9 ms·

For BSD Unix, It's Sayonara (1992)

129 points by operator-name 3y ago

bitwize 3y ago
It's not over till Netcraft confirms it.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Clap. Clap. Clap.
  - jakedata 3y ago
    So it goes.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      Eh. I thought it was funny, anyway!
  - bitwize 3y ago
    Good, that's still working.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      I, for one, welcome our Slashdot-era meme overlords.
  - syockit 3y ago
    (Score:5, Insightful)
- Sylamore 3y ago
  Throwback to my slashdot sig: To misquote Churchill, never has an operating system (FreeBSD) used by so many been administered by so few. - NetCraft
  - baz00 3y ago
    So basically it's an anti-Kubernetes?
    - steve1977 3y ago
      That sums up the frustration with my career in an unsuspected way
      - baz00 3y ago
        Yeah I'm projecting there with that one. It's the same for me. My commiseration and sympathy to you.
        steve1977 3y ago
        That feeling of doing more and more but getting done less and less
        baz00 3y ago
        I am now completely dead inside.
- tiffanyh 3y ago
  Whatever happened to the old Netcraft site where I type in a url and it’d tell you what OS, webhost, webserver, etc it ran. Netcraft seems all corporate now.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Security checklists.
  - lukegb 3y ago
    It's still there, although it too got rebranded: https://sitereport.netcraft.com https://sitereport.netcraft.com
  - npteljes 3y ago
    I personally used https://builtwith.com/ https://builtwith.com/, gave nice reports back in the day.
- vondur 3y ago
  Wow forgot about that, How many times did the Slashdot trolls have the "BSD Is Dying" posts over the years?
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I bet that continues, but I don't want to be the one to investigate.
- EgregiousCube 3y ago
  The whole copypasta, frequently posted to slashdot back in the day: It is official; Netcraft now confirms: BSD is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered BSD community when IDC confirmed that BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test. You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for BSD because BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for BSD. As many of us are already aware, BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying. Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers. OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts. Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house. All major surveys show that BSD has steadily declined in market share. BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save BSD from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, BSD is dead. Fact: BSD is dying
drewg123 3y ago
Not according to the computer I'm typing this on, 31 years later :) FWIW, Klara has a good series on the history of FreeBSD: https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-unix-and-bsd/ https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-unix-an... https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-2-bsdi-and-usl-lawsuits/ https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-2-... https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-3-early-days-of-freebsd/ https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-3-... https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-4-bsd-and-tcp-ip/ https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-4-...
- 9front 3y ago
  The article is about BSD Unix which had a final release in June of 1995. So BSD is sayonara! Long live FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, the stepchild(s) of BSD.
  - voytec 3y ago
    Nevertheless, it shows an interesting crossroads moment in the BSD history and uncertainty of it's future. > There are still options to secure BSD code, with one company, Berkeley Software Design (Falls Church, Va.), a company employing former Berkeley programmer Mike Karels, planning to offer a commercial version of Unix for SPARC systems based on the 4.4BSD code but free of AT&T source licensing requirements. It currently offers BSD/386, a version of Unix for 386 machines based on the Berkeley NET2 release. (commented from a laptop running FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT;)
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      Does it still have that classic Berkeley smell? "It was a matter of their taking it in and peeing on it until it smelled like Berkeley."
    - inferiorhuman 3y ago
      Ah, I was looking at the history of BSDi (nee Berkeley Software Design). Turns out BSD/OS was killed off by Wind River in 2003? I didn't realize it had lasted so long. Nor did I realize BSD/OS had such strong market share in '95. (commented from a laptop building an osx -> dragonfly cross compiler)
yuhong 3y ago
[dead]
InTheArena 3y ago
It’s neat to start reading and immediately run into professor Evi Nemeth being quoted. I TA”d for her a few year later, and it was axiomatic in her labs that BSD Unix was the only true Unix, that slowaris was a abomination and ATM was the worst network protocol ever devised. We eventually got her onto this new Linux thing..
- rootbear 3y ago
  I always attended her talks at Usenix. I'm still sad about her loss.
- gwright 3y ago
  > ATM was the worst network protocol ever devised Having 53 byte payloads is something only a committee could love.
  - matthiasl 3y ago
    ATM cells have 48 byte payloads. Supposedly that was because different groups involved in the standardisation process wanted either 32 or 64 byte payloads.
    - chungy 3y ago
      That's definitely a "split the baby down the middle" kind of solution.
      - Paul-Craft 3y ago
        More like a "fuck all you guys, I'm going home" kind of solution, if you ask me.
      - drewolbrich 3y ago
        I think there's a similar story for the HDTV 16:9 aspect ratio.
    - marcus0x62 3y ago
stan1234 3y ago
[dead]
zitterbewegung 3y ago
Yea it’s strange that right now we have four direct derivatives (OpenBSD, FreeBSD ,NetBSD and DragonflyBSD) and an combination of OSF Mach 4 and FreeBSD which has Billions of users (macOS ,iOS)
- declan_roberts 3y ago
  Given Apple’s market share, BSD is actually extremely popular!
  - Sunspark 3y ago
    In other stuff too.. PlayStation 3 through 5, but those are closed systems.
    - donkeybeer 3y ago
      So is Apple. Some here might see this as a lesson in licensing I guess.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        Specially when we check what they have contributed to upstream.
        zitterbewegung 3y ago
        Yea open sourcing APFS drivers would be something actually useful
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
slavapestov 3y ago
"The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System" is a classic: https://www.amazon.com/Implementation-Operating-paperback-Addison-wesley-Systems/dp/0132317923 https://www.amazon.com/Implementation-Operating-paperback-Ad...
- assimpleaspossi 3y ago
  Don't forget the newer, updated versions, the last release just a few years ago.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    There is just one updated version, and 2014 was more than just a few years. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Marshall-Kirk-McKusick/dp/0321968972 https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Marshall-Kirk-McKusick/dp/0321968...
    - assimpleaspossi 3y ago
      No, there are two: https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operating-System/dp/0201702452 https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operati...
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        Have you bothered to check the release year before replying?
        assimpleaspossi 3y ago
        Your link is to the newest one. Mine is to the one before that. The original post is about the very first issue. You claimed there are only two editions. My link proves there were more. Understand?
        pjmlp 3y ago
shon 3y ago
Ahem… Darwin. Because of Darwin (iOS) and its derivatives, BSD probably powers 10-20% or more of all daily user hours logged on the planet.
CodeCompost 3y ago
I don't know what it is about the BSD's. I just keep getting drawn to them, and I don't even use them personally or professionally. I think it's because they are complete operating systems with their own user-land and complete documentation. Plus the fact that BSD users get excited about little things like when an extra command line switch or a new filesystem flag. All this meticulous attention to detail...
- parlortricks 3y ago
  This is me as well, im excited to know there is a whole solution in one. Ive run them here and there to experiment, but for my needs i still use Debian. I feel Debian gives me some of the BSD vibe, but i still enjoy reading about all the new features the BSDs bring each release. Hope one day they catch up to what my linux box does, so i can enjoy it more.
  - bch 3y ago
    Slack and Debian (mostly Debian) were my favorite Linux experience, and indeed Unix experience, until I landed on NetBSD.
- LeFantome 3y ago
  Try Chimera
- bilbyx 3y ago
  I had switched all my customers from CentOS 6 to FreeBSD many years ago, before systemd was introduced into RHEL. They have been running solidly for almost 9 years now, all on various DELL PowerEdge rack mounted servers.
  - djbusby 3y ago
    Back in the day "they" said: what one BSD admin can do in a week, 10 Windows admins could do in a month. (Or something like that).
- asyx 3y ago
Paul-Craft 3y ago
Funny. This reminded me of the old saying "Two of the most famous products to come out of Berkeley are BSD and LSD." Turns out, as a tech person, I'm (very) tangentially involved with BSD and my landlord was pretty deeply involved with LSD decades ago. ;)
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"The University of Colorado's Nemeth, regarded as an expert on Unix security and perhaps best known for having co-authored the Unix System Administration Handbook, said last week that she would like to have her university conduct some of the operating system research that Berkeley is now abandoning." RIP Prof. Nemeth. Tragically lost at sea sailing across the Tasman in Winter in a "vintage" 1928 schooner. "Evi Nemeth had previously used the services of Bob McDavitt for weather forecasts and passage planning during her voyage on her yacht Wonderland. There was no such request for services made to Bob McDavitt from the Nina before she sailed from Opua. Bob McDavitt is a well-known and respected meteorologist who retired in 2012 from the NZ Met office where he had responsibility for marine and aviation weather forecasting. Now as a consultant he provides services to cruising yachts, providing weather forecasts and voyage forecasts. (www.metbob.com.)" https://nzsar.govt.nz/assets/Downloadable-Files/Nina-Independent-Review-June-2014-1.pdf https://nzsar.govt.nz/assets/Downloadable-Files/Nina-Indepen... https://www.sail-world.com/-123872/ https://www.sail-world.com/-123872/ (AUS --> NZ)
- mrelectric 3y ago
  I recommend her book to everyone, get a hard copy!
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  Correction: Apparently Met uses June 1 as 1st day of winter but it's officially the solstice. One could argue it was not yet winter. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/113038178/when-does-winter-officially-start-in-new-zealand https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/113038178/when-does-winter-...
russtrotter 3y ago
I started uni in 1990 and went from a kid in his basement banging away on a PC clone with Turbo Pascal 5.x to a place with this thing called "usenet" on a "VAX" running "BSD" off of tapes and the map of the "Internet" could just about fit on a whiteboard. I sponged off the sysadmins all I could learning about renoe, tahoe and all things in between. I had no cognizance at the time that the death of this amazing world was getting thought off just when i thought it was the greatest stuff in the universe. I read the demon book cover to cover when I had no idea what most of it meant. BSD, whether alive or "dead" will always hold a special place in my mind. It's only with the long road since those days that I can appreciate the tone of this article. Thanks OP for posting it here.
johnklos 3y ago
As long as we can still run BSD on our VAXen, I'm happy. http://vlc.zia.io/ http://vlc.zia.io/

129 points by operator-name 3y ago

bitwize 3y ago

It's not over till Netcraft confirms it.

kstrauser 3y ago
Clap. Clap. Clap.
- jakedata 3y ago
  So it goes.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Eh. I thought it was funny, anyway!
- bitwize 3y ago
  Good, that's still working.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I, for one, welcome our Slashdot-era meme overlords.
- syockit 3y ago
  (Score:5, Insightful)
Sylamore 3y ago
Throwback to my slashdot sig: To misquote Churchill, never has an operating system (FreeBSD) used by so many been administered by so few. - NetCraft
- baz00 3y ago
  So basically it's an anti-Kubernetes?
  - steve1977 3y ago
    That sums up the frustration with my career in an unsuspected way
    - baz00 3y ago
      Yeah I'm projecting there with that one. It's the same for me. My commiseration and sympathy to you.
      - steve1977 3y ago
        That feeling of doing more and more but getting done less and less
        baz00 3y ago
        I am now completely dead inside.
tiffanyh 3y ago
Whatever happened to the old Netcraft site where I type in a url and it’d tell you what OS, webhost, webserver, etc it ran. Netcraft seems all corporate now.
- toast0 3y ago
  Security checklists.
- lukegb 3y ago
  It's still there, although it too got rebranded: https://sitereport.netcraft.com https://sitereport.netcraft.com
- npteljes 3y ago
  I personally used https://builtwith.com/ https://builtwith.com/, gave nice reports back in the day.
vondur 3y ago
Wow forgot about that, How many times did the Slashdot trolls have the "BSD Is Dying" posts over the years?
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I bet that continues, but I don't want to be the one to investigate.
EgregiousCube 3y ago
The whole copypasta, frequently posted to slashdot back in the day: It is official; Netcraft now confirms: BSD is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered BSD community when IDC confirmed that BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test. You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for BSD because BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for BSD. As many of us are already aware, BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying. Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers. OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts. Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house. All major surveys show that BSD has steadily declined in market share. BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save BSD from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, BSD is dead. Fact: BSD is dying

drewg123 3y ago

Not according to the computer I'm typing this on, 31 years later :) FWIW, Klara has a good series on the history of FreeBSD: https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-unix-and-bsd/ https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-unix-an... https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-2-bsdi-and-usl-lawsuits/ https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-2-... https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-3-early-days-of-freebsd/ https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-3-... https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-4-bsd-and-tcp-ip/ https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-4-...

9front 3y ago
The article is about BSD Unix which had a final release in June of 1995. So BSD is sayonara! Long live FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, the stepchild(s) of BSD.
- voytec 3y ago
  Nevertheless, it shows an interesting crossroads moment in the BSD history and uncertainty of it's future. > There are still options to secure BSD code, with one company, Berkeley Software Design (Falls Church, Va.), a company employing former Berkeley programmer Mike Karels, planning to offer a commercial version of Unix for SPARC systems based on the 4.4BSD code but free of AT&T source licensing requirements. It currently offers BSD/386, a version of Unix for 386 machines based on the Berkeley NET2 release. (commented from a laptop running FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT;)
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    Does it still have that classic Berkeley smell? "It was a matter of their taking it in and peeing on it until it smelled like Berkeley."
  - inferiorhuman 3y ago
    Ah, I was looking at the history of BSDi (nee Berkeley Software Design). Turns out BSD/OS was killed off by Wind River in 2003? I didn't realize it had lasted so long. Nor did I realize BSD/OS had such strong market share in '95. (commented from a laptop building an osx -> dragonfly cross compiler)

yuhong 3y ago

[dead]

InTheArena 3y ago

It’s neat to start reading and immediately run into professor Evi Nemeth being quoted. I TA”d for her a few year later, and it was axiomatic in her labs that BSD Unix was the only true Unix, that slowaris was a abomination and ATM was the worst network protocol ever devised. We eventually got her onto this new Linux thing..

rootbear 3y ago
I always attended her talks at Usenix. I'm still sad about her loss.
gwright 3y ago
> ATM was the worst network protocol ever devised Having 53 byte payloads is something only a committee could love.
- matthiasl 3y ago
  ATM cells have 48 byte payloads. Supposedly that was because different groups involved in the standardisation process wanted either 32 or 64 byte payloads.
  - chungy 3y ago
    That's definitely a "split the baby down the middle" kind of solution.
    - Paul-Craft 3y ago
      More like a "fuck all you guys, I'm going home" kind of solution, if you ask me.
    - drewolbrich 3y ago
      I think there's a similar story for the HDTV 16:9 aspect ratio.
  - marcus0x62 3y ago

stan1234 3y ago

[dead]

zitterbewegung 3y ago

Yea it’s strange that right now we have four direct derivatives (OpenBSD, FreeBSD ,NetBSD and DragonflyBSD) and an combination of OSF Mach 4 and FreeBSD which has Billions of users (macOS ,iOS)

declan_roberts 3y ago
Given Apple’s market share, BSD is actually extremely popular!
- Sunspark 3y ago
  In other stuff too.. PlayStation 3 through 5, but those are closed systems.
  - donkeybeer 3y ago
    So is Apple. Some here might see this as a lesson in licensing I guess.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Specially when we check what they have contributed to upstream.
      - zitterbewegung 3y ago
        Yea open sourcing APFS drivers would be something actually useful

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

slavapestov 3y ago

"The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System" is a classic: https://www.amazon.com/Implementation-Operating-paperback-Addison-wesley-Systems/dp/0132317923 https://www.amazon.com/Implementation-Operating-paperback-Ad...

assimpleaspossi 3y ago
Don't forget the newer, updated versions, the last release just a few years ago.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  There is just one updated version, and 2014 was more than just a few years. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Marshall-Kirk-McKusick/dp/0321968972 https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Marshall-Kirk-McKusick/dp/0321968...
  - assimpleaspossi 3y ago
    No, there are two: https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operating-System/dp/0201702452 https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operati...
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Have you bothered to check the release year before replying?
      - assimpleaspossi 3y ago
        Your link is to the newest one. Mine is to the one before that. The original post is about the very first issue. You claimed there are only two editions. My link proves there were more. Understand?
        pjmlp 3y ago

shon 3y ago

Ahem… Darwin. Because of Darwin (iOS) and its derivatives, BSD probably powers 10-20% or more of all daily user hours logged on the planet.

CodeCompost 3y ago

I don't know what it is about the BSD's. I just keep getting drawn to them, and I don't even use them personally or professionally. I think it's because they are complete operating systems with their own user-land and complete documentation. Plus the fact that BSD users get excited about little things like when an extra command line switch or a new filesystem flag. All this meticulous attention to detail...

parlortricks 3y ago
This is me as well, im excited to know there is a whole solution in one. Ive run them here and there to experiment, but for my needs i still use Debian. I feel Debian gives me some of the BSD vibe, but i still enjoy reading about all the new features the BSDs bring each release. Hope one day they catch up to what my linux box does, so i can enjoy it more.
- bch 3y ago
  Slack and Debian (mostly Debian) were my favorite Linux experience, and indeed Unix experience, until I landed on NetBSD.
LeFantome 3y ago
Try Chimera
bilbyx 3y ago
I had switched all my customers from CentOS 6 to FreeBSD many years ago, before systemd was introduced into RHEL. They have been running solidly for almost 9 years now, all on various DELL PowerEdge rack mounted servers.
- djbusby 3y ago
  Back in the day "they" said: what one BSD admin can do in a week, 10 Windows admins could do in a month. (Or something like that).
asyx 3y ago

Paul-Craft 3y ago

Funny. This reminded me of the old saying "Two of the most famous products to come out of Berkeley are BSD and LSD." Turns out, as a tech person, I'm (very) tangentially involved with BSD and my landlord was pretty deeply involved with LSD decades ago. ;)

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"The University of Colorado's Nemeth, regarded as an expert on Unix security and perhaps best known for having co-authored the Unix System Administration Handbook, said last week that she would like to have her university conduct some of the operating system research that Berkeley is now abandoning." RIP Prof. Nemeth. Tragically lost at sea sailing across the Tasman in Winter in a "vintage" 1928 schooner. "Evi Nemeth had previously used the services of Bob McDavitt for weather forecasts and passage planning during her voyage on her yacht Wonderland. There was no such request for services made to Bob McDavitt from the Nina before she sailed from Opua. Bob McDavitt is a well-known and respected meteorologist who retired in 2012 from the NZ Met office where he had responsibility for marine and aviation weather forecasting. Now as a consultant he provides services to cruising yachts, providing weather forecasts and voyage forecasts. (www.metbob.com.)" https://nzsar.govt.nz/assets/Downloadable-Files/Nina-Independent-Review-June-2014-1.pdf https://nzsar.govt.nz/assets/Downloadable-Files/Nina-Indepen... https://www.sail-world.com/-123872/ https://www.sail-world.com/-123872/ (AUS --> NZ)

mrelectric 3y ago
I recommend her book to everyone, get a hard copy!
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
Correction: Apparently Met uses June 1 as 1st day of winter but it's officially the solstice. One could argue it was not yet winter. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/113038178/when-does-winter-officially-start-in-new-zealand https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/113038178/when-does-winter-...

russtrotter 3y ago

I started uni in 1990 and went from a kid in his basement banging away on a PC clone with Turbo Pascal 5.x to a place with this thing called "usenet" on a "VAX" running "BSD" off of tapes and the map of the "Internet" could just about fit on a whiteboard. I sponged off the sysadmins all I could learning about renoe, tahoe and all things in between. I had no cognizance at the time that the death of this amazing world was getting thought off just when i thought it was the greatest stuff in the universe. I read the demon book cover to cover when I had no idea what most of it meant. BSD, whether alive or "dead" will always hold a special place in my mind. It's only with the long road since those days that I can appreciate the tone of this article. Thanks OP for posting it here.

johnklos 3y ago

As long as we can still run BSD on our VAXen, I'm happy. http://vlc.zia.io/ http://vlc.zia.io/