From owner-freebsd-questions  Sun Jan 26 02:48:57 1997
Return-Path: <owner-questions>
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id CAA01707
          for questions-outgoing; Sun, 26 Jan 1997 02:48:57 -0800 (PST)
Received: from gatekeeper.barcode.co.il (gatekeeper.barcode.co.il [192.116.93.17])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id CAA01702
          for <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>; Sun, 26 Jan 1997 02:48:51 -0800 (PST)
Received: (from smap@localhost) by gatekeeper.barcode.co.il (8.7.5/8.6.12) id MAA09071; Sun, 26 Jan 1997 12:47:49 +0200 (IST)
X-Authentication-Warning: gatekeeper.barcode.co.il: smap set sender to <nadav@barcode.co.il> using -f
Received: from localhost.barcode.co.il(127.0.0.1) by gatekeeper.barcode.co.il via smap (V1.3)
	id sma009067; Sun Jan 26 12:47:43 1997
Message-ID: <32EB364E.3AFE@barcode.co.il>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1997 12:47:42 +0200
From: Nadav Eiron <nadav@barcode.co.il>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (X11; I; SunOS 5.5 sun4m)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: myorke@usa.net
CC: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: What's the difference
References: <32E91B3B.112C@usa.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

Mike Yorke wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I have recently become a UN*X enthusiast and have been playing around
> with Linux a bit.  While doing so I have discovered that Linux is not
> the only Free PC compatible UNIX out there; i.e. FreeBSD.
> 
> I've noticed that there are what appears to be different BSD
> implementations out there that all use the BSD name; FreeBSD, NetBSD,
> BSDI, etc.  What's the difference?  Is there a difference?  I get the
> impression that they are all very similar with some exceptions.  Could
> you shed any light on this subject?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> Mike

I'm not trying to start a flame war, so please....

To get an overview of the different BSD variants you may want to take a
look at each project's web site. Basically the differences are:

BSDI is a commercial OS targeted at Intel based PCs
NetBSD is a free OS whose main goal is portability
FreeBSD is a free OS targeted at Intel based PCs.

All those OSs are based (like many many others) on the BSD code
developed by the CSRG at the UCB. Any modern UNIX book will probably
have an overview of the hoistory and taxonomy of those variants.

Nadav