Comparison of user features of operating systems: Difference between revisions

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[[FreeBSD]] is a [[free and open-source]] [[Unix-like]] [[operating system]] descended from the [[Berkeley Software Distribution]] (BSD), which was based on [[Research Unix]]. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular [[open-source software|open-source]] BSD operating system, accounting for more than three-quarters of all installed [[BSD licenses|simply, permissively licensed]] BSD systems.

FreeBSD has similarities with [[Linux]], with two major differences in scope and licensing. First, FreeBSD maintains a complete system, i.e. the project delivers a [[kernel (computeroperating sciencesystem)|kernel]], [[device driver]]s, [[Userland (computing)|userland]] utilities, and [[documentation]], as opposed to Linux only delivering a kernel and drivers, and relying on third-parties for system software. Second, FreeBSD [[source code]] is generally released under a [[permissive software license|permissive]] [[FreeBSD License|BSD license]], as opposed to the [[copyleft]] [[GPL]] used by Linux.

The FreeBSD project includes a [[computer security|security]] team overseeing all software shipped in the base distribution. A wide range of additional third-party [[application software|applications]] may be installed using the pkg [[package manager|package management system]] or [[FreeBSD Ports]], or by [[compiler|compiling]] source code.