Started using FreeBSD in mid 1996, I believe at the time it was FreeBSD 3.x - 4.x RELEASE. A friend of mine introduced me to it and I gave it a shot. Couple of installs later… I was loving it.
What I liked about it was the RC system. The simplified flat-file configuration files makes configuring the entire system a breeze. The entire system would be up and running in minutes.
Secondly was IPv6, as back then it was still experimental and I wanted to find an OS that had a solid IPv6 stack. Turns out FreeBSD had it at the time and it was rock solid.
Many moons later, I find myself using FreeBSD on different types of servers, mainly email servers, IRC servers and dedicated shell hosting servers. These servers lasted a few years without reboots and still performed like it was day 1. That puts a smile on my face :>
Fast forward to 2010 onwards I’ve shifted to using FreeBSD on the cloud, mainly on DigitalOcean and Vultr to run email and web servers for my clients.
The way it is upgraded now (FreeBSD 11.x-RELEASE) is so much easier, both package and src. You can upgrade a server and it can be up within minutes.
A big thanks goes out to all the contributers and the FreeBSD team to make this a long lasting rock solid OS that will continue to serve us for years to come.
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