In early 1978, Professor Richard Fateman's search for a machine with larger address space was complete with the coming of VAX-11/780. Faterman and other faculty members mutually proposed that they will purchase a VAX with collective funds from some departments. Fateman, soon after the advent of the VAX, got a copy of the 32/V port of UNIX to the VAX. A VAX computer was installed at Berkeley in 1978. Though 32/V provided a Version 7 Unix settings on the VAX but it did not take the benefit of the effective memory of the VAX hardware. Basically, the kernal of 32V was modified and rewritten by the students of Berkeley. 3BSD was also recognized as VMUNIX and VAX/UNIX. In October 1980, 4BSD was released by CHRG. This was the improved version of 3BSD.  

4.1BSD: 4.1BDS was an answer for the criticism of BSD's performance compared to the dominant VAX operating system, VMS. It was deliberately launched to give competition to VMS.  

4.2BSD: 4.2BSD was officially released in August 1983. Before it was officially released, three intermediate versions were released. It was recognized as the first version released after the departure of Bill Joy.

4.3BSD: In June 1986, 4.3BSD was released. The main changes included in this version were to improve the performance of the earlier version of BSD (4.2BSD).

4.3BSD-Reno: This version came in early 1990's. It was a provisional release during the initial development stage of 4.4BSD. Its use was a complete gamble and that's why its name was after the gambling center of Reno, Nevada.

4.4BSD: This was released in two forms in June 1994, 4.4BSD-Lite and 4.4BSD-Encumbered.