386BSD (also known as "Jolix" that was developed by couple Lynne and William "Bill" Jolitz. Released as free and open source in 1992, it was the first fully operational Unix built to run on IBM PC-compatible systems based on the Intel 80386 ("i386") microprocessor, and the first Unix-like system on affordable home-class hardware to be freely distributed. Its innovations included role-based security, ring buffers, self-ordered configuration and modular kernel design.

Development began in 1989 while the Jolitzes were at the University of California, Berkeley's Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG), intended to be a port of BSD to 386-based personal computers. They then contributed the project to the university with some of the work ending up in BSD's Net/2, distributed in 1991. However, when the CSRG scrapped the project and ruled that his work was "university proprietary", Jolitz rewrote the code from scratch, based on the incomplete free code from Net/2. Eventually, Linux would take off as the most popular complete free Unix clone for PCs, partly due to the slow progress of 386BSD and the then-ongoing lawsuit surrounding BSD.

History and releases

386BSD was written mainly by Berkeley alumni Lynne Jolitz and William Jolitz. William had considerable experience with prior BSD releases while at the University of California, Berkeley (2.8 and 2.9BSD) and both contributed code developed at Symmetric Computer Systems during the 1980s, to Berkeley. William worked at Berkeley on porting 4.3BSD-Reno and later 4.3BSD Net/2 to the Intel 80386 for the university. 4.3BSD Net/2 was an incomplete non-operational release, with portions withheld by the University of California as encumbered (i.e. subject to an AT&T UNIX source code license). 386BSD does not contain any original Unix code.

The port began in 1989 and the first, incomplete traces of the port can be found in 4.3BSD Net/2 of 1991. The port was made possible as Keith Bostic, partly influenced by Richard Stallman, had started to remove proprietary AT&T out of BSD in 1988. The port was first released to the public in March 1992 (version 0.0).

386BSD proved popular, with it receiving 250,000 downloads from the FTP server it was hosted on. It was helped partly by the porting process with code being extensively documented in a 17-part series written by Lynne and William in Dr. Dobb's Journal beginning in January 1991.

In late 1994, a finished version 386BSD Release 1.0 was distributed by Dr. Dobb's Journal on CD-ROM only due to the immense size (600 MB) of the release (the "386BSD Reference CD-ROM") and was a best-selling CDROM for three years (1994–1997). 386BSD Release 1.0 contained a completely new kernel design and implementation, and began the process to incorporate recommendations made by earlier Berkeley designers that had never been attempted in BSD.

On August 5, 2016, an update was pushed to the 386BSD GitHub repository by developer Ben Jolitz, named version 2.0. According to the official website, Release 2.0 "built upon the modular framework to create self-healing components." However, , almost all of the documentation remains the same as version 1.0, and a changelog was not available.

FreeBSD and NetBSD

After the release of 386BSD 0.1,

  • Jan/1991: DDJ "Designing a Software Specification"
  • Feb/1991: DDJ "Three Initial PC Utilities"
  • Mar/1991: DDJ "The Standalone System"
  • Apr/1991: DDJ "Language Tools Cross-Support"
  • May/1991: DDJ "The Initial Root Filesystem"
  • Jun/1991: DDJ "Research and the Commercial Sector: Where Does BSD Fit In?"
  • Jul/1991: DDJ "A Stripped-Down Kernel"
  • Aug/1991: DDJ "The Basic Kernel"
  • Sep/1991: DDJ "Multiprogramming and Multiprocessing, Part I"
  • Oct/1991: DDJ "Multiprogramming and Multiprocessing, Part II"
  • Nov/1991: DDJ "Device Autoconfiguration"
  • Feb/1992: DDJ "UNIX Device Drivers, Part I"
  • Mar/1992: DDJ "UNIX Device Drivers, Part II"
  • Apr/1992: DDJ "UNIX Device Drivers, Part III"
  • May/1992: DDJ "Missing Pieces, Part I"
  • Jun/1992: DDJ "Missing Pieces, Part II"
  • Jul/1992: DDJ "The Final Step: Running Light with 386BSD"
  • Jolitz, William F. and Jolitz, Lynne Greer: Operating System Source Code Secrets Vol 1 The Basic Kernel, 1996,
  • Jolitz, William F. and Jolitz, Lynne Greer: Operating System Source Code Secrets Vol 2 Virtual Memory, 2000,

References

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  • William Jolitz's 386bsd Notebook
  • Jolix.com
  • Porting UNIX to the 386: A Practical Approach
  • Memories of 386BSD releases by Lynne Jolitz
  • The unknown hackers - Salon.com
  • 386BSD Design Notes Professional Video Series
  • Frequently asked questions of 386BSD - active Q/A by authors
  • Raising Top Quality Rabble; article mentioning 386BSD
  • Archived comment on "Raising Top Quality Rabble" with remarks on the history of 386BSD by Lynne Jolitz
  • Remarks on the history of 386BSD by Greg Lehey
  • More information on the various releases of 386BSD
  • Browsable 386BSD kernel sources