Why I am starting to hate Linux.

[Bob Proulx]

Brian Sturgill wrote:
> What would be the best BSD distro to start with?

Best?  It's all a matter of opinion.  The three main BSD flavors today
are FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.  There are also a few varations and
forks of those too.

NetBSD is really the most original BSD like system.  NetBSD tries to
be the Universial Operating System and prides itself on running on
every small random bit of hardware that exists.  People have created
toasters running NetBSD.  I think I would choose NetBSD for embedded
projects.  Smart doorbells.  Routers.  Controllers.  It will run on
anything.  It also runs on servers and desktops too.  NetBSD is the
most pure of the BSDs.

OpenBSD tries to be the secure platform.  I applaud them for the
vision.  Yet as far as I can see they have the same security issues as
other distributions.  They may have deviated the most from the
original BSD.  It is also just a little bit different.  Different from
the classical BSD.  Different from the current BSDs.  And different
from other GNU/Linux distributions.  Of course we all use OpenSSL and
OpenSSH from there.  I see OpenBSD as targetting a more server
centered platform.  OpenBSD is probably the least popular of the
three.

FreeBSD is the most popular.  FreeBSD has the best desktop and laptop
driver support.  FreeBSD is the native reference platform for ZFS
development these days.  It is the best platform for using ZFS with a
large disk farm.  FreeBSD has a lot of features.  Because of this it
has been called the Linux of the BSD world.  I am sure that was not in
a positive way.  But popularity does mean a large community and a lot
of community support.  Therefore I think FreeBSD is a good one to use
for a desktop system.

FreeBSD is not the simplest desktop to set up.  But it has a great
base core.  Therefore it has become the base fork of several other
flavors of it.  Several others exist as friendly forks of it.

GhostBSD, MidnightBSD, NomadBSD are examples.  Ghost tries to be the
easier desktop distribution.  It's more than just FreeBSD with a
desktop flavor as they change some other things more deeply.  Perhaps
it is similar to the differences Mint has from Ubuntu/Debian.  Someone
who likes Mint instead of Ubuntu/Debian might be the target for Ghost.
MidnightBSD is another desktop focused flavor.  And then Nomad is
meant to be a persistent live boot USB system which I found intriguing.

Right at this moment FreeBSD 12.3-RELEASE is the most Stable release
of it.  FreeBSD 13.0 is also out as the new stable but historically
the .0 releases have suffered from being the first out with new
features and sometimes the most teething pains.  So a lot of people
wait until the .1 version releases before upgrading to it.  That's the
path recommended for new users.

I installed FreeBSD 12.3-RELEASE on my desktop and have been using it
daily for the last month.  I'll be upgrading to 13.1 soon as it is
releasing very soon now.

Bob