UNIX Desktop Questions & Answers

Hello All!
I am a macintosh user and I am starting to get into using UNIX through Mac OS X which is installed on a partition all to itself. I am having alot of fun just looking through directories and learning about it on the internet, and i have come across BSD alot. I went to freebsd.org and it tells me where i can get it and what not, but here is my question to you all: What is it? compared to os x?, how do i install it, and can it run on a macintosh with a drive formated in mac os extended( i believe that is what it is, what ever comes standard Any help in this area would be much appreciated!
Thank You,
Jlage

BSD is just another variant of Unix, based on the "Berkeley Standard Distribution". FreeBSD has versions which will run on just about any hardware platform (including Apple, I believe). Go to www.freebsd.org to find out more info.

Unfourtunatly. FreeBSD does NOT run on a Macintosh, either G4. G3, PPC, or 68K. It will only run on a i386 (pentium) computer or Alpha. Rather similar to FreeBSD is NetBSD, that is designed to run on almost everycomputer imaginable. It DOES support ALL of the mac processors I talked about up there, goto http://www.netbsd.org They have a wonderful install guide

Also, if im not mistaken. the OS X kernel, Darwin is based on FreeBSD 3.3.6, but heavily modified, and compiled from source for the M<ac architechture