Why Use FreeBSD?

There are probably as many reasons to use FreeBSD as there are people who use it. Perhaps the most obvious reason is that FreeBSD is free, in the truest sense of the word: not only does it cost nothing to download and install it, there are also no expensive licensing fees. You can install a single copy of FreeBSD on as many computers as you want without paying a dime. Unlike some commercial network operating systems, there are also no "per-connection" or "per-user" fees for using FreeBSD on a server.

Just because FreeBSD is free doesn't mean it's lacking the quality found in commercial operating systems. Here are some other very convincing reasons to consider using FreeBSD:

• It is extremely stable. FreeBSD servers have been known to run for more than three years without being rebooted.

• It's trusted by some of the largest companies and busiest sites in the world. Some of the companies and sites running FreeBSD have included Sony, Yahoo!, and The Apache Project.

• It's open source. The entire source tree for the operating system is available to you, the user. You can change it, perform security audits on it, develop new features, and contribute them back into the operating system.

• Thousands of free software packages are available. FreeBSD users can take advantage of the thousands of free programs available for UNIX for everything from playing chess to simulating the division of cells and bacteria growth, word processing, image editing, and serving up web pages.