noun - primary one
FreeBSD is one of several Unix-
like operating systems stemming from the BSD4.4-lite release of the Berkeley Software Distributions.
FreeBSD is the most
popular of the BSDs and is focused largely on the ix86 platform.
FreeBSD currently has two main development branches; 4.9 and 5.2. The first is stable and ready for use in servers. The second is a development branch that will see better
SMP support.
The FreeBSD mascot is one that is shared by all BSDs, the beastie. Falsely called
Chuck or Charlie by some this daemon is a smiling fellow in large sneakers that has undergone relatively few alterations over the past two decades and has been used on hats, boxer shorts, shirts, jackets, stickers and has been used on a series of pewter and copper statues.
FreeBSD has spawned two prominent derived operating systems;
Darwin, the Unix-
like underpinings of
Mac OS X and DragonflyBSD, a contiuation of the 4.x codebase seeking to completely rewrite the
way the operating system uses multiple processors.
noun - primary two
The FreeBSD Project, the organisation that manages the development of the FreeBSD operating system.
