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I run my web servers using FreeBSD on Digital Ocean. Not to get into a whole thing about it, but Linux just refers to the kernel; various groups package the kernel with user-land stuff to create distributions: Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, etc. FreeBSD is a unified operating system that’s developed, tested and released as a unit; they take responsibility for the entire stack and architectures: amd64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, sparc64, armv6, and aarch64. In general, FreeBSD (and to my knowledge, the other BSDs) are very stable, memory efficient, supports high throughput, and are quite secure. Famously I suppose, Netflix runs their entire infrastructure on FreeBSD and contributes back lots of code. The base of Apple’s macOS is a FreeBSD variant called Darwin. The narrative has been that FreeBSD is fabulous for servers and the like but not as good for desktops and laptops, due to it not having as broad driver support for the latest PC hardware. My understanding that’s starting to change with BSDs specifically focused on desktop use; see https://trueos.org. There’s a lot more; see https://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/whyusefreebsd.html |
When people mention this, it doesn't mean Linux ships with a kernel and everyone putting random things on top but Linux is also rigorously tested by distribution vendors and are well streamlined throughout, so I don't think that's much of a selling point for BSD.
What matters for average users are that they can google their problems easily and they don't get hit by edge cases that they can't easily solve.
None of the UNIX except macOS are really good at desktop.