Around 3 weeks ago when of writing this, I watched a youtube video which made me interested in the *BSD family of operating systems. A week later (because of school work), after not very thorough research, I downloaded the FreeBSD iso and installed it on my main PC.
It just works!!1!
Contrary to many Linux distributions, it offers an easy to use yet thorough installer that leaves the user with a very minimal yet somehow pleasurable to use system. With Linux, in my experience, most distros install either way more stuff than I’d ever use or so little they feel tedious to use and configure. It’s also a complete operating system. Linux really is just a kernel. All the tools the user actually uses usually come from gnu or busybox whereas FreeBSD is a complete operating system that is maintained by mostly the same developers.
Things I like
The lack of GNU. (look at the ‘why don’t you like gnu?’ section)
Built in security tools like jails and native firewall
The FreeBSD documentation is really extensive and well written which allowed me to get everything I needed to work without any major issues.
What doesn’t work
Gaming (kinda). Although emulators like RPCS3 and Prism Launcher work as well as on Linux or windows, Steam is a different story. There is a linux compatibility layer but I couldn’t get it to work. It still can be used via wine but with a noticeably worse performance.
Will I stick with it?
Yes. At least for now. It’s a really fascinating OS and I enjoy my time with it. I hope I’ll be able to continue using it without any major issues. If these arrive tho, I’ll switch back to Artix but still recommend FreeBSD for people with simple and common use cases.