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Kirk McKusick - A Narrative History of BSD

Kirk McKusick - A Narrative History of BSD on HackerTube: recommended by 1 Hacker News commenter across 1 month, 2020–2025.

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Kirk McKusick gives a narrative history of the Berkeley Software Distributions at MeetBSD California. He covers how BSD originated and evolved, including the origin of the networking releases.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Recommended as the authoritative, first-hand telling of BSD lore whenever Unix and BSD history comes up.

people recommended it
1
separate months
1
strong recommendations
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discussed on HN
2020–2025
“Maybe you have some fun with BSD-Lore (Kirk McKusick)”
— nix23, Jun 2020, in “Linux Sucks 2020 [video]”

What HN commenters said

3 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

nix23Jun 2020Recommends

Yep, that! Maybe you have some fun with BSD-Lore (Kirk McKusick): ▶ this video Or Solaris/illumos (Bryan M. Cantrill): [link]

in “Linux Sucks 2020 [video]” · View on HN

damhsaApr 2025Cites it

i didnt understand it until i stumbled on the bsd supp docs that openbsd couldnt be ****** to include. i dont have the sources, but v7 vol2 is close enough: [link] vol2 contains fuller book like manuals and tutorials for complicated things like ed, C, filesystem, UNIX, etc. and should be your first introduction to UNIX/BSD, while the man(1) program (vol1) serves as a complementary quick reference for experienced users and for short programs that dont need much explanation. sadly V7 wont tell you about the internet because that was started by the "net" releases of 4.3-4.4BSD (see kirk mckusicks history ▶ this video ) for vi, get the PostScript.ps files for the OTHER manual from keith bostics sources (openbsd src only has troff source and no troff): [link] echo pkg_add ghostscript | su root tar xfz nvi-1.79.tar.gz cd nvi-1.79/docs/USD.doc (cd vi.ref; ps2pdf vi.ref.ps) (cd vi.tut; ps2pdf vi.tut.ps) the interactive vi tutorial is also great: cp /usr/src/usr.bin/vi/docs/tutorial/* ./ vi vi.beginner vi vi.advanced assuming you installed the relevant src tar: ftp -C [link] -r`"/SHA256.sig && ftp -C [link] -r`"/src.tar.gz && signify -Cp /etc/signify/openbsd-"`uname -r|tr -d .`"-base.pub -x SHA256.sig src.tar.gz && su root -c 'tar xfzCp src.tar.gz' wouldnt it be nice if installation did this and syspatch patched it and sysupgrade merged it? openbsd is also not very good at pointing you to the right manual. making them grepable was a small improvement for me. mkdir man && cd man && for n in

in “Dipping my toes in OpenBSD, in Amsterdam” · View on HN

pjmlpNov 2020Cites it

"Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, The, 2nd Edition" [link] Marshall Kirk McKusick has done some talks on the subject. ▶ this video [link] [link] [link]

in “The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan” · View on HN

Topics & tags

Operating systems & kernelsHistory of computingLinux & open-source ecosystemsbsdunix historyfreebsdkirk mckusickoperating systems