FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a free and open source UNIX-like Operating System well-known for its coherent design, well-grown codebase and speed and is often used on high-load servers. Well known users are WhatsApp and Netflix.

Resources

FreeBSD on Wikipedia describes the History of the operating system and gives a good overview.

https://www.freebsd.org/ is the Homepage for FreeBSD, with well-wirtten documentation for almost any aspect of the system. Its Documentation for sure is one of the strong benefits of FreeBSD

Installation of software

pkg is the binary package manager of FreeBSD:

pkg install <pkgname>

If you prefer to compile the software yourself, e.g. if you need to enable build options:

portsnap fetch extract # only first time running portsnap
portsnap fetch update
cd /usr/ports/a/b
make config-recursive install clean

Update of software

pkg update
pkg upgrade

To update all source ports:

pkg install portmaster
portsnap fetch update
portmaster -a

System update

freebsd-update fetch
freebsd-update install

Change system configuration

The main system configuration file is /etc/rc.conf. FreeBSD comes with a tool that allows changing that file, showing non-default values and getting values:

sysrc <key>=<value>
sysrc -a # show only changed settings
sysrc <key>