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FreeBSD is by far the best supported BSD system. Many people choice is FreeBSD VPS.
Read more why in this article taken from Michael Lucas' book.
What Is FreeBSD?
FreeBSD is a freely available Unix-like operating system, used widely by
Internet service providers, in appliances and embedded systems, and
anywhere that reliability on commodity hardware is paramount. One day
last week, FreeBSD miraculously appeared on the Internet, fully formed,
extruded directly from the mutant brain of its heroic creator.s lofty intellect.
Just kidding; the truth is far more impressive. FreeBSD is a result of almost
three decades of continuous development, research, and refinement. The
story of FreeBSD begins in 1979, with BSD.
The Birth of FreeBSD
One early result of BSD was 386BSD, a version of BSD designed to run on the
cheap 386 processor.1 The 386BSD project successfully ported BSD to Intel.s
386 processor, but it stalled. After a period of neglect, a group of 386BSD
users decided to branch out on their own and create FreeBSD so that they
could keep the operating system up to date. (Several other groups started
their own branches off of 386BSD around the same time, of which only
NetBSD remains.)
386BSD and FreeBSD 1 were derived from 1992.s BSD release, the
subject of AT&T.s wrath. As a result of the lawsuit, all users of the original
BSD were requested to base any further work on BSD 4.4-Lite2. BSD 4.4-Lite2
was not a complete operating system.in particular, those few files AT&T
had retained as proprietary were vital to the system.s function. (After all, if
those files hadn.t been vital, AT&T wouldn.t have bothered!) The FreeBSD
development team worked frantically to replace those missing files, and
FreeBSD 2.0 was released shortly afterward. Development has continued
ever since.
Today, FreeBSD is used across the Internet by some of the most vital
and visible Internet-oriented companies. Yahoo! runs almost entirely on
FreeBSD. IBM, Nokia, Juniper, NetApp, and many other hardware companies
use FreeBSD in embedded systems where you.d never even know it
unless someone told you. The fact is, if a company needs to pump serious
Internet bandwidth, it.s probably running FreeBSD or one of its BSD relatives.
Like smog, spiders, and corn syrup, FreeBSD is all around you; you simply
don.t see it because FreeBSD just works. The key to FreeBSD.s reliability is
the development team and user community.which are really the same thing.
FreeBSD.s Strengths
After all this, what makes FreeBSD unique?
Portability
The FreeBSD Project.s goal is to provide a freely redistributable, stable, and
secure operating system that runs on the computer hardware that people are
most likely to have access to. Today this means Intel x86-compatible systems
such as the 486, the various Pentiums, AMD, and so on, as well as AMD.s
amd64 architecture (copied by Intel as EM64T). Older x86 systems no
longer work out of the box with newer versions of FreeBSD, but most of
those systems are either long dysfunctional or aren.t about to change
operating systems any time soon.
The ARM platform used in embedded devices is a new addition to
FreeBSD and is well supported on specific embedded boards. FreeBSD also
supports Sun.s SPARC systems and Intel.s Itanium (IA64), as well as the
PowerPC processor recently used by Apple. While these other platforms
are not afterthoughts, they don.t receive the same level of attention that
x86 and amd64 do.
Power
Since FreeBSD runs adequately on 386 hardware, it runs extremely well on
modern computers. It.s rather nice to have an operating system that doesn.t
demand a Pentium III and half a gig of RAM just to run the user interface. As
a result, you can actually dedicate your hardware to accomplishing real work
rather than tasks you don.t care about. If you choose to run a pretty graphical
interface with all sorts of spinning geegaws and fancy whistles, FreeBSD will
support you; it just won.t penalize you if you don.t want that. FreeBSD will
also support you on the latest n-CPU hardware.
Simplified Software Management
FreeBSD also simplifies software management through the Ports Collection.
Traditionally, running software on a Unix-like system required a great deal
of expertise. The Ports Collection simplifies this considerably by automating
and documenting the install, uninstall, and configuration processes for
thousands of software packages.
Optimized Upgrade Process
Unlike operating systems that require painful and risky upgrade procedures,
FreeBSD.s simple upgrade process builds an operating system optimized for
your hardware and applications. This lets FreeBSD use every feature supported
by your hardware, instead of just the lowest common denominator. If you
change hardware, you can rebuild your operating system to best handle that
particular hardware. Vendors such as Sun and Apple do exactly this, but they
control both the hardware and the software; FreeBSD pulls off the same trick
on commodity hardware.
Advanced Filesystem
A filesystem is how information is stored on the physical disk.it is what maps
the file My Resume to a series of zeroes and ones on a hard drive. FreeBSD
supports very sophisticated filesystems and can support files up to a petabyte
(one thousand thousand gigabytes). Its default filesystem is highly damage
resistant and reads and writes files extremely quickly. The BSD filesystem is
advanced enough that many commercial Unix vendors have used it as a basis
for their own filesystems.
Who Should Use FreeBSD?
While FreeBSD can be used as a powerful desktop or development machine,
its history shows a strong bias towards web, mail, file, and support services.
FreeBSD is most famous for its strengths as an Internet server, and it is an
excellent choice as an underlying platform for any network service. If major
firms such as Yahoo! count on FreeBSD to provide reliable service, it will
work as well for you.
If you.re thinking of running FreeBSD (or any Unix) on your desktop,
you.ll need to understand how your computer works. FreeBSD is not your
best choice if you need point-and-click simplicity. If that.s your goal, get a
Mac so you can use the power of Unix when you need it and not worry about
it the rest of the time. If you want to learn FreeBSD, though, running it on
your desktop is the best way.as we.ll discuss later.
Who Should Run Another BSD?
NetBSD and OpenBSD are FreeBSD.s closest competitors. Unlike competitors
in the commercial world, this competition is mostly friendly. FreeBSD,
NetBSD, and OpenBSD freely share code and developers; some people
even maintain the same subsystems in multiple operating systems.
If you want to use old or oddball hardware, NetBSD is a good choice for
you. For several years I ran NetBSD on an ancient SGI workstation that I used
as a Domain Name System (DNS) and fileserver. It did the job well until the
hardware finally released a cloud of smoke and stopped working.
OpenBSD has implemented an impressive variety of security features.
Many of the tools are eventually integrated into FreeBSD, but that takes
months or years. If you have real security concerns but don.t need sophisticated
multiprocessor support, you might look at OpenBSD.
If you.re just experimenting to see what.s out there, any BSD is good!
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