Presentation for SCALE 2010.

1. BSD For Linux Users
Dru Lavigne
Chair, BSD Certification Group
SCALE 2010

2. This presentation will cover...
What is this BSD you speak of? (frame of
reference)
How is BSD different? (will I like it?)
Release engineering? (behind the scenes)
Any features unique to BSD? (am I missing
out on anything cool?)
Books (some recommended reading)

3. What is this BSD you
speak of?

4. aka What is this Linux
you speak of?

5. a kernel?

6. a distro?

7. If so, which one? Ubuntu?

8. Back to BSD....
Since we only have 45 minutes.....
We'll start with an overview of the BSD
projects
Then concentrate on some of the
differences Linux users tend to notice on
BSD

9. Back to BSD....
Differentiated by focus:
NetBSD: clean design and portability (56
supported platforms)
FreeBSD: production server stability and
application support (21,250+ apps)
OpenBSD: security and dependable release
cycle
Dragonfly BSD: filesystem architecture
PC-BSD: anyone can install and use BSD

11. How is BSD different?

13. Gnome vs.

14. KDE

15. device names

16. rc.conf instead of runlevels

17. one config file philosophy

18. kernel configuration

19. consistent layout (man hier)

20. BSD vs GNU switches

21. working examples

22. Release Engineering?

23. Release Engineering
Complete operating system, not kernel +
distro: one source for security advisories,
less likelihood of incompatible libraries
Integration of features not limited by
copyleft: e.g. drivers are built-in
High “bus factor”
Consistent separation between operating
system and third party and between BSD
and GPL'd code

24. Release Engineering
● While each BSD project has a separate
focus, the communities share ideas/code
● Mentorship process to earn commit bit
● FreeBSD 417 commit bits
● NetBSD 263 commit bits
● OpenBSD 127 commit bits
● plus thousands of contributors for
software, docs, translations, bug fixes, etc
● Linux has 1 committer, 196 maintainers

25. Release Engineering
Principles used by the BSD projects reflect
their academic roots:
● well defined process for earning a
“commit bit” includes a period of working
under a mentor
● code repository from Day 1 and can
trace original code back to CSRG days
● no “leader”, instead well defined release
engineering, security, and doc teams

26. Release Engineering
● development occurs on CURRENT which is
frozen in preparation for a RELEASE
● nightly builds (operating system and
apps) help ensure that upgrades and
installs don't result in library
incompatibilities (safe for production)
● documentation considered as important
as code

27. Features unique to
BSD?

28. securelevels

29. FreeBSD jails

30. NetBSD build.sh

31. pkgsrc

32. PC-BSD PBIs

33. VuXML and portaudit

34. pkg_admin audit
or pkg_admin audit
for pkgsrc systems

35. NetBSD veriexec

36. binary emulation

37. FreeBSD netgraph

38. ZFS support

39. FreeBSD dtrace suport

40. CARP

41. FreeBSD superpages

42. OpenBSM

43. FreeBSD system snapshots

44. ALTQ

45. DragonFly HAMMER

46. Books

47. Books

48. Books

49. Books

50. Books

51. Books

52. Questions?
dru@osbr.ca
Stop by the BSD booth to say hi and get a
free copy of PC-BSD!