1.1 Goals and Features

Designed with the desktop computer user in mind, PC-BSD® provides the following features:

• Easy installation: to install PC-BSD®, simply insert the installation media, reboot the system to start the installer, and answer a few questions in the graphical menus.
• Automatically configured hardware: video, sound, network and other devices are automatically configured for you.
• Intuitive desktop interface: PC-BSD® comes with a choice of desktop environments to support your day-to-day computing needs.
• Easy software management: with AppCafe®, installing, upgrading, and uninstalling software is safe and easy.
• Lots of software available: in addition to its own software, PC-BSD® can install software that has been ported to FreeBSD (currently nearly 24,000 applications).
• Binary compatibility: for software that has not been specifically ported to FreeBSD. PC-BSD® can run almost any GNU/Linux application using Linux binary compatability. It is also able to run many Windows applications using Wine.
• Easy to update: PC-BSD® provides a built-in Update Manager that will notify you of available updates and allow you to apply operating system security fixes, bug fixes, system enhancements as well as upgrade to newer versions of the operating system or installed software.
• Virus-free: PC-BSD® is not affected by viruses, spyware and other malware.
• No defragmentation: PC-BSD® hard drives do not need to be defragmented and do not slow down over time. PC-BSD® also supports - - ZFS which is a self-healing filesystem.
• Architecture support: PC-BSD® is available for 32-bit and 64-bit systems.
• Laptop support: provides power saving and swap space encryption and automatically switches between wired and wifi network connections.
• Secure environment: PC-BSD® provides a pre-configured PF firewall, brute-force attack protection with OSSEC, and a Host-based Intrusion - Detection System with Fail2ban.
• Easy system administration: PC-BSD® provides a Control Panel containing many graphical tools for performing system administration tasks.
• Localization: PC-BSD® supports a number of native languages and locales.
• Vibrant community: PC-BSD® has a friendly and helpful support community.
• Professional support: professional email and phone support is available from iXsystems.