Comparison of BSD Operating Systems - Names, Logos, Slogans

Names, Logos, Slogans

The names FreeBSD and OpenBSD are references to software freedom: both in cost and open source. NetBSD's name is a tribute to the Internet, which brought the original developers together.

The first BSD mascot was the BSD daemon, named after a common type of Unix software program, a daemon. FreeBSD still uses the image, a red cartoon daemon named Beastie, wielding a pitchfork, as its mascot today. In 2005, after a competition, a stylized version of Beastie's head designed and drawn by Anton Gural was chosen as the FreeBSD logo. The FreeBSD slogan is "The Power to Serve."

The NetBSD flag, designed in 2004 by Grant Bisset, is inspired by the original NetBSD logo, designed in 1994 by Shawn Mueller, portraying a number of BSD daemons raising a flag on top of a mound of computer equipment. This was based on a World War II photograph, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. The Board of Directors of The NetBSD Foundation believed this was too complicated, too hard to reproduce and had negative cultural ramifications and was thus not a suitable image for NetBSD in the corporate world. The new, simpler flag design replaced this. The NetBSD slogan is "Of course it runs NetBSD", referring to the operating system's portability.

Originally, OpenBSD used the BSD daemon as a mascot, sometimes with an added halo as a distinguishing mark, but OpenBSD later replaced its BSD daemon with Puffy. Although Puffy is usually referred to as a pufferfish, the spikes on the cartoon images give him a closer likeness to the porcupinefish. The logo is a reference to the fish's defensive capabilities and to the Blowfish cryptography algorithm used in OpenBSD. OpenBSD also has a number of slogans including "Secure by default", which was used in the first OpenBSD song, 'E-railed', and "Free, Functional & Secure" and OpenBSD has released at least one original song with every release since 3.0.

The DragonFly BSD logo, designed by Joe Angrisano, is a dragonfly named Fred. A number of unofficial logos by various authors also show the dragonfly or stylized versions of it. DragonFly BSD considers itself to be "the logical continuation of the FreeBSD 4.x series." FireflyBSD has a similar logo, a firefly, showing its close relationship to DragonFly BSD. In fact, the FireflyBSD website states that proceeds from sales will go to the development of DragonFly BSD, suggesting that the two may in fact be very closely related.

PicoBSD's slogan is "For the little BSD in all of us," and its logo includes a version of FreeBSD's Beastie as a child, showing its close connection to FreeBSD, and the minimal amount of code needed to run as a Live CD.

A number of BSD OSes use stylized version of their respective names for logos. This includes Mac OS X, PC-BSD, DesktopBSD, ClosedBSD, and MicroBSD. The Mac OS X logo is the roman numeral for 10. This is intended to emphasize the change from previous versions of Mac OS, which were not based on BSD and had version numbers expressed using the arabic numerals up to 9. PC-BSD's slogan is "Personal computing, served up BSD style!", DesktopBSD's "A Step Towards BSD on the Desktop." MicroBSD's slogan is "The small secure unix like OS."

MirOS's site collects a variety of BSD mascots and Tux, the Linux mascot, together, illustrating the project's aim of supporting both BSD and Linux kernels. MirOS's slogan is "a wonderful operating system for a world of peace."