Introduction

FreeBSD is my server operating system of choice. Profoundly stable, scalable, able to handle high load averages, with spectacular uptimes, it's also one of the easiest to use of the Unix-based and Linux-based operating systems.

A brief history

I won't go into the history of Unix; that's been done much better by people like Dennis Ritchie and (in printed form) by Kirk McKusick. FreeBSD got its start in 1993, when three people (including Jordan Hubbard, still one of the Guru Emeriti of the FreeBSD project) attempted to get what was then the only partially functional 386BSD operating system up and running. When the creator of 386BSD opted to pull what little support he was giving, the creators, in conjunction with Walnut Creek CDROM's support, created a new Unix from the 4.3BSD-Lite (Net/2) distribution from UC Berkeley, plus snippets from 386BSD and all the code they could snarf from the Free Software Foundation. This became FreeBSD 1.0, released in December 1993.

Unfortunately, FreeBSD, along with the other “freenix” offerings, was hampered considerably by troublesome legal issues between UC Berkeley and Novell (who had bought the Unix properties from AT&T). The result was that FreeBSD and other freenixes had to stop distributing versions of their products based on the Net/2 release, and instead wait for the 4.4BSD-Lite tapes—which, unfortunately, turned out to be pretty crippled after all the disputed code was removed. Nonetheless, within six months, the FreeBSD team had managed to create a solid, bootable version, and released it as 2.0 in December of 1994.

Since then, FreeBSD has enjoyed a fairly wide following. Its latest release is version 4.1.1, which includes the recently unencumbered RSA encryption-based utilities. Long-term development continues on version 5.0. Recently, Walnut Creek CDROM was acquired by BSDi, which (they say) will result in improved commercial support for FreeBSD as well as their commercial product BSD/OS.

Strengths

FreeBSD is a very solid implementation of a BSD-style Unix, which tend to be friendlier and more flexible than more strictly POSIX-compliant systems (including Linux). It is a solid compromise between speed, security, and hardware availability. Its “ports” system, by which third-party software is compiled and distributed, is functional and elegant. Most significantly, its core development team has taken great pains to commit to establishing and maintaining good relationships with the teams behind the other main players in this field, including OpenBSD (a more security-conscious Unix) and NetBSD (a group interested in porting BSD Unix to a very wide variety of hardware platforms), not to mention the main Linux players. In fact, FreeBSD includes a Linux emulation package, making it possible to run many Linux binaries without change—sometimes even faster than Linux does. Its stability and load capacity are stronger than some commercial Unix implementations, and it tends to handle high loads better than Linux. With cvsup, it makes it very easy to keep FreeBSD up to date. There's even a variant named PicoBSD, intended to run in one floppy disk on machines with as little as 8MB of RAM.

Weaknesses

FreeBSD only supports ports for the Intel (and compatible) 386-style processors, and the Compaq Alpha CPU. If you need a Unix to run on your handheld or old Atari TT030, you're better off going to NetBSD. It also tends to shelter you from the bleeding edge of technology a little better, which means that device drivers tend to be slow to show up (but is that such a bad thing?).

Recommendation

It's free. It's stable. It's even fun. And it's more mature and reliable than Linux. Check it out, and draw your own conclusions.