After a brief break from BSD, I had to return for more. This week I will be continuing the series with FreeBSD. FreeBSD is certainly one of the more popular BSDs. Many testimonials talk of extremely fast networking, combined with super uptimes. Internet power-houses such as Yahoo, Walnut Creek CDROM and even Microsoft's Hotmail swear by FreeBSD.

The title is really just a fancy way of saying that I am going to attempt to describe the whole VM enchilada, hopefully in a way that everyone can follow.

FreeBSD has several options for using software from other platforms, such as Wine for Win32 and dosemu for DOS. BSDI, NetBSD, and OpenBSD binaries will run unmodified, and source code from many UNIX or Linux programs can be compiled without modification on FreeBSD.

I've thought about the BSD License and GPL, and I've concluded that BSD is the most free intellectual license around. BSD allows anyone the freedom of doing whatever one wishes with BSD code. BSD allows reward through money from proprietary work or the zero cost to great software. I also like the GPL because I can get good stuff for free, but BSD also does the same.

For years, BSDers have been looking for ways to help their favorite OS penetrate the office and home marketplace. They have been ignored mainly because of the lack of an office suite with word processor and spreadsheet and presentation package. Given the ubiquitous popularity of a certain other OS and office productivity product, compatibility with the existing document base is also a big factor.

FreeBSD 3.4-RELEASE is available at ftp.FreeBSD.org and various FTP mirror sites throughout the world. It can also be ordered on CD from The FreeBSD Mall.

Just in under the wire for the current millenium, Jordan K. Hubbard is happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 3.4-RELEASE, the very latest in 3.x-STABLE branch technology.

Mike Smith is an engineer in the FreeBSD test labs. Emmett Plant and Paul Ferris interview Mike about the new and exciting developments in FreeBSD, as well as the differences between FreeBSD's license and the GPL used by Linux.

Applix, Incorporated, in partnership with Walnut Creek CDROM, have released Applixware Office Solutions in a native FreeBSD binary.

I like Unix, Linux, xBSD, and playing with operating systems to see what they can offer as servers or as desktops, and here's my opinon - my 2 cents worth about FreeBSD, OpenBSD and SuSE Linux 6.2.