FreeBSD 4.0 by Walnut Creek

Description

Reputed to be one of the most stable operating systems around and based on the highly refined Berkeley 4.4 BSD Unix kernel, FreeBSD is a worthy choice for computers that must have maximum reliability and robustness. Many of the Web's most heavily trafficked sites have FreeBSD on the back end. But FreeBSD is more than an ideal operating system for local area network (LAN) and Internet servers. This is the latest in a series of FreeBSD upgrades that have made this variety of Unix extremely competitive with Linux in the desktop workstation market. FreeBSD makes a very good desktop operating system if you're familiar with the Unix way of doing things.

For a power user's product, FreeBSD installs remarkably easily on practically any IBM-compatible personal computer; the distributor claims it will even install and run on a 386SX. We had no trouble installing the operating system on a homemade Pentium II clone, and chose a workstation configuration from a menu of predefined setup schemes. Aside from the graphical workstation setup, the menu included options for network servers, software-development workstations, and a variety of other machine roles. (We later chose to configure the K Desktop Environment–KDE–on top of the X server.) The only problem we had was in getting FreeBSD to recognize the mouse, but this was resolved after a little experimentation. Installation is far from simple, but it's not nearly as bad as you may have heard.

This package ships with a slew of goodies in addition to the kernel itself. On the four CD-ROM discs, you'll find support for lots of hardware (including RAID arrays, ISDN devices, and many network and video cards), all the standard network services, and more than 2,500 software packages.

In addition to its numerous technical attractions, FreeBSD may be used free of charge by a business or individual. Buy this disk and use it to install FreeBSD on your whole fleet of machines–you'll still be in compliance with the license. Though it's not as user-friendly as Microsoft Windows or even the top-selling Linux distributions (Red Hat Linux and Caldera OpenLinux do more handholding), FreeBSD makes up for its sometimes terse demeanor with near-absolute reliability and a community of experts on the Internet. Set up FreeBSD, put it to work, and don't expect it to cause any trouble. —David Wall

Platforms

Windows NT, Mac, Linux, Unix, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows 95