BSDs taught me how to Unix in a way that I just wasn't able to manage with Linux before. This was during the early RedHat 5.x days and I just found so many pain points with the RPMs and odd file hierarchy inconsistencies for different packages. I tried to setup a firewall for my office network and struggled with iptables (or was it ipchains back then?) and found the documentation confusing.

I tried OpenBSD to setup a firewall system and fell in love. Everything just made more sense and felt more cohesive. PF rules syntax was just so much easier to work with and flexible. I loved the ports system and the emphasis on code correctness and security. The Man pages were a revelation! I could find everything I needed in the command line.

I tried all the BSDs, and each have their own strengths and weaknesses. FreeBSD had the most ports and seemed to also have good hardware support, NetBSD had the most platform support, DragonflyBSD was focused on parallel computing, etc. They all borrow and learn from each other.

BSDs are great and I heartily recommend people give them a whirl. This article in The Register is also worth a read:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/08/switching_from_linux_...