RocBSD

About

RocBSD is a FREE OpenBSD based operating system. The base system is designed to be small enough that most system administrators should be able to know what every file in the system does and what it is for (kind of like an old car), yet still big enough to do real work (and not just be your router, firewall, or access point).

RocBSD closely tracks OpenBSD's development. We try to avoid any changes that will make syncing from upstream difficult. RocBSD has the same rock (no pun intended) solid kernel, network stack, libraries, crypto support, and network daemon as OpenBSD and we hope it will have the same extraordinary security record as OpenBSD.

Platforms

Initially, RocBSD will only support the i386, amd64 (x86_64), and macppc architectures. We'd like to support all of OpenBSD's supported platforms but these are the only hardware platforms the developers have access to for testing (i.e. that is what I have kicking around in the basement).

Releases

RocBSD is currently under heave development and we hope to release the first version in the coming weeks. Binaries will be available as well as a git repository. Stay tuned!

About the name

RocBSD has its name for several reasons:

1. All BSDs should have a short 3 or 4 letter name (DragonFly BSD seems to have got away with breaking this rule, but I think they're the exception to the rule).
2. I live in Rochester, which is sometimes known as Roc, for short (probably because it is our IATA airport code).
3. I was a big fan of ROCK Linux, and ran it for a while back in the day (however, I soon built my own Linux distribution shortly after that, sigh... I just can't find a Unix distribution I like), and "Roc" is pronounced like "rock"
4. There are no other BSDs that start with "R" (that I know of), so "RBSD" won't be ambiguous.

-Brian <brian@rocbsd.org>