FreeBSD is a well-known server platform and a free and open-source Unix-like operating system derived from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). FreeBSD is an OS designed to power contemporary servers, PCs, and embedded systems.

BSD is an abbreviation for "Berkeley Software Distribution". It is the moniker given to source code releases from the University of California, Berkeley that were initially enhancements to AT&T's Research UNIX® operating system. Multiple open-source operating system projects are based on the 4.4BSD-Lite edition of this source code. In addition, they include a variety of packages from other Open Source projects, the GNU project in particular.