BSD has been a bit of a trip. It's a bit backwards, in that you're meant to install first, then check if everything works. Maybe this behaviour is just a convention, but most BSDs I've tried follow that pattern. With the exception of more recent projects, like NomadBSD, GhostBSD and FuryBSD.

So many things are exactly as I would expect as a Linux and MacOS user, but so many things are different. No judgement there either, it's not terrible or difficult, it just requires more research on my part.

For instance, when I booted up NomadBSD on a little thumb drive attached to my ThinkPad, the wireless wouldn't resolve. I could probe the hardware, so I just needed to set it up and authenticate on my network using wpa_suplicant. But FreeBSD doesn't use systemd, so that's another rabbit whole I needed to jump down.

I'll continue to plug away at it, perhaps not as publicly until I get a system I'm happy using. It's fun but like most things, it's taking longer than I expected.