4.4BSD is the final release of what may be one of the most significant research projects in the history of computing. When Bell Labs originally released UNIX source code to the R&D community, brilliant researchers wrote their own software and added it to UNIX in a spree of creative anarchy that hasn't been equaled since. The Berkeley Software Distribution became the repository of much of that work.

This CD contains a copy of the University of California, Berkeley's, 4.4BSD-Lite release, with additional documentation and enhancements. The 4.4BSD-Lite distribution did not include sources for the complete 4.4BSD system. The source code for a small number of utilities and files (including a few from the operating system) were removed so that the system could be freely distributed.

Access to the source code included here will provide invaluable information on the design of a modern UNIX-like system, and the source code for the utilities and support libraries will greatly enhance any programmer's toolkit. The CD is a source distribution only and does not contain program binaries for any architecture. It will not be possible to compile or run this software without a pre-existing system that is already installed and running.

In addition to source code, the CD includes the manual pages, other documentation, and research papers from the University of California, Berkeley's, 4.4BSD-Lite distribution.