FreeBSD
The Power to Serve
FreeBSD is an operating system derived from BSD, the version of UNIX developed at the University of California, Berkeley, and maintained by a large community. It focuses on features, speed, and stability, addressing the needs of servers, appliances, embedded platforms, and desktops that require advanced networking, performance, security, and compatibility.
Key features include OpenZFS integrated as filesystem and volume manager, ZFS boot environments, jails for isolation, the bhyve hypervisor, Linux binary compatibility, DTrace for tracing and debugging, Capsicum sandboxing, VNET network virtualization, and a ports collection of applications and libraries. It also provides extensive documentation, security advisories, errata notices, and a defined support model for releases and stable branches.
FreeBSD targets server, appliance, embedded, and desktop environments across amd64, aarch64, ARM, PowerPC, and MIPS platforms. It is available free of charge with source code, installable from media or over the network.
12 alternatives to FreeBSD
Ranked by how well each tool replaces FreeBSD: shared features, audience, price and popularity.
A free operating system built by a volunteer association of individuals, distributed as a
Covers 5 of 15 key features.
Free planOpen source67 out of 100 matchContact salesEnterprise open source operating system published by Canonical
Covers 3 of 15 key features.
Free planOpen source65 out of 100 matchContact sales- 62 out of 100 match—
Only two remote holes in the default install, in a heck of a long time
Covers 0 of 15 key features.
Free planOpen source62 out of 100 matchFreeA flexible, source-based Linux distribution
Covers 2 of 15 key features.
Free planOpen source61 out of 100 matchContact sales- 60 out of 100 matchContact sales
Nearly 90 free ready-to-use system images for virtual machines, the cloud and bare metal
Covers 8 of 15 key features.
Free planOpen source59 out of 100 matchFreeOpen source virtualization for systems that demand isolation and control.
Covers 8 of 15 key features.
Open source59 out of 100 match—Powerful open source virtualization for personal and enterprise use
Covers 5 of 15 key features.
Free planOpen source59 out of 100 matchContact sales- 59 out of 100 match$20/mo
GNU is the only operating system developed specifically to give its users freedom.
Covers 0 of 15 key features.
Open source59 out of 100 match—