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I was a fan of FreeBSD over NetBSD; far more driver compatibility in the 1990s. It was nice to play with. Way too hard to use for much (well, online) now, due to the shrinking number of software packages (eg browsers) these days. I still remember how good it used to feel installing NetBSD on (now long long dead) laptop in the early/mid-90s.

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I would have gone for FreeBSD myself but alas it didn’t run on the SPARC stuff I lifted out of the company skip :)

I think the thing with the BSDs in general was the fact I didn’t always even need any extra software packages on them. The base install was that useful.

Yeah, NetBSD definitely had Sparc compatibility. I wonder how many OpenSolaris and NetBSD machines on old Sparc hardware are still on the internet (like ones that aren't doing it just to say they are).

The base install _was_ useful. Can still do stuff like write, and those sorts of old packages still work, but browsers.... not so much.

The BSDs were so clean. With the exception of Slackware, Linux distros at the time (late 90s/early 2000s) tended to be bloated with everything installed and enabled by default for "ease of use" reasons. I was an OpenBSD guy, and the way they made loading things so cleanly and straightforward in /etc/rc.conf was a delight.

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