Why would someone choose FreeBSD over Linux? What are the advantages of FreeBSD compared to Linux? (My shared hosting provider uses FreeBSD.)
Why would someone choose FreeBSD over Linux?
linux;freebsd;distribution choice
If you want to know what's different so you can use the system more efficiently, here is a commonly referenced introduction to BSD to people coming from a Linux background.If you want more of the historical context for this decision, I'll just take a guess as to why they chose FreeBSD. Around the time of the first dot-com bubble, FreeBSD 4 was extremely popular with ISPs. This may or may not have been related to the addition of kqueue. The Wikipedia page describes the feelings for FreeBSD 4 thusly: widely regarded as one of the most stable and high performance operating systems of the whole Unix lineage. FreeBSD in particular has added other features over time which would appeal to hosting providers, such as jail and ZFS support.Personally, I really like the BSD systems because they just feel like they fit together better than most Linux distros I've used. Also, the documentation provided directly in the various handbooks, etc. is outstanding. If you're going to be using FreeBSD, I highly recommend the FreeBSD Handbook.