GhostBSD
So I'm delving down the BSD rabbit-hole and have no idea where to start. I did what any uninformed person would: I started by searching, “Best desktop BSD”.
Most of the articles I scanned were either relatively old or of pretty poor quality. How much smaller is the BSD community, I began to wonder. The Linux community feels vast in comparison.
I read about PC-BSD... which eventually renamed to TrueOS... which later split into two, TrueOS and Project Trident, the latter of which being the desktop project... only to find out that Project Trident recently rebased on Void Linux. So, all that for a dead end.
I'd nearly given up on the whole enterprise before I came across GhostBSD. The project bills itself as, “A simple, elegant desktop BSD Operating System.” GhostBSD uses Mate as the default desktop environment and is based on TrueOS. Exactly what I was looking for, something purpose built for the desktop and presents itself simply. The release notes for each major release even come with an example dd command attached.
This project feels like a winner to me. Time to experiment!
As an aside, I'm honestly surprised by my first pass at the BSD world. My experience in Linux has made me overconfident. I've forgotten but this must be how new-to-Linux users feel when they first switch from whatever platform they started on. Was it this confusing when I started on Slackware all those years ago? Probably, but I was too excited to think on it for long.
Clearly, I need to summon more of this beginner energy.