Welcome
Welcome my FreeBSD News blog. This website tracks news around the development FreeBSD and the following FreeBSD based operating systems:
PC-BSD - DesktopBSD - FreeNAS - Frenzy - pfSense - m0n0wall - DSBSD - FreeSBIE - RoFreeSBIE - TrueBSD - askoziaPBX;
Great systems and proud members of the FreeBSD Family.
You may wonder, why is this blog called “FreeBSD - the unknow Giant“? Good question. To be honest, this is not a title that i’ve come up with, but it’s what IBM has said about FreeBSD:
The FreeBSD operating system is the unknown giant among free operating systems. Starting out from the 386BSD project, it is an extremely fast UNIX®-like operating system mostly for the Intel® chip and its clones. In many ways, FreeBSD has always been the operating system that GNU/Linux®-based operating systems should have been. It runs on out-of-date Intel machines and 64-bit AMD chips, and it serves terabytes of files a day on some of the largest file servers on earth.
About this website
I figured that if you’ve been reading my blog you may also want to know a little more about me, what I’m doing and what I’m interested in.
This blog provides news, howtos and reviews relating to the FreeBSD operating system and systems based on it, with the view of generating more interest in FreeBSD and showing it’s a valid and perfect alternative to Linux. FreeBSD is even better than Linux ;-)
If you’ve come to this page you’re probably, like me, interested in BSD/UNIX systems in general and maybe FreeBSD in particular, or you want to learn more about FreeBSD or just want to stay up-to-date with the latest news and developments.
Anyway, I am very fond of FreeBSD as (server) operating system, but that said, I’m not anti-Microsoft, anti-Windows, anti-Apple, anti-Linux, etc. I even think that every OS has got some good points and features that makes it ‘better’ or stand apart from others. A common attitude found in the BSD community is that we should borrow these ideas and implement them into BSD operating sytems.
With this blog I’d like to raise more awareness of, and generate more interest in FreeBSD as a viable and perfect alternative to Linux. Or is it even superior…? Well, that depends. I’ll be sharing news and things I’ve learned relating to FreeBSD, releasing notes and howtos, pointing to some useful websites etc etc. Basically, spreading the word.
You’re very welcome to leave your comments and to post feedback.
Well, so far about the website. Now a little bit about me.
About me
Gerard van Essen - maintainer of this website
My name is Gerard van Essen, I’m born and bred in Holland and currently living in the UK with my (English) wife and 2 children (at the time of writing, 4 year old girl and a 1 year old boy). I am employed by a large UK mortgage lender and I’m also a independent associate for Tiscali, one of Europe’s largest communication companies (broadband, telephone, TV, VoIP, line rental). If you live in the UK and you’d like to benefit from our market-shaking prices, have a look on my website, gotiscali.com, or drop me an email.
My first contact with open source software was in the late-nineties when I tried Redhat (6.0) and FreeBSD (4.0) for about 2 months. Neither om them liked my computer or, maybe more like it, I didn’t have enough patience and persistence to overcome some problems/chalenges. Anyway, the hard disk got formatted and Windows 2000 put back on. I didn’t touch any open source operating systems until 2004 when I tried out Kanotix (Linux). I liked it - it was fast and all my hardware was recognised out of the proverbial box.
In July 2005 I read an interview with Kris Moore, the founder of PC-BSD, on OSNews.com. This got me interested again in FreeBSD and and I downloaded PC-BSD 0.7.8 and have used PC-BSD ever since. Currently I am part of the PC-BSD Core Team, managing Documentation and FAQs, helping out on the PC-BSD Forums and occasionally creating PBIs.
Apart from computers, FreeBSD, web development, Web 2.0, I’m interested in mountain biking, hiking and playing chess.
Donations
If you wish to express your appreciation for the time and resources I have spent setting up and maintaining this website, please link to my site and/or make a donation. Any donation is appreciated and keeps me motivated! Thank you for your support! (Donations so far: £10.00)
Copyright
Links to external sites are not to be interpreted as endorsements of those organizations or individuals, and are included solely for information or reference purposes.
Text on this website is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Beware, however, that this refers only to parts which are obviously written by me and do not have any other information about licensing. Quoted text, pictures and other content created by others is copyrighted by the corresponding authors. If you are in doubt, ask before republishing any content.
I am in no way affiliated with the FreeBSD Project and I’m not being paid for promoting any of these operating systems. I’m a happy BSD user and like to promote this branch of operating systems and make more people aware of it.
Many thanks for visiting my blog. Hope you enjoy reading it, and please let me know if you know of any way to make this the best BSD website.
