Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Illumos VS FreeBSD

Compare Illumos VS FreeBSD and see what are their differences

Illumos logo Illumos

Illumos is a derivative of OS/Net (aka ON), which basically is a Solaris/ https://alternativeto.

FreeBSD logo FreeBSD

FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium® and Athlon™)...
  • Illumos Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-19
  • FreeBSD Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-29

Illumos videos

OpenIndiana 2021.04 overview | Community-driven illumos Distribution.

More videos:

  • Review - OmniOS distro review (Illumos distros part 2)
  • Review - Tribblix Distro Review (Illumos)

FreeBSD videos

FreeBSD 12 Review - Used as my daily OS

More videos:

  • Review - A Look and brief introduction to FreeBSD 12.1
  • Review - I tried FreeBSD! - here's what I think of it

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Illumos and FreeBSD)
Linux
22 22%
78% 78
Operating Systems
19 19%
81% 81
Linux Distribution
20 20%
80% 80
Open Source
50 50%
50% 50

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Illumos and FreeBSD

Illumos Reviews

We have no reviews of Illumos yet.
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FreeBSD Reviews

Best free Linux router and firewall distributions of 2023
OpenBSD and FreeBSD are actively developed and are very capable, but these systems require a high level of understanding of operating system internals and low-level networking to be used as routers.
Source: teklager.se
Avoid The Hack: 11 Best Privacy Friendly Operating Systems (Desktops)
With "Linuxulator," FreeBSD has compatibility with Linux binaries. Linuxulator can run unmodified Linux binaries without using virtual machines or emulation. Additionally, FreeBSD has tens of thousands ported libraries and applications.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, FreeBSD should be more popular than Illumos. It has been mentiond 21 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Illumos mentions (10)

  • Can SGI’s Enthusiast Community Bring IRIX Back to Life?
    People are still actively working on Illumos. The last change was yesterday morning. * https://illumos.org People are still actively working on MirBSD. There's a CVS commit account that can be followed on the FediVerse. * http://www.mirbsd.org It's DragonFly BSD, not Dragon BSD, and the irony of that is that you missed FreeBSD, which is of course still going. * https://dragonflybsd.org * https://freebsd.org As... - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Linux distributions' relative popularity over time (by Distrowatch hits)
    Its successor is still out there: Illumos. Though it seems to be mainly focused on backwards compatibility for existing custom applications as it still enforces things like an 8 character username limit. Source: about 1 year ago
  • There are literally no reasons to choose an iPhone over an Android smartphone
    By contrast, if you replaced the usage share of Windows with that FreeBSD you and that of macOS with, say, illumos, I would care not one bit, because this wouldn't threaten my rights. FreeBSD respects user freedom, and so does illumos. Source: over 1 year ago
  • OSes with native/root ZFS besides FreeBSD and Proxmox?
    All the Solaris family like illumos and openindiana. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Solaris 11.4 free for non-production personal use
    Why? There is already an active open source fork of Solaris with better licensing terms than what Oracle offers - Illumos / OmniOS - https://illumos.org/ . - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
View more

FreeBSD mentions (21)

  • I've never used FreeBSD and have some questions
    Aside from being UNIX based, what similarities does it share with Linux? Both have monolithic kernels. Source based build systems are offered (ports, which are like the portage system on Gentoo) as well as binary build systems (pkg, which is like apt, yum, pacman, etc.) Both offer a lot of free software, though more licenses are compatible with FreeBSD like CDDL, which is not compatible Linux. Both let you... Source: 6 months ago
  • FreeBSD turns 30 today!
    There's no mention of a birthday on their site, and its footer says 1995-2023. That must be just the site, because Wikipedia tells me FreeBSD's initial release was indeed, but not quite, 30 years ago, November 1st 1993. Still no birthday. Source: 11 months ago
  • Computer
    I'm not the right person to ask this -- I just run it on whatever I happen to have. But I think sleep and wifi (for example) have issues with different hardware, so you'd have to do your homework. The FreeBSD handbook on freebsd.org is always very helpful to me. You can try it out with a live cd / thumbdrive to see how much supported hardware you've got. My Lenovo X1 from a couple years ago works for what I... Source: 12 months ago
  • Can SGI’s Enthusiast Community Bring IRIX Back to Life?
    People are still actively working on Illumos. The last change was yesterday morning. * https://illumos.org People are still actively working on MirBSD. There's a CVS commit account that can be followed on the FediVerse. * http://www.mirbsd.org It's DragonFly BSD, not Dragon BSD, and the irony of that is that you missed FreeBSD, which is of course still going. * https://dragonflybsd.org * https://freebsd.org As... - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • X220 and beer. A lovely combo, especially with FreeBSD.
    A open source free and stable Unix-like operating system. Read more at http://freebsd.org. Source: 12 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Illumos and FreeBSD, you can also consider the following products

GNU/Linux - Friendly Linux Forum

Arch Linux - You've reached the website for Arch Linux, a lightweight and flexible Linux® distribution that tries to Keep It Simple. Currently we have official packages optimized for the x86-64 architecture.

Haiku - Haiku is an open source OS catered specifically to the needs of personal computing.

Ubuntu - Ubuntu is a Debian Linux-based open source operating system for desktop computers.

Linux Mint - Linux Mint is one of the most popular desktop Linux distributions and used by millions of people.

Slackware - Slackware Linux is an advanced Linux operating system, designed with the twin goals of ease of use...