FreeBSD: Reproducible Rootless Builds and Moving From Windows to This Linux Chaos Alternative
An Anonymous Coward writes:
https://hackaday.com/2025/11/11/moving-from-windows-to-freebsd-as-the-linux-chaos-alternative/
Back in the innocent days of Windows 98 SE, I nearly switched to Linux on account of how satisfied I was with my Windows experience. This started with the Year of the Linux Desktop in 1999 that started with me purchasing a boxed copy of SuSE Linux and ended with me switching to Windows 2000. After this I continued tinkering with non-Windows OSes including QNX, BeOS, various BSDs, as well as Linux distributions that promised a 'Windows-like' desktop experience, such as Lindows.
Now that Windows 2000's proud legacy has seen itself reduced to a rusting wreck resting on cinderblocks on Microsoft's dying front lawn, the quiet discomfort that many Windows users have felt since Windows 7 was forcefully End-Of-Life-d has only increased. With it comes the uncomfortable notion that Windows as a viable desktop OS may be nearing its demise. Yet where to from here?
Although the recommendations from the peanut gallery seem to coalesce around Linux or Apple's MacOS (formerly OS X), there are a few dissenting voices extolling the virtues of FreeBSD over both. There are definitely compelling reasons to pick FreeBSD over Linux, in addition to it being effectively MacOS's cousin. Best of all is not having to deal with the Chaos Vortex that spawns whenever you dare to utter the question of 'which Linux distro?'. Within the world of FreeBSD there is just FreeBSD, which makes for a remarkably coherent experience.
[...] In case you're more into the 'just add water' level of a desktop OS installation process, the GhostBSD project provides the ready to go option for a zero fuss installation like you would see with Linux Mint, Manjaro Linux and kin. Although I have done the hard mode path previously with FreeBSD virtual machines, to save myself the time and bother I opted for the GhostBSD experience here.
[...] Since any open source software of note that runs on Linux tends to have a native FreeBSD build, the experience here is rather same-ish. Where things can get interesting is with things related to the GPU, especially gaming. These days that of course means getting Steam and ideally the GoG Galaxy client running, which cracks open a pretty big can of proprietary worms.
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