FreeBSD 5.5 review

FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium and Athlon), amd64 compatible (including Opteron, Athlo

License: BSD License File size: 523634K Developer: The FreeBSD Project

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FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium and Athlon), amd64 compatible (including Opteron, Athlon 64, and EM64T), IA-64, PC-98, Alpha/AXP and UltraSPARC architectures.

It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals. Additional platforms are in various stages of development.

FreeBSD offers advanced networking, performance, security and compatibility features today which are still missing in other operating systems, even some of the best commercial ones.

FreeBSD makes an ideal Internet or Intranet server. It provides robust network services under the heaviest loads and uses memory efficiently to maintain good response times for thousands of simultaneous user processes.

The quality of FreeBSD combined with today's low-cost, high-speed PC hardware makes FreeBSD a very economical alternative to commercial UNIX workstations. It is well-suited for a great number of both desktop and server applications.

FreeBSD can be installed from a variety of media including CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, floppy disk, magnetic tape, an MS-DOS partition, or if you have a network connection, you can install it directly over anonymous FTP or NFS.

While you might expect an operating system with these features to sell for a high price, FreeBSD is available free of charge and comes with full source code.

It is easy to contribute to FreeBSD. All you need to do is find a part of FreeBSD which you think could be improved and make those changes (carefully and cleanly) and submit that back to the Project by means of send-pr or a committer, if you know one. This could be anything from documentation to artwork to source code.

Even if you are not a programmer, there are other ways to contribute to FreeBSD. The FreeBSD Foundation is a non-profit organization for which direct contributions are fully tax deductible.

Here are some key features of "FreeBSD":
A merged virtual memory and filesystem buffer cache continuously tunes the amount of memory used for programs and the disk cache. As a result, programs receive both excellent memory management and high performance disk access, and the system administrator is freed from the task of tuning cache sizes.
Compatibility modules enable programs for other operating systems to run on FreeBSD, including programs for Linux, SCO UNIX, and System V Release 4.
Soft Updates allows improved filesystem performance without sacrificing safety and reliability. It analyzes meta-data filesystem operations to avoid having to perform all of those operations synchronously. Instead, it maintains internal state about pending meta-data operations and uses this information to cache meta-data, rewrite meta-data operations to combine subsequent operations on the same files, and reorder meta-data operations so that they may be processed more efficiently. Features such as background filesystem checking and file system snapshots are built on the consistency and performance foundations of soft updates.
File system snapshots, permitting administrators to take atomic file system snapshots for backup purposes using the free space in the file system, as well as facilitating background fsck, which allows the system to reach multiuser mode without waiting on file system cleanup operations following power outages.
Support for IP Security (IPsec) allows improved security in networks, and support for the next-generation Internet Protocol, IPv6. The FreeBSD IPSEC implementation includes support for a broad range of accelerated crypto hardware.
Out of the box support for IPv6 via the KAME IPv6 stack allows FreeBSD to be seamlessly integrated into next generation networking environments. FreeBSD even ships with many applications extended to support IPv6!
Multi-threaded SMP architecture capable of executing the kernel in parallel on multiple processors, and with kernel preemption, allowing high priority kernel tasks to preempt other kernel activity, reducing latency. This includes a multi-threaded network stack and a multi-threaded virtual memory subsystem. With FreeBSD 6.x, support for a fully parallel VFS allows the UFS file system to run on multiple processors simultaneously, permitting load sharing of CPU-intensive I/O optimization.
M:N application threading via pthreads permitting threads to execute on multiple CPUs in a scaleable manner, mapping many user threads onto a small number of Kernel Schedulable Entities. By adopting the Scheduler Activation model, the threading approach can be adapted to the specific requirements of a broad range of applications.
Netgraph pluggable network stack allows developers to dynamically and easily extend the network stack through clean layered network abstractions. Netgraph nodes can implement a broad range of new network services, including encapsulation, tunneling, encryption, and performance adaptation. As a result, rapid prototyping and production deployment of enhanced network services can be performed far more easily and with fewer bugs.
TrustedBSD MAC Framework extensible kernel security, which allows developers to customize the operating system security model for specific environments, from creating hardening policies to deploying mandatory labeled confidentiality of integrity policies. Sample seucrity policies include Multi-Level Security (MLS), and Biba Integrity Protection. Third party modules include SEBSD, a FLASK-based implementation of Type Enforcement.
GEOM pluggable storage layer, which permits new storage services to be quickly developed and cleanly integrated into the FreeBSD storage subsystem. GEOM provides a consistent and coherrent model for discovering and layering storage services, making it possible to layer services such as RAID and volume management easily.
FreeBSD's GEOM-Based Disk Encryption (GBDE), provides strong cryptographic protection using the GEOM Framework, and can protect file systems, swap devices, and other use of storage media.
Kernel Queues allow programs to respond more efficiently to a variety of asynchronous events including file and socket IO, improving application and system performance.
Accept Filters allow connection-intensive applications, such as web servers, to cleanly push part of their functionality into the operating system kernel, improving performance.