this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2026
949 points (98.7% liked)
Programmer Humor
33809 readers
2554 users here now
Welcome to Programmer Humor!
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.
Rules
- Keep content in english
- No advertisements
- Posts must be related to programming or programmer topics
- If the mod doesn't find it funny, you're banned. Ha-ha!... For real: do not use the community for "statements". There are other places for such content. Keep it chill and funny.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The fuck is BSD?
sincerely: a non-technical mint user
B (Berkeley), S (Software), D (Distribution).
A Unix based OS, developed at Berkeley.
Technically yes, but there's a lot more to it lol
It's a bit like if you separated two twins and raised them in isolation to study nature vs nurture
So, there are a couple of things. Here is where I push up my glasses and say "well--ahem--"
First, true, BSD is not itself Unix. That specific OS (which began with the PDP-7 Operating System in the late 1960s) really only existed until the late 80s or early 90s, when Bell Labs stopped working on it.
However, it is literally Unix-based. The first version of BSD was forked (as we'd call it today) from the Research Unix source code at UC Berkeley. Since then, the various BSD derivatives and distros have all iterated upon or forked from that initial Unix code. I don't think any are officially registered as SUS systems (but there are only a handful that are), which means that a pedant would say that BSD is technically "Unix-like."
But it is based on Unix, it's a part of the Unix family, just like Windows 11 is part of the NT family. MacOS is also part of the Unix family (I think it might be or used to have been SUS-registered, actually). Linux isn't, and I think I remember hearing that Torvalds didn't even use the Research Unix source code to write the Linux kernel originally, but it does follow a lot of the SUS spec and so is definitely Unix-like.
Torvalds was inspired by Minix (which was in turn inspired by UNIX) but didn't follow Tannenbaum's micro-kernel model.
We got a historian over here! Lol Twins is a bit strong as a descriptor but the spirit of it might be apt enough.
I wish I had learned more about BSD before getting so ingrained in Linux. Not because one is "better" or anything. They're just two different worlds. I'm not sure I have the bandwidth to explore it the way I'd like to, like I did with Linux.
But who knows, it's just one step more than all the distro and setup hopping I've done over the years.
If you try FreeBSD you get ZFS as the file system and PF (OpenBSD's creation) as the firewall. Sound and video will be a little different to set up, but most applications are going to work the same these days.
Yeah, I think it's a fair characterization, I just wanted to clarify that it is indeed based on Unix.
To my knowledge I've never used BSD. I didn't move away from Windows until I, like you say, just didn't have the bandwidth to do more than one experimental thing with my computer. Windows pushed me out a few years back, and I went with Linux because of the breadth of support.
I've got tons of time to do research, though. By which I mean read random Wikipedia articles in the bathroom, TBH. I found a big tree somewhere on there a long time ago, showing the progression from PDP Unix all the way to the latest FreeBSD (with Linux as a little tag on the side, lol).
Thanks for the writeup, I have trouble falling asleep on some days, and rereading it a couple times will definitely help.
Anyway, not sure what SUS is, but MacOS was indeed certified as a Unix. They also keep tools and APIs compatibility with FreeBSD so stuff is portable between them, and not just for shits and giggles.
Lol, nice.
SUS is "Single Unix Specification" or "Single Unix System," I can't remember which (I think the former). It's the name of the certification that MacOS actually has.
I do have to say, I didn't realize that they were close enough as to be co-portable. That's really interesting.
Well, I don't know the details about portability, but there are a couple of pages in their documentation where they straight up say they keep the tools updated, and the APIs are the same except (which differences are in such areas of which I have never heard even with some rudimentary understanding of what Unix syscalls look like and what some parts of a kernel are).
Yeah, those details are firmly in the "deep magic" realm for me. I suppose I could figure them out if I wanted to spend the time trying, but I'd rather just assume that Apple's engineers know what they're doing. (And know that it really doesn't affect me either way if they don't)
Wait so which is more accurate? Unix-based or unix-like? Also as someone who thought they knew this stuff already, what is "the SUS spec" or are you making some pun on suspect?
The BSDs are UNIX-like because being "UNIX" involves paying to go through a certification process, and I don't believe any of them target strict compliance. Solaris is a UNIX, as is HP-UX, AIX, and Apple OSX.
The BSDs should all be pretty close, though.
Both are accurate. Something can be Unix-like (using many of the same paradigms and keywords and such) without being derived from the source code of Unix, but BSD actually is originally based on that code. Linux is Unix-like but not Unix-based. BSD is both, as is MacOS. Windows is neither.
SUS means "Single Unix Specification," I think. When it went from being an OS to being a spec, that's what they called the certification.
Though "SUSpect" would be a great pun on the idea, yeah. Big "Among Us" opportunities.
~~In a strictly semantic way it is technically true; It is the basic building block of what later became the building block of macos.~~
Responded to the wrong person.
What I meant to write here was: I've used both linux and freebsd, and nature vs nature holds true, I th8nk. But I am unsure which one is which.
I didn't mean that either results specifically from nature or nurture, but that there's a lot of nuance between the two that makes me think of that kind of "forbidden experiment".
It's the same fabric as any human culture, I suppose, which is endlessly fascinating.
Cool, thanks for the straight answer.
A separate family of operating systems. It's a direct decendant of the old UNIX. FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD are the most common distributions.
It shares a lot of the same userspace tools as Linux (the GNUserspace, if you will), so if you're used to the command line, a lot will seem familiar at a first glance. However, the underlying mechanisms can feel a bit strange at first once you try it out.
I used FreeBSD as my daily driver back in the day, but now I'm also on Mint, mostly because I used linux more at work.
I've been meaning to check out BSD these days to see how far it's come since I last used it 20ish years ago, I just haven't gotten around to it.
I also remember hearing someone say that there are two things from Berkley that messes with your head: BSD and LSD.
Well I sure used to like LSD, but I get the feeling that I'm not qualified for Berkeley's other offering.
You know I won't.
Until one runs into “unknown option --help” and the multitude of other quality-of-life improvements that at least FreeBSD never ported. I frankly doubt it that they changed a noticeable amount in that department in the past twenty years.
Basically Macos
What the fuck did you just fucking say to me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class at Berkeley, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on GNU, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in al-gore-rhythm warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire FOSS ecosystem. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo
I like how you stopped bothering to modify the copy pasta a third of the way through. 😄
You're absolutely right, we can do better!
Operating System
Kernel
It's weird to think about it and notice that's basically true.
MacOS is closed-sourced Darwin, which is itself a descendant of BSD.
Omg, license laundering goes brrr.
In a strictly semantic way it is technically true; It is the basic building block of what later became the basic building block of macos
Okay, imagine Linux. But (most of) the whole thing developed at once rather than just the kernel and tools separately.
AND: