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Open Source Operating Systems

• Linux

  Linux was not the first, or the most widely ported, or (some might say) the best. What it is is the smartest -- its development model of a single leader taking contributions from one and all is Open Source in the classic mold and a runaway success that has turned a small, Intel PC-based hacker project into one of the top three operating systems in existence (and the only multiplatform OS of those three). Linux has a mascot, a cartoon penguin named Tux.

  Except where it's used to refer to a specific distribution, I reject the GNU/Linux label suggested by the Free Software Foundation; like many others in the Linux community I consider it an FSF territory grab and refuse to use it.

  What follows are a few important Linux links...

  • RedHat -- The biggest commercial Linux distribution, and the source of the RedHat Package Manager, the most significant installer package available for the Linux platform. RedHat also funds several other significant Open Source projects, including the Kaffe Java virtual machine implementation and the GNU Compiler Collection.
  • Debian GNU/Linux -- The Free Software Foundation's distribution; the focus is on "free as in speech" software and therefore includes no software that does not fit the FSF's definition of free. A good, if less-than-friendly, distro.
  • Slackware -- Patrick Volkerding's creation is the oldest and most Unix-like active distribution. An excellent learning system, but definitely geek territory.
  • SuSE Linux -- Hailing from Germany, SuSE is possibly the biggest Linux distribution, as well as one of the best-organized. SuSE also provides significant funding for XFree86 and has been largely responsible for making it a better X implementation than many commercial versions.
  • Linux-Mandrake -- Mandrake started out as a French RedHat derivative with an emphasis on security but has developed into a separate distribution in its own right.
  • TurboLinux -- Asia's most popular Linux distro, TurboLinux places emphasis on internationalization, particularly Asian languages.
  • LinuxPPC -- Though the relationship between Paul Mackerras' PowerPC Linux group and Linus himself has occasionally been a contentious one, LinuxPPC and its progeny have been responsible for bringing Linux to what was once one of the most closed hardware platforms, the Macintosh. Check out Yellow Dog Linux and MkLinux for more information on Linux on the Mac.
  • Linux ISO -- A place to download CD images of the latest and greatest Linux distros. Bring DSL.
  • DreamCast Linux -- A spectacular example of Linux's flexibility, this page contains everything necessary to run Linux on the late, lamented Sega Dreamcast (ironically enough, a system designed with a WinCE runtime in mind).

  Yes, I know I forgot your favorite distribution. Please don't ask me to expand this section; Linux is so big that this entry could be its own site.

• *BSD

  The original Open Source Unix, BSD was born at University of California at Berkeley in the late '70s. The early Unix workstation market came from Berkeley students like Bill Joy at Sun Microsystems and took advantage of the liberal BSD license; even after System V took over the commercial Unix market BSD continued in the background until 1994, when the Computer Science Research Group that had created it broke up and cleaned the last of the old AT&T code out of the source tree, creating 4.4BSDLite. From there, several BSD variants were born, some for technical reasons, some more political, all heirs to a history that went back to ancient DEC hardware and college students in the process of changing the world.

  BSD too has a mascot, a little red daemon (sorta looks like a demon but cuter) named Beastie.

  The BSD world incorporates both old-style monolithic kernels and Mach microkernel-based versions.

  • Monolithic BSDs

    • NetBSD -- IMHO the most direct descendant of the original Berkeley sources, NetBSD exists for something in the vicinity of thirty different architectures (including the original VAX) and serves as something of an operating system of last resort.
    • FreeBSD -- FreeBSD seems to serve as a BSD-based answer to Linux in some ways; its focus has traditionally been on the x86 market, though it has also been ported to Compaq's Alpha architecture; in addition, Apple's Mach-based Darwin borrows much of its userland from FreeBSD.
    • OpenBSD -- While its creator, Theo De Raadt, has a reputation for being difficult to work with, OpenBSD is widely acknowledged to be one of the most secure operating systems available.

  • Mach-based BSDs

    • Darwin -- The open source BSD layer of MacOS X/Rhapsody/NextStep, Darwin had its origins in Carnegie-Mellon University's Mach microkernel project (one of Mach's creators, Avie Tevanian, is now a major member of Apple's management). It's available for both Mac hardware and PC; it uses a somewhat different license from the BSD license. Its mascot is a platypus in a daemon suit.
    • xMach -- Based on an earlier BSD-on-Mach kernel called Lites and targeted at embedded systems, xMach is probably the youngest BSD variant. Its mascot is a blue version of Beastie.

• Minix

  Minix, a clone of Unix V7 created for teaching purposes by Andy Tanenbaum, was the original inspiration for Linux. It is a fairly small system by current standards; since being placed under a BSD license a couple of years ago it's been hoped that it might find a place in the embedded systems market.

• AtheOS

  Apparently intended originally as an AmigaOS clone, AtheOS absorbed a number of ideas from BeOS on the way to becoming one of the first noticeable OS projects with no Unix pretensions.

• FreeDOS

  FreeDOS is an attempt to create a direct clone of MS-DOS. It has been around for a number of years and actually seems so far to have been fairly successful (I believe it's the default DOS for DOSEMU, for example).

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