FreeBSD

From MILOL Wiki

FreeBSD is a Unix-like free operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) branch through the 386BSD and 4.4BSD operating systems. It runs on Intel x86 family (IA-32) IBM PC compatible computers, Sun UltraSPARC, IA-64, AMD64, PowerPC, ARM and NEC PC-9801 architectures along with Microsoft's Xbox. Support for other architectures is in varying stages of development. The DEC Alpha architecture was previously supported between releases 4.0 and 7.0, with the code being removed for FreeBSD 7.0. FreeBSD currently has more than 200 active developers and thousands of contributors.

FreeBSD has been characterized as "the unknown giant among free operating systems." It is not a clone of UNIX, but works like UNIX, with UNIX-compliant internals and system APIs. FreeBSD is generally regarded as reliable and robust.

FreeBSD is developed as a complete operating system. The kernel, device drivers and all of the userland utilities, such as the shell, are held in the same source code revision tracking tree, whereas with Linux distributions, the kernel, userland utilities and applications are developed separately, then packaged together in various ways by others.

• Pros: Fast and stable; availability of over 15,000 software applications (or "ports") for installation; very good documentation

• Cons: Tends to lag behind Linux in terms of support for exotic hardware, limited availability of commercial applications; lacks graphical configuration tools

• Software package management: A complete command-line package management infrastructure using either binary packages or source-based "ports" (TBZ)

• Available editions: Installation CDs for Alpha, AMD64, i386, IA64, PC98 and SPARC64 processors

• Suggested FreeBSD-based alternatives: PC-BSD (desktop), DesktopBSD (desktop), FreeSBIE (live CD)

• Other BSD alternatives: OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, MidnightBSD