Skip to main content
TrustRadius
FreeBSD

FreeBSD

Overview

What is FreeBSD?

FreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms. A large community has continually developed it for more than thirty years. Its advanced networking, security, and storage features have made FreeBSD the platform of choice…

Read more
Recent Reviews
Read all reviews
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is FreeBSD?

FreeBSD Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(5)

Reviews

(1-1 of 1)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
August 08, 2021

FreeBSD is an excellent and performant operating system that allowed me to run a development environment on older hardware

Verified User
Professional in Corporate
Research Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I have been using FreeBSD as a development environment on several machines for work and personal projects - mainly NodeJS and MongoDB based. I chose FreeBSD as my environment initially because of its speed on older hardware, it allowed me to make use of older laptops and machines that would have otherwise been thrown out. FreeBSD is a modern operating system under active development and to be able run that on older hardware and have it perform so well - is actually quite amazing. I first tried different distributions of Linux, but I had trouble getting them to install or they did not perform on older hardware well at all. From my use of FreeBSD I have come to really really like it, I appreciate it's robustness and performance and I also like that I am using a direct descendant of UNIX.
Pros and Cons
  • Performs really well, even on older hardware
  • Secure
  • Robust
  • Package manager (pkg) is excellent
  • Large collection of ported software from Linux
  • Documentation is excellent (FreeBSD Handbook)
  • Installation can be tricky for first timers
  • You need to be comfortable using a command line terminal most of the time
Likelihood to Recommend
FreeBSD is an excellent choice to continue using older hardware and have it perform, it is a great choice for a UNIX based development environment. Although I haven't used it as a server, it is most suited for this - it would make an excellent, secure and robust server for and I would love to start using it for this as well.
Most Important Features
  • Active development and strong community
  • Documentation
  • Security
  • Robustness
  • Performance
  • XFCE
  • Support for NodeJS and MongoDB
  • Package management
Return on Investment
  • As FreeBSD is free - the ROI is at least the cost of some commercial Linux or Windows based OS (which can be very expensive)
  • Allowed the re-use of older hardware that would have otherwise been disposed
  • No cost development environment
  • Opportunity for a no cost server setup also
Alternatives Considered
FreeBSD was the only operating system out of many I tried to install easily on older hardware and to run in a very performant way. For example, I had a lot of trouble trying to get Ubuntu to install on older hardware and when it did, it was too slow to use. FreeBSD installed quite easily and even after installing a desktop such as XFCE - it still run surprisingly fast. I was very impressed with it's performance, which it seems is a goal of the FreeBSD project.
Other Software Used
Return to navigation