# What are the major features created by Freebsd (or before 3.1 BSD) that everyone uses without knowing it?



## plottwist (Nov 26, 2020)

Growing up in a family where everyone has always used either Windows or Linux I felt alone deciding what to buy.
In my case Mac but I also used a lot of Yahoo for years and discovered there the existence and importance of this operative system, initially it was just to understand why the Yahoo server had so many problems but then discovered that even Apple has much of this.
Now far be it from me to say "is or not" I’m interested in understanding what we use that is made by this community.
I remember that on the Yahoo Mail(when the option @rocketmail was still a thing) I had a function(something like SendFile or SendMail...I remembered I'd always thought weird as 11 years old) that they removed and that only then discovered that it was proper to this operative system.

Thanks for the answers, I know everything that comes from Linux and nothing from Freebsd but as I understand it has created more functionality (I think even things like Java if I’m not mistaken) 3.1 BSD that is now Linux Freebsd...I’m just curious!


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## SirDice (Nov 26, 2020)

How about the TCP/IP stack? Without it there wouldn't even be an internet.



plottwist said:


> Thanks for the answers, I know everything that comes from Linux and nothing from Freebsd but as I understand it has created more functionality (I think even things like Java if I’m not mistaken) 3.1 BSD that is now Linux Freebsd...I’m just curious!


That sentence gave me a headache. Your whole post actually. Linux is not (Free)BSD, and (Free)BSD is not Linux. You got some history pretty backwards it seems.


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## plottwist (Nov 26, 2020)

SirDice said:


> How about the TCP/IP stack? Without it there wouldn't even be an internet.
> 
> 
> That sentence gave me a headache. Your whole post actually. Linux is not (Free)BSD, and (Free)BSD is not Linux. You got some history pretty backwards it seems.


I didn't, I know the differences, simple I don't have nobody who neither knew it was a thing or whole they are stuck in Linux...I don't hate Linux but community is a bit overexcited(aka they think Linux have too much importance than what is the real, is just an OS nothing more and nothing less than a tool), I would known that it wasn't the only Unix like as they told me, I know Linux isn't FreeBSD(I said 3.1BSD not Linux) as much Linux is Windows 10...isn't, I know it.

I just said I didn't even knew *BSD existed, I read whole documentations and that's the only think I wasn't able to understand.


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## SirDice (Nov 26, 2020)

plottwist said:


> I just said I didn't even knew *BSD existed


Just as most people drive a car without knowing anything about the engine that powers it. They don't need to know to be able to drive a car. Only mechanics and "petrol-heads"  know the details of the engine. I think the same can be said for FreeBSD. Most people don't know how the internet works, they don't need to know to be able to use it. We, nerds and geeks, are basically the modern version of a "petrol-head".


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## plottwist (Nov 27, 2020)

SirDice said:


> Just as most people drive a car without knowing anything about the engine that powers it. They don't need to know to be able to drive a car. Only mechanics and "petrol-heads"  know the details of the engine. I think the same can be said for FreeBSD. Most people don't know how the internet works, they don't need to know to be able to use it. We, nerds and geeks, are basically the modern version of a "petrol-head".


that was my question, so isn't right that actually 90% of web's metadata are run on Linux...they always told me Linux is actually how web is working(from Facebook to Yahoo...but I know they are really FSF for make you understand).
But if is working on Linux what created *BSD so really important?!
Is really intriguing and I'm honestly intrestisted.


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## SirDice (Nov 27, 2020)

plottwist said:


> , so isn't right that actually 90% of web's metadata are run on Linux...they always told me Linux is actually how web is working(from Facebook to Yahoo...but I know they are really FSF for make you understand).


The world wide web is only a part of the internet. There's also a lot of other infrastructure that's invisible to most people, like DNS servers, mail servers, streaming services, content delivery services, etc. 



plottwist said:


> But if is working on Linux what created *BSD so really important?!


UNIX and BSD existed long before Linux.


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## olli@ (Nov 27, 2020)

There is BSD code in _every_ major operating system that exists today.

Just to name one example, there are the “BSD sockets”. It is a networking API invented by BSD (as the name implies) back in the 80s of the previous century, first released with 4.2BSD in 1983. That’s 8 years before Linux came into existence. Today, BSD sockets are used by Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android etc.


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## obsigna (Nov 27, 2020)

May it be that coquetting with naivety came en vogue lately, or is it me being more and more impatient while becoming older?

Anyway, Wikipedia got everything you always wanted to know about FreeBSD, Linux and Sex, but were afraid to ask:








						FreeBSD - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				











						Linux - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				











						Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (film) - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				




And the best of all, this come all in a hell a lot of language versions, for example the German ones:








						FreeBSD – Wikipedia
					






					de.wikipedia.org
				











						Linux – Wikipedia
					






					de.wikipedia.org
				







__





						Was Sie schon immer über Sex wissen wollten, aber bisher nicht zu fragen wagten – Wikipedia
					






					de.wikipedia.org


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## matt_k (Nov 27, 2020)

obsigna said:


> May it be that coquetting with naivety came en vogue lately, or is it me being more and more impatient while becoming older?


Pretty much this. I deleted my message here, because I am salty.


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## plottwist (Nov 27, 2020)

olli@ said:


> There is BSD code in _every_ major operating system that exists today.
> 
> Just to name one example, there are the “BSD sockets”. It is a networking API invented by BSD (as the name implies) back in the 80s of the previous century, first released with 4.2BSD in 1983. That’s 8 years before Linux came into existence. Today, BSD sockets are used by Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android etc.


thanks fully answered to my questio(no, Wikipedia is untrustable suorce...I never use it if I can)


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## ShelLuser (Nov 27, 2020)

I really fail to see the point of this thread or even understand what's being asked. Sure, I read the question(s) but I fail to see the point to them. It seems to boil down to "_what can FreeBSD do for me?_" or "_why are you using FreeBSD?_" because otherwise... who cares where something is coming from? There's no added value to it. Which also makes it hard for me to take this thread seriously, though I'm glad I read it because now I get to learn more about sex 

I can say this though, one of the main reasons I use FreeBSD on all my servers is _control_. I have full control over the OS itself as well as all the software I run on it. On my servers I don't have support for floppy disks, other firewalls besides PF, no fancy update programs, no finger, no examples, no ee, no bluetooth (or other wireless junk) and talk has also been zapped. That's something you can't do with most Linux distributions, especially when you rely on packages.

The other reason, apart from features such as jails, sane firewalls and ZFS is because it's not as mainstream as Linux is. FreeBSD is an OS where the developers concentrate on quality over quantity (and IMO the same can be said about its other cousins NetBSD & OpenBSD (which are *not* the same as FreeBSD!)). Meaning that we don't get new features or changes shoved down our throats every month or so because there's suddenly a new hip thing to use, but instead things go slowly. Because it's not about the features, but about the results.

And sure... it's not all milk and honey (did you know there's actually handsoap and shampoo for that? but when I told my gf that she didn't need fancy stuff like that because I could always help mix some honey in a cup of hot milk for her so she could pour that through her hair she suddenly complained that I wasn't taking things seriously! ). There are plenty of ports which build process could be smoother for example. But that doesn't change anything about my personal overal perspective of this thing.

When it comes to client environments I'll take Windows 10 over X (KDE, XFCE4, etc.) any day of the week. But for my servers I want nothing other than FreeBSD.

</vent>


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## tingo (Nov 27, 2020)

ShelLuser said:


> who cares where something is coming from?


People who don't know history is doomed to repeat it?


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## SirDice (Nov 27, 2020)

plottwist said:


> no, Wikipedia is untrustable suorce...I never use it if I can


Nothing wrong with checking Wikipedia. You just need to be aware things may not appear the way they are. But that's why articles have links to citations and sources, so you can double check the information.


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## plottwist (Nov 28, 2020)

ShelLuser said:


> I really fail to see the point of this thread or even understand what's being asked. Sure, I read the question(s) but I fail to see the point to them. It seems to boil down to "_what can FreeBSD do for me?_" or "_why are you using FreeBSD?_" because otherwise... who cares where something is coming from? There's no added value to it. Which also makes it hard for me to take this thread seriously, though I'm glad I read it because now I get to learn more about sex
> 
> I can say this though, one of the main reasons I use FreeBSD on all my servers is _control_. I have full control over the OS itself as well as all the software I run on it. On my servers I don't have support for floppy disks, other firewalls besides PF, no fancy update programs, no finger, no examples, no ee, no bluetooth (or other wireless junk) and talk has also been zapped. That's something you can't do with most Linux distributions, especially when you rely on packages.
> 
> ...


because I'm *nerd*, that's why I joined to study History of Art!


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## VladiBG (Nov 29, 2020)

According to Wiki, from BSD we still use c shell and vi. Also the concept of virtual memory came from it. But as you don't trust the Wikipedia then why should you trust someone random forum post...


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## ralphbsz (Nov 30, 2020)

The concept of virtual memory existed in the 50s. I remember learning about it when studying the B5000 (which also had tagged memory). It was in use on IBM mainframes of the late 60s. It long predates Unix, in particular BSD.


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## sidetone (Nov 30, 2020)

BSD has an overlapping history with Unix. At one time, Berkeley licensed programs were built on top of Unix. When Unix restricted that use of their code, BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) came up with its own kernel and base distribution.



plottwist said:


> I know everything that comes from Linux and nothing from Freebsd


This is a little ambiguous. I think it means, plottwist is aware of what comes from Linux, but wasn't aware of what software/technologies/developments came from FreeBSD. (The topic being asked about is on BSD too.)


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## plottwist (Nov 30, 2020)

sidetone said:


> BSD has an overlapping history with Unix. At one time, Berkeley licensed programs were built on top of Unix. When Unix restricted that use of their code, BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) came up with its own kernel and base distribution.
> 
> 
> This is a little ambiguous. I think it means, plottwist is aware of what comes from Linux, but wasn't aware of what software/technologies/developments came from FreeBSD. (The topic being asked about is on BSD too.)


exactly, I know what is Unix and co simple nothing about BSD...I know about PlayStation, MacOS part, about WhatsApp but nothing more. I know that's Unix, one of the closer to be pure, but nothing more that is good as server.


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## sidetone (Nov 30, 2020)

Unix is a brand name. Linux, Minix and different BSD distributions are Unix-like, but not Unix. For an operating system to be called Unix, a lot has to be paid to the Unix organization on a regular basis. While many opensource distributions are considered Unix based or Unix derivatives, they're not officially allowed to be called that. The few Unix distributions around are commercial derivatives.

FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD and other BSD's are more true to the roots of what the first BSD's or the early history of BSD was. Sure, FreeBSD and Linux are brandnames too, but they're more true to what the original BSD was. 

Playstation and MacOS would be closer to FreeBSD, because they use or used FreeBSD code.


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## SirDice (Nov 30, 2020)

The entire family tree, from the early incarnations up till the latest FreeBSD versions: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/share/misc/bsd-family-tree?revision=367095&view=markup

If you look hard enough in the FreeBSD source tree you can actually find various tools that haven't changed a single line of code in the last 30-40 years.


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## a6h (Nov 30, 2020)

*Essential*:

*I.* aio_waitcomplete(2) syscall

*II.* vfs, sched and mac_framework related to dtrace(1) providers.

*III.* jail(8)

*IV.* FreeBSD event-auditing system (FreeBSD and Apple)

*V.* New way of sending file over network: copy-less "send" data from file to the socket.
* Before FreeBSD: read file to buffer -> write buffer to socket => 2 copies
1. kernel to buffer.
2. buffer to kernel.
=> send to socket

refer to sendfile(2) and mmap(2)

*Not sure:*

*I.* FreeBSD (BSDcon 2002) was one the first which implemented Yarrow PRNG in kernel (FreeBSD 10.1). It was depreciated in 11.0 PR 230870
*II.* GPT/BIOS hybrid mode (sector 0: MBR, sector 1: GPT)

*More info:*

For more discussion on the topic, please refer to the thread posted by our infamous beloved Delete Member:
Thread why-all-of-innovations-come-from-elsewhere.76499


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## plottwist (Dec 5, 2020)

Listen...I was asking the differences between Linux and BSD and not Unix. I know FreeBSD is closer than Linux to Unix, probably only a few of differences but I'm not so ignorant...you are talking of Unix, honestly I won't read useless answers.
Let's talk ONLY about FreeBSD and family, Unix isn't a topic here and neither gonna to me FreeBSD=Unix...c mon, internet was already born with Unix and only after 1990 *BSD existed.
Not gonna tell me that virtual machines are *bsd because existed from start, whole first calculators were microkernels.

Yeah, sorry I ALWAYS take as granted that is a brand name as Posix! ;-) Obviously I'm talking about family!


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## a6h (Dec 5, 2020)

plottwist said:


> Listen...[...] honestly I won't read useless answers. [...] Not gonna tell me [...]


Dude, you have to `portlint -A` your language, before posting to the FreeBSD Forums.



plottwist said:


> Not gonna tell me that virtual machines are *bsd because existed from start



If you're referring to this specific reply


ralphbsz said:


> The concept of virtual memory existed in the 50s. [...]



I'm sorry to say, you AKA plottwist do not know the difference between the "virtual memory" and "virtual machine".

ralphbsz was talking about "virtual memory", not "virtual machine".

Fortunately, we have a booklet for such situation. Start by reading: For People New to Both FreeBSD and UNIX by Annelise Anderson


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## ralphbsz (Dec 6, 2020)

plottwist said:


> I know FreeBSD is closer than Linux to Unix, ...


For that statement to make any sense, you need to define what you mean by Unix. I know probably half a dozen definitions of "Unix".



> c mon, internet was already born with Unix


That statement is false. The first machines connected to the internet were famously two Xerox Sigma, one IBM mainframe, and one DEC-10. This was 1968 or 1969. The first packet was transmitted between Stanford (SRI, not the University) and UCLA about then. Want to look it up? Kleinrock "Queueing Theory Vol. 2", the book is somewhere on the bookshelf upstairs, Lenny Kleinrock documents the growth of the internet, and how he helped theoretic work get good speed out of it (the hardware started with 9600 baud modems connected to the in-famous IMPs). Note that work on the very first version of Unix started later, in the 70s, so no, the internet was not born with Unix.

Do you know what the word "Internet" actually means? The revolutionary part of the Internet was not only that it connected computers to each other (that had been done before), but that it connected whole networks of computers ... thence the name "inter network". For example, when IBM was connected to the internet (the IP address 9.1.1.1 tells you how early that was), suddenly all machines on the IBM internal network (called VNET and a few other names) had access to Harvard, UCLA, USC, Stanford, and Berkeley. And VNET was larger than the Internet until I think the mid 90s.



> Not gonna tell me that virtual machines are *bsd because existed from start,


Ah, so you're changing from virtual memory to virtual machines. But then your statement is also completely false. I don't actually know when virtual machines started being worked on in research, but IBM developed them as a product in the mid 60s, and shipped it in the late 60s, as soon as the 360/67 hit the street. Interestingly, the first versions were open source software and free (!), and also interestingly, they were not actually called "VM" until the 370 version came out a few years later, the first few versions were called CP or CP/CMS: CP was the OS itself that you ran (today we would call it the VM host), and CMS was sort of the "shell" (today we would call it the guest OS), but in those days, CMS did everything. I can't even remember how many types in my life I pressed PA1 to get attention, then "i cms", because everytime something crashed, you simply rebooted CMS, which was done with the "i" command (for initial program load). So virtual machines long predate Unix.

Actually, if someone asked me "when did the first VM host/client exist in the Unix family", my answer would have to be: I don't know. It was very very late. On x86 CPUs, I think it only happened after Mendel Rosenblum and Diane Greene did what had been considered impossible, and demonstrated that the Intel CPUs could be virtualized, in spite of their instruction set that was completely inimical to that (the product of their imagination is today the multi-billion company VMware). But I think all of HP, IBM and Sun already had versions of their Unix machines that could run multiple copies of the OS on a single hardware; I know IBM called it LPARs, I think Sun and HP used words like slices or containers or something like that. This all existed in the mid 90s.



> whole first calculators were microkernels.


Sorry, but that statement is not only wrong, it is complete utter nonsense. The first calculators didn't even have anything we would call an "OS" today. Even at the level of the 1401 (the first "personal" computer, in the sense that it was the first programmable data processing device of which over 10,000 were sold, the first computer that a small or medium company could actually afford) did not actually have an OS, in the sense of a program that is always running and loads other programs. Instead, programs were linked with IO libraries, and booted onto the machine: If you wanted to runn payroll, you would boot payroll, and when it is done printing paychecks, the machine would halt. Then you could find a tape with the binary file (executable) for accounts receivable, boot it, and it might print invoices for customers, and then halt. If you wanted to actually compile the payroll program, you would find the source code (probably on a deck of cards that the "source code librarian" keeps in a file cabinet, and that's a person, not a program), put it into the input hopper, boot the compiler (for example Autocode, COBOL or RPG), it would read the source code on cards, and (after much work) write the resulting bootable executable onto a tape. Seeing a compiler in action is pretty breathtaking, as most of them require at least 4 tape drives, and during compilation, the tapes keep going madly back and forth. No OS here, in particular not a microkernel.

The 1401 is what today we would call a "programmable calculator", except it was a bit bigger than one. Look it up on the web, and if you are near one of the ones that exist (there are at least two fully functioning ones in the world, probably more), go visit them in a museum.

Ah, microkernels. Another great and really old ideas that will probably never ever work, except in limited engagements, and all the good aspects of it are being stolen by other systems. Do you know who Per Brinch Hansen is? One of the greats of CS research; he wrote the first microkernel system as a "programmer for hire" in the late 60s (!!!), before becoming the great head of Computer Science at USC (one of the two places where the internet started, the other being UCLA). So microkernels also predate Unix.

By the way, to demonstrate how important USC was to the Internet: Today we have IANA, which is a big international standards body (the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), which decides things like protocol numbers and address formats. Old-timers will remember that IANA didn't used to be an agency or standards body, it was a person: Jon Postel, a USC staffers, was the authority of the internet. If you wanted to create a new protocol (like http), you would send an e-mail to the IANA, and Jon would give you a new number (like 80). A particularly impressive document to read is RFC 2468 (the number is quite easy to remember) https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2468, which is an obituary of Jon, written by his friend Vint Cerf (another of the half dozen fathers of the Internet).

So in summary: everything you said here is completely wrong, nonsense, dripping with ignorance. May I suggest that you define what you mean by the term "Unix", and tell us?


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## sidetone (Dec 6, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> For that statement to make any sense, you need to define what you mean by Unix. I know probably half a dozen definitions of "Unix".


We already established this.



plottwist said:


> I know FreeBSD is closer than Linux to Unix, probably only a few of differences but I'm not so ignorant.


Berkeley was once the userland for Unix. When Berkeley made it's own kernel, that Berkeley userland from Unix is BSD. Berkeley originated; not AT&T's work. I was describing Unix as a brand name, to define that FreeBSD and BSD are not that according to an official definition. They are often called that. A lot of people don't look at is as Unix is a brand name that requires an official procedure, rather than Unix-like.


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## ralphbsz (Dec 6, 2020)

sidetone said:


> We already established this.


Ah, you're using the definition "Unix is that and only that which has the current Unix brand name applied to it by the Xopen organization". Cool. I haven't seen Ken in a long time (over a year and a half now); next time I see him, I'll tell him that he didn't invent Unix with Dennis, because Unix has only existed for the last 20 years (or whenever the SCO lawsuit forced the trademark to be sold, which was sometime in the early 2000s if I remember right). He'll laugh.

There are many ways to define Unix. You quoted one of them. Dennis (may he rest in peace) and Ken would disagree. As would people like Kirk and the other parents of BSD (which had a Unix license, so it could use the "Unix" code, 25 years before the term Unix as you define it even came into existence. As would all the companies that sold Unix (with valid Unix licenses from AT&T!) in the 80s and 90s.


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