What is Linux is actually only the kernel, the rest of what makes a distro is all GNU tools, starting with the toolchain that makes a kernel: compiler, assember, binutils, glibc, etc, and the things make it a unix system: tcp/ip, dns, shells, parsers, etc, and all of the other add-ons. What makes one distro different from another is the choice of which programs are included, how the file system hierarchy is laid out, how the init scripts work, how the install and and configuration works. BSD is a similar situation but the design of the kernel is exteremely different, how device drivers are included is also very different, but its based on the same set of GNU tools, similar toolchain, similar utilities etc. The difference between the BSD variants is similar to the difference between linux distros. People split off from the original berkeley unix and started making different distros and focusing on different areas, with somewhat different philosophies as to how things should be done. Regarding security, BSD is probably more secure only because there is less of it around, therefore less reason for hackers to attack it, same as mac. Can speakup work with BSD, no. The source code patches the kernel, and the kernels are completely different. Something exactly like speakup could be written for BSD but I think most of the code would not be portable at all. -- Doug
