BSD and Linux use different kernels and package managers. BSD is closer to a pure Unix experience. The FreeBSD installer is no-frills and terminal-based, and there are post-installation steps if you ...

What defines an operating system isn’t a geeky label or a collection of ramblings from the mouths of its community members. Nor is it some empty and pointless certification offered up by an obscure ...

Two weeks ago frequent contributors p_msac and bportlock challenged me to see Linux as not Unix and to discuss the consequences of that difference. The reality here is simple: Linus Torvalds started ...

ZDNET's key takeaways FreeBSD is one of the most stable OSes on the planet.FreeBSD is also more challenging than Linux.You ...

Takeaway: Unix’s rock-solid reliability means that its relevant now more than ever – and Linux puts Unix’s power within reach. Unix has been around for a very long time. We remember the rampant ...

MacOS and Windows are the two most popular desktop and laptop operating systems. They’re the two central OS choices dominating the desktop and laptop markets today. But have you heard of the ...

Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at a PDP-11. Peter Hamer [CC BY-SA 2.0] Last week the computing world celebrated an important anniversary: the UNIX operating system turned 50 years old. What was ...

Unix died because of endless incompatibilities between versions. Linux succeeded on servers and everywhere else because it ...

Many people have read that post by Linus Torvalds in the comp.os.minix newsgroup on Usenet, or at least heard about it. Many more are aware of how that (free) operating system ended up taking over ...

It probably shouldn’t, but it routinely astonishes me how much we live on the Web. Even I find myself going entire boots without using anything but the Web browser. With such an emphasis on Web-based ...

Forty years ago this summer, a programmer sat down and knocked out in one month what would become one of the most important pieces of software ever created. In August 1969, Ken Thompson, a programmer ...

Back on September 12, fellow blogger Marc Wagner wrote a long rebuttal to my comment that the Linux community should stop trying to make Linux look like Windows and just let Linux be Linux. As part of ...