters under FreeBSD) make it possible to carry out qualitative evaluations.
Most of Internet (Netblock owners) is under FreeBSD:
- HotJobs.com Ltd, which includes/understands inter alia yahoo, AltaVista or geocities
- Rackspace.com
- Isle, Inc
- Bayerischer Rundfunk
- Japan Network Information Center
- ViaNet Communications
- Hopemoon Co, Ltd
- Full Internet Provider
Former users (or current but not confirmed ) of FreeBSD on waiters are:
- Microsoft (hotmail)
The use of FreeBSD for a domestic use, without being confidential, is much more moderate near the general public than the GNU/Linux system. However, FreeBSD makes function the software which largely helped to popularize the GNU/Linux systems, among which the graphic waiter X associated with office automation space and of fenestration KDE, the office automation continuation OpenOffice, the navigator Web Firefox. FreeBSD is free like GNU/Linux. FreeBSD does not settle with difficulty than the Linux distributions.
Other factors come into play. Without claim of exhaustiveness, of hierarchy as for the impact, there is probably:
- mediatization, in which took part of large companies like IBM, Microsoft, Novell or RedHat, of the organizations of state and the various media which relay the selected subjects.
- a synergy enters of the movements: software-free, against current compared to Microsoft and with the paying solutions.
- the license: sometimes considered to be too free, it allows companies like Apple or Microsoft to integrate FreeBSD code into their operating system.
Without being decisive, a logo or a slogan is a door word which by the repetition and the force of the image help to mark the spirits. In data processing of free, the tendency is with the mascots.
The Demon BSD (Beastie)
The character red and smiling is the Demon BSD. In the context of the UNIX systems, let us demons them - D (isk) has (Nd) E (xecution) my (itor) - are programs of maintenance working in background and not requiring a human intervention. If Demon were between the medium of XVIe century and the XIXe century the literal spelling for demon , today these two terms differ. In the old Greek beliefs demon designated a divinity, a supernatural being, a genius or guardian angel. On the other hand demon (demon in French) has a diabolic connotation. The demon term reappeared in the years 1980 with the beginning of UNIX, it with the same old Greek connotation. Demon BSD at the same time revêt the appearance of a demon (with the horns, and the pointed tail) and incarnates a demon by its benevolent appearance.
The Demon BSD is called officially Beastie, which decides like English BSD. The erroneous name of Chuck was employed during a time, at the origin by Walnut Creek CD-ROM. John Lasseter (stable Pixar, realizer and producer of Toy Story and 1001 Legs) created the first the image of beastie. Since 1988 the rights on demon BSD are held by Marshall Kirk McKusick, old developer with the CPU Berkeley Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG). The image of beastie opposite was created by Poul-Henning Kamp, former member of the core TEAM.
Comparison with GNU/Linux
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