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FreeBSD

The FreeBSD is a Unix-based OS or operating system that serves as the offspring of AT&T UNIX through the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) UNIX. For legal reasons, FreeBSD cannot be referred to as "UNIX"; nevertheless, its entire existence is derived from the UNIX platform and it is BSD UNIX's direct descendant to boot. In fact, many of the original developers who worked on BSD UNIX also ended up developing FreeBSD, which makes the existence of its UNIX-like features less of a coincidence and more of a natural, par-for-the-course consequence. Back in 1993, a speedily evolving and unofficial patchkit upheld by users of the 386BSD OS eventually led to the development of the open-source BSD OS we now know as FreeBSD. The patchkit split from the aforementioned OS and turned into an operating system of its own.

FreeBSD's system APIs and internals are all compatible with UNIX, and because of its accommodating licensing terms, the majority of FreeBSD's code base has become quite a crucial part of other OS platforms' makeup. In particular, Mac OS X owes its existence to FreeBSD. This FreeBSD derivative is certified as UNIX-compliant as well thanks to its origins. Ergo, it eventually and officially received UNIX branding as well. Save for the Apple-branded propriety OS, FreeBSD is believed to be the most popular and ubiquitous BSD-based OS when it comes to the number of computers it's installed in; besides which, it's also been confirmed as the most extensively used free-licensed BSD distribution that's open sourced.

FreeBSD even accounts for more than seventy-five percent of all installed freeware operating systems and open-source BSD offshoots. As for the operating system itself, FreeBSD is as complete a system as you can get regardless if it's proprietary or freeware. FreeBSD is composed of all the standard userland utilities (e.g., the shell), device drivers, and the kernel. They're all stored within the same source code revision tracking tree to boot (as opposed to Linux products, for which the applications, userland utilities, and the kernel are individually developed while isolated from each other before being packaged together in a multitude of ways by others). A number of software installation systems must be used in order to install third-party application software in FreeBSD. For example, the two most common installation systems include package installation and source installation, both of which utilize the FreeBSD Ports System in order to work.

For something that's free and high quality, FreeBSD remains an unknown operating system among the masses when compared to the omnipresent nature of, say, MS-DOS, Windows, or FreeBSD's originator, LINUX. It's the unknown OS giant among free operating systems to boot, because not only does it cost nothing to install, it's also robust and dependable as well. To be true, a NetCraft survey back in September 2010 had its most reliable web hosting company for that month running FreeBSD on its servers. What's more, the top three of five most reliable hosting companies for the same date were also using FreeBSD too.

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