BSD was a Unix-based operating system released in 1977. It went through four major forms and several revisions before officially ending support in 1995. BSD lives on through several variants, including FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, and is commonly used in embedded software and real-time computers.
Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) was a derivation of the Unix operating system. The pure BSD operating system was officially supported from 1977 to 1995. In that time, it went through four major forms and several revisions of each. Even though the original BSD operating system no longer exists, the basic BSD model continues in several variants. Later forms of BSD and all operating systems based on it no longer follow the basic guidelines of Unix: they are officially in a category called Unix-like operating systems.
The original BSD operating system came out in 1977, in Berkeley, California, as part of a University of California student project. The original releases were core add-ons to the Unix operating system, rather than full software revisions. Between 1977 and 1980, BSD versions one through four were released.
Due to the open source nature of BSD, multiple versions have been maintained in parallel development. In 1983, an update to BSD version two was the first true BSD operating system. Prior to this release, releases were updates and add-ons for one of the many versions of Unix. Version two is still being updated, albeit unofficially. Volunteers maintain the operating system with patches and periodic updates.
The Berkeley team’s main effort went into version three, then four. The release of version three was a major departure from version two, hence the parallel development. Version three didn’t last long because version four replaced it. Between the two revisions, the BSD operating system was chosen as one of the primary operating systems for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Development continued on various projects throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. During this period, the BSD operating system officially separated from Unix. This allowed BSD to move in any direction it wanted, development-wise. This split culminated in a lawsuit against American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) because they owned the Unix version on which BSD was based. This lawsuit ended in a big win for BSD.
Although official support ended in 1995, the BSD operating system lives on through several projects based on it. FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD were originally the big three variants, but each of these releases has since spawned many other releases, giving the BSD operating system one of the largest coverage areas of any Unix or Unix-like system.
The various BSD operating systems work fine as a standard operating system, but also disassemble very easily. For this reason, BSD versions are commonly used as internal operating systems in embedded software and real-time computers. Considering these embedded systems together with the standard computer operating system, it makes BSD one of the most used operating systems in the world.
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