So I've been a linux user since June 2008. My first distro was Ubuntu.
I've tried OpenSuSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Linux Mint, Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux and Arch Linux, and I was thinking about giving BSD a try.
Which BSD variant should I choose?
So I've been a linux user since June 2008. My first distro was Ubuntu.
I've tried OpenSuSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Linux Mint, Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux and Arch Linux, and I was thinking about giving BSD a try.
Which BSD variant should I choose?
If you are coming from Linux, you might give TrueOS a try.
It is FreeBSD but with a focus on desktop polish and ease-of-use. FreeBSD has historically been a server OS.
Linux and BSD are pretty similar in that they share the bulk of the software that would run on either one of them. To a casual desktop user, the BSD desktop will not seem that different.
Big differences are (in my opinion of course):
Userland (Linux uses GNU while BSD uses BSD)
Integration (Linux is a collection of different efforts, BSD is much more unified at the core)
Packaging (Linux typically manages installed software in binary packages - BSD typically manages a "ports" tree that you use to build software from sources)
Personally, I find OpenBSD a great BSD to start with. It's simple, installs no external packages by default, and has excellent documentation. Man pages are a good thing. The installer is fast and incredibly easy to use (no, it's not a gui). And once you have the base system up and running, the online FAQ has answers to pretty much any question you could imagine, and it's not a wiki, the FAQ is written and maintained by the developers, and is up to date. Installing packages is just as easy as on other modern unix like systems, and though they lag behind the latest/greatest they are fully functional. I've been using it as my only desktop OS for years, and I find it's a great first unix like OS.
If you used and understood Arch linux, you will have zero trouble with NetBSD, except for the ps
command line flags. All the /etc files are the same, the /etc/rc.d files are similar.
FreeBSD because it's the most user friendly. OpenBSD focuses too much on security to be truly useful to the average user. NetBSD's goal is to run on anything, but that doesn't make it user friendly. I can't speak anything about any of them really... But FreeBSD just sounds like a good, popular choice.
The most mature one, though far from free is Mac OS X.
The low-level part is distributed for free as Darwin.