linuxmemes

OpenBSD works surprisingly well as a desktop, probably because the devs use it themselves. As long as you have supported hardware that is.

Dude we literally have that unix_surrealism comic there's at least some love for BSDs here

I have a sneaking suspicion that there is one person at least !unix_surrealism@lemmy.sdf.org

I see little reason to use any of the BSDs. Neither for desktops nor for servers. The only benefit I see is that you can take the BSD licensed code and use it to create a closed source product like the PlayStation without having to contribute anything back. I dislike that benefit with quite some intensity.

I ran FreeBSD on my home server for a while since the old TrueNAS versions use it. The supposed simplicity of BSD rings hollow to me as it is just another thing I'd have to learn. I also don't care much about the Unix philosophy or any other clerical reasons that distinguish the various BSDs. Computers and their OSes are a tool to me not a religion. Admittedly TrueNAS worked well for me, but reading up on the differences from Linux got old rather quickly. I migrated to the newer Debian Linux based TrueNAS Scale a couple of months ago because I feel more confident that if anything goes wrong I'd be able to fix it.

From my little experience with working on BSD Servers, BSD is very reliable and for my use cases fast enough. But the slower updates and lack of most Wi-Fi support and sometimes spotty hardware support combined with the need for porting a lot of Linux software that dose not natively run on BSD is a deal breaker for using BSD on my Main Desktop Computer.

TLDR: For me BSD is a powerful tool that has a very specific job that is not being a Desktop Computer.

BSD is dying and it is not a bad thing