List of BSD operating systems
There are a number of Unix-like operating systems under active development, descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution series of UNIX variants developed at the University of California, Berkeley Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department. there were four major BSD operating systems, and an increasing number of other OSs derived from these, that add or remove certain features but generally remain compatible with their originating OS—and so are not really forks of them. This is a list of those that have been active since 2014, and their websites.
FreeBSD-based
is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution. FreeBSD currently has more than 200 active developers and thousands of contributors. Other notable derivatives include DragonFly BSD, which was forked from FreeBSD 4.8, and Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, with its Darwin base including a large amount of code derived from FreeBSD.| Name | Description |
| AskoziaPBX | Discontinued |
| BSDBox | |
| BSDeviant | |
| BSDLive | |
| Bzerk CD | |
| ClonOS | ClonOS is a free open-source FreeBSD-based platform for virtual environments creation and management. |
| DragonFly BSD | Originally forked from FreeBSD 4.8, now developed in a different direction |
| ClosedBSD | |
| DesktopBSD | DesktopBSD is a discontinued desktop-oriented FreeBSD variant using K Desktop Environment 3.5. |
| EclipseBSD | |
| Evoke | Formerly DamnSmallBSD; a small live FreeBSD environment geared toward developers and system administrators. |
| FenestrOS BSD | |
| FreeBSDLive | |
| FreeBSD LiveCD | |
| FreeNAS | |
| FreeSBIE | |
| Frenzy Live CD | A "portable system administrator toolkit". It generally contains software for hardware tests, file system check, security check and network setup and analysis. |
| FuryBSD | FuryBSD pays homage to desktop BSD projects of the past like PC-BSD and TrueOS with its graphical interface and adds additional tools like a live, hybrid USB / DVD image. |
| Debian GNU/kFreeBSD | |
| Ging | Discontinued |
| Gentoo/FreeBSD | Gentoo/*BSD subproject to port Gentoo features such as Portage to the FreeBSD operating system |
| GhostBSD | GhostBSD is a FreeBSD OS distro oriented for desktops and laptops. Its goal is to combine the stability and security of FreeBSD with OpenRC, OS packages and Mate graphical user interface. GhostBSD comes as livecd for users to test before installing. |
| GuLIC-BSD | |
| HamFreeSBIE | |
| HardenedBSD | HardenedBSD is a security-enhanced fork of FreeBSD. The HardenedBSD Project is implementing many exploit mitigation and security technologies on top of FreeBSD. |
| HeX | |
| IronPort AsyncOS | security appliances |
| Junos OS | For Juniper routers |
| MaheshaBSD | A LiveCD or USB stick-based modular toolkit, including an anonymous surfing capability using Tor. The author also made NetBSD LiveUSB - MaheshaNetBSD, and DragonFlyBSD LiveUSB - MaheshaDragonFlyBSD. A LiveCD can be made from all these USB distributions by running the /makeiso script in the root directory. |
| miniBSD | |
| m0n0wall | m0n0wall was an embedded firewall distribution of FreeBSD, one of the BSD operating system descendants. It provides a small image which can be put on Compact Flash cards as well as on CDROMs and hard disks. It runs on a number of embedded platforms and generic PCs. Discontinued. Successor is OPNsense. |
| MidnightBSD | Midnight BSD has now forked away from FreeBSD 6.1 Beta |
| NanoBSD | |
| NAS4Free | NAS4Free is a network-attached storage server software. |
| NetBoz | |
| NextBSD | A distribution of FreeBSD based on the trunk version. |
| Nokia IPSO | Nokia IP security appliances |
| OPNsense | OPNsense is a FreeBSD-based firewall tailored for use as a firewall and router that was forked from pfSense. |
| PacBSD | A lightweight operating system that aims to bring the flexibility and philosophy of Arch Linux to BSD-based operating systems. |
| Paxym | FreeBSD for Cavium Networks OCTEON |
| pfSense | pfSense is a FreeBSD-based firewall tailored for use as a firewall and router. |
| PicoBSD | |
| RelaxBSD | |
| RoFreeSBIE | |
| Snarl | |
| StarBSD | StarBSD is a Unix-like, server-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD for Mission-Critical Enterprise Environment. |
| The Dark Star | |
| TheWall | |
| ThinBSD | |
| Triance OS | |
| TrueBSD | |
| TrueOS | TrueOS is a discontinued Unix-like, desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD based on ZFS boot-environments, Lumina, and the sysadm administration framework; reinvented as Trident OS on top of Void Linux, retaining many BSD aesthetics. |
| TrustedBSD | |
| WarBSD | |
| WiBSD | |
| WiFiBSD | |
| CellOS | The PlayStation 3 operating system |
| Orbis OS | The PlayStation 4 operating system |
| XORP | |
| Zrouter | FreeBSD based firmware for embedded devices |
| ULBSD | ULBSD is a Unix-like, desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD. It aims to be easy to instal and ready-to-use immediately by providing pre-installed graphical KDE5 user desktop environment. |
DragonFly BSD-based
NetBSD-based
is a freely redistributable, open source version of the Unix-derivative Berkeley Software Distribution computer operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. Noted for its portability and quality of design and implementation, it is often used in embedded systems and as a starting point for the porting of other operating systems to new computer architectures.| Name | Description |
| BlackBSD | Live CD with security tools and Fluxbox. http://blackbsd.tk |
| EdgeBSD | NetBSD fork with main goal to be more modern in some aspects than NetBSD itself. Looks like some of the things will be back-committed to the main project. |
| Force10 Networks FTOS | the operating system for Force10 TeraScale E-Series switches/routers |
| Debian GNU/NetBSD | Debian GNU/NetBSD was a project to combine Debian with the kernel of NetBSD. It was abandoned in 2002 and has not seen active maintenance ever since. |
| Gentoo/NetBSD | Gentoo/*BSD subproject to port Gentoo features such as Portage to the NetBSD operating system. |
| Jibbed | Live CD based on NetBSD |
| OS108 | OS108 is a desktop-oriented operating system based on NetBSD. |
| PolyBSD / pocketSAN | Multipurpose framework for building embedded systems based on NetBSD. |
| SEOS | The operating system for the Ericsson SmartEdge router series |
OpenBSD-based
is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution, a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD in 1995. OpenBSD includes a number of security features absent or optional in other operating systems and has a tradition of developers auditing the source code for software bugs and security problems.| Name | Description | - |
| ÆrieBSD | OpenBSD fork which tends to be free from GPL-licensed software. | - |
| adJ | Distribution of OpenBSD for Spanish speakers, since 2005 new versions are released around 3 months after OpenBSD's releases, source in GitHub, to learn how to install there is a challenge with badge on P2PU | - |
| Anonym.OS | Discontinued. | - |
| Bitrig | OpenBSD fork with main goal to be more modern in some aspects than OpenBSD. | - |
| BowlFish | a customized OpenBSD installation script for embedded systems, intended to make OpenBSD fit into small media like compact flash cards. | - |
| BSDanywhere | Live CD featuring the Enlightenment DR17 window manager | |
| A firewall with UTM features | - | |
| ekkoBSD | ekkoBSD was a Unix-like operating system based on OpenBSD 3.3, also incorporating code from other BSD-like operating systems. Its focus was on security and easy administration. | - |
| EmBSD | - | |
| OpenBSD fork with main application in CNC field. It's almost inactive. | - | |
| :ja:河豚板|FuguIta | Providing both LiveCD and LiveUSB for i386/amd64/arm64. Highly customizable by user. Tracking errata on OpenBSD-stable. | - |
| Gentoo/OpenBSD | Gentoo/*BSD subproject to port Gentoo features such as Portage to the OpenBSD operating system | - |
| MarBSD | LiveCD of OpenBSD | - |
| LibertyBSD | Fork of OpenBSD with all non-free binaries removed. | - |
| MicroBSD | Fork of the UNIX-like BSD operating system descendant OpenBSD 3.0, begun in July 2002. The project's objective to produce a free and fully secure, complete system, but with a small footprint. | - |
| MirOS BSD | Core system based mostly on OpenBSD and some NetBSD code for 32-bit i386 and sparc, updated via infrequent snapshots and by following "current". Additional packages via MirPorts and pkgsrc are no longer updated. | - |
| OliveBSD | Was a live CD originally based on OpenBSD 3.8 | |
| PsygNAT | Firewall and NAT router tool | - |
| Quetzal | Was a live DVD/CD system, based on OpenBSD | - |
| SONaFR | SONaFR is a small system with router/NAT/firewalling capabilities that fits on a single floppy. | - |
| SnasciOS | Snasci OS is a general purpose operating system built upon OpenBSD and the Lumina Desktop Environment. Designed to be very light weight, Snasci OS is quick, responsive and secure. Whether you want a pretty desktop to surf the web, read emails, work with documents or a hardened server platform, Snasci OS provides a nice balance between the two, without compromising on either. | - |
| Successor of ComixWall, a firewall with UTM features | - |
Historic BSD
BSD was originally derived from Unix, using the complete source code for Sixth Edition Unix for the PDP-11 from Bell Labs as a starting point for the First Berkeley Software Distribution, or 1BSD. A series of updated versions for the PDP-11 followed. A 32-bit version for the VAX platform was released as 3BSD, and the 4.xBSD series added many new features, including TCP/IP networking.For many years, the primary developer and project leader was Bill Joy, who was a graduate student at the time; funding for this project was provided by DARPA. DARPA was interested in obtaining a programming platform and programmer's interface which would provide a robust, general purpose, time-sharing computing platform which would not become obsolete every time computing hardware was or is replaced. Such an operating system would allow US Department of Defense software, especially for intricate, long-term finance and logistics operations, to be quickly ported to new hardware as it became available.
As time went on, code was later ported both from and to Unix System III and still later Unix System V. Unix System V Revision 4, released circa 1992, contained much code which was ported from BSD version up to and including 4.3BSD.