It is expected. The PS3 also used a modified FreeBSD. For us, it doens't mean much. For Sony, it means that they didn't have to write an OS from the scratch and were able to use fully functional network drivers, Wifi support, USB storage support, filesystem support, etc, for free.

Yep, this is definetelly all about licensing. FreeBSD is my prefered OS, I really love it's simplicity and the ports system is awesome (nothing to do with Playstation, just for the record). 

Because of the amount of time, money and testing required to get a solid operating system.

If thet tried to develop their own it would have security holes all over the place, its much better to modify an existing OS which has the solid foundations already in place, and much cheaper as well.

From what I've heard the Vita OS is fantastic.

Well, nobody is wrong but only for very special needs, so yeah, mostly true. And it's a lot of work to do this, so economically not worth it.

No, the core is not the same. Not even close. The kernels are totally different implemented. Yes, they share applications but they are not the same. You won't be able to use a kde for linux on bsd, easy as that. They *look* the same but they aren't :)

The systems also differ a lot in the userland but users won't see it.

Yes, its true and the PS4 interface on this FreeBSD OS going to be even better. I think Sony is foucsing better this time with OS rather than sticking to simple.

The XMB was also based on freebsd but it was simple *and* had big memory footprint so it has to get better.

An OS is a monumental task to develop, OSX is based off of BSD as well.  A lot of computer apliances will use linux or a BSD varient, but there are some comercial systems that are still around like QNX.  What almost all of them have in common is a general unix like foundation (and POSIX compliance).  So things like Direct X are irrelivant to everything except a windows device (the others use OpenGL which is what the hardware speaks anyway).

As  to the rest of the thread...

The interesting bit is that BSD has  very poor driver support from AMD.  BSD generally performs slower than linux on most tasks (except networking where it can be as good or better for serving up lots of web materials).

All of these non windows systems have very low overhead compared to a windows mahine. They need less ram, hard drive room, and fewer clock cycles for the OS.  A full fledged OS with all apps (ful office suites, etc..) in a recent version of Ubuntu for instance is 4-18 GB and comfortably runs in a gig of ram for most uses while multitasking.  Windows 7 is about 7 GB before you install a single application for comparison.  Windows 8 is 10-13 GB and needs 2 GB of ram.  A minimal linux/BSD/QNX install, like what console/appliance makers use is very small, Puppy linux runs in 165 MB of disk space and 128 MB of ram.  A minimal Ubuntu linux install like the steam box is using will likely end up needing  200-500 MB of drive space.

For the record, Android is Linux based, IOS is BSD based, Blackberry is QNX, etc..

I don't know what kernel the PS3 is based on.  I am damn curious what the WiiU's is based on, given the size of Nintendo (employees 5k) I doubt they have built completely from scratch.

What does a FreeBSD kernel mean for PS4? Decent system security, low overhead, minimal system resources for the OS. If AMD have made decent drivers for it, it should work well.

For the technically challenged this is a good solid, secure OS that will be a beast on PS4. I am wondering what POS microsoft are running theirs on