From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Aug 8 2:20: 2 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.rdc1.sfba.home.com (ha1.rdc1.sfba.home.com [24.0.0.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2B1AE14C21 for ; Sun, 8 Aug 1999 02:19:58 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from charon@freethought.org) Received: from c40948-a ([24.1.7.99]) by mail.rdc1.sfba.home.com (InterMail v4.01.01.00 201-229-111) with SMTP id <19990808091626.ENUJ8807.mail.rdc1.sfba.home.com@c40948-a>; Sun, 8 Aug 1999 02:16:26 -0700 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990808021624.00a41100@mail> X-Sender: tuathadedanann@mail X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Sun, 08 Aug 1999 02:16:24 -0700 To: "BJ How" , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG From: charon@freethought.org Subject: Re: Definition of FreeBSD In-Reply-To: <000801bee18c$c8d006a0$88361e18@mw.mediaone.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 03:57 AM 8/8/99 -0700, BJ How wrote: >Howdy, >By accident I stumbled across your website when on Yahoo I typed in a search for a program to play VCDs called >Power VCD. For whatever reason it pulled your sight up in the list. I followed the link and was caught by the >terms UNIX and LINUX. I've been interested in playing with UNIX for a little while and have finally gotten to a >point where I have an extra PC (P90 with 48 megs and a twitchy monitor) and wanted to get a little more serious >about getting LINUX loaded. So I continued to read on, if I don't go with LINUX I will probably go with FreeBSD. >There's only one thing which irritated me about your site. Nowhere can I find BSD broken down. If this is truly >an acronym what the heck is it (please don't say its nothing, found this out the hardway with VAX, searched all >over until I found one book which was actually kind enough to state 'if your looking for what the acronym stands >for, don't, one doesn't exist'). > >Anyways, if you could provide me with what the acronym stands for and what it means it would be appreciated (been >programming for close to 15 years and the biggest thing I hate is all the acronyms (I know, picked the wrong >business!)). > >Thanks for any info you can provide. "BSD" stands for Berkeley Software Distribution, because originally BSD UNIX was developed at UC Berkeley (this is actually in the FAQ, http://www.freebsd.org/FAQ/FAQ245.html). A couple years ago when I started getting interested in other OS's (i.e. something other than Microsoft), I looked into Linux because it was the only free UNIX I'd heard of. I got confused by the whole multiple distributions thing, and a friend recommended FreeBSD - I've never looked back since :) (BTW, you should send your email formatted in plain text - I know this is hard to do with Microsoft Outlook Express, but many UNIX mail readers can't read text in strange formats.) Best of luck with whatever you choose! -Charon To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message