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NetBSD - situation does not seem that good. Project feels less active now.

OpenBSD - has a fanatical band of security obsessed users. Not going away anytime soon.

FreeBSD - It chugs along. Why is FreeBSD worth trying out ? See my reply above.

NetBSD has their new npf firewall which is quite nice. Of all the options their internal architecture is the cleanest. It gets less fanfare than the others because it has less drivers, although even that is partially due to a commitment against binary blobs.

FreeBSD is more practical but for example you find the config files scattered about the file system whereas in NetBSD they’re always exactly where I expect. SDF.org has a great NetBSD system if anyone wants to try it out.

Love OpenBSD, it is my main work and personal OS. Doesn't rank the best in performance, but certainly good enough for my uses (and many others, I'd guess).

The thing I like is that almost everything I've invested in learning about it over the past 15 years still applies. Stuff that does change, or is added, tends to be done in a way that is sensible and consistent with established patterns and practices. Linux, not so much.

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