text: what are the similarities and differences between solaris and freebsd operating systems? if i gain some knowledge on freebsd how far would it go to help me get the basic idea of solaris? i agree with the previous answer, but keep in mind that solaris kept all of the  bsd'isms that didn't strictly conflict with sysv.  also, bsd unix is currently getting a port of dtrace, so it will have yet another thing in common with solaris.