FreeBSD
FreeBSD is one of the most popular branches of the BSD project, and one of the oldest open-source branches. It emphasizes security through design and offers a featureful packaging toolchain.
Installation
Grab an image from the official repositories. You likely will want either the -memstick.img or the mini-memstick.img images. The former is larger, the latter requires an internet conection during installation.
dd the image onto your device, and the rest will explain itself.
Administration
Operating System Updates
Updates to the operating system are handled by freebsd-update(8).
Each minor and major version release will have it's own upgrade notes. The general process is:
# run current version updates freebsd-update fetch freebsd-update install # fetch new version updates freebsd-update upgrade -r MAJOR.MINOR-RELEASE freebsd-update install # reboot shutdown -r now
Software
See here for details on software and packages.
Services
FreeBSD uses BSD init for services. To enable SSH, edit /etc/rc.conf with:
sshd_enable="YES"
This enables the service. To start it immediately, run service sshd start.