FreeBSD Part 1
RAID Recovery - FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free operating system designed for desktops, servers and embedded platforms. FreeBSD is derived from Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a UNIX derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by more than 200 developers and thousands of contributors across the world. FreeBSD is known for its advanced networking capabilities and impressive security as well as compatibility features. It is used by some of the popular Web sites and embedded networking and storage devices.
Unlike Linux distributions, FreeBSD is developed as a complete operating system. The kernel, device drivers and all userland utilities are held in the same source code tracking tree. In Linux distributions, these are developed separately and then packed together by others.
FreeBSD 8.0 is the current version under development. An important enhancement in this version would be the ability for jails to have more than one IP, superpages, Xen DomU support, network stack virtualization, stack-smashing protection, enhanced ZFS support and a new USB stack. FreeBSD 8.0 is scheduled to be released in the third quarter of 2009.
Important features
Support for embedded platforms
FreeBSD’s integrated build and cross-build environments make it an ideal operating system for a number of embedded platforms. Examples of supported architectures are Intel x86 family (including Pentium and Athlon) IBM PC compatible computers, AMD64 (including Opteron, Athlon, EM64T), PowerPC, ARM, DEC Alpha, Sun UltraSPARC, IA-64, NEC PC-9801 and Microsoft Xbox. The software is also being used in networking appliances including routers, time servers and wireless access points. Under Berkeley open source license, companies are allowed to customize the product and contribute back to the FreeBSD project. Developers are keen to include more architecture in the future.
