If you install a server distro, the number of default processes is pretty minimal. Run GNOME on FreeBSD and you'll get the same huge list of processes.
Not so sure about that, my last fresh install of Ubuntu Server (admittedly like 4-5 years ago now) had several cores hovering in the 20-30% range while idle and nothing was installed on the server yet. "Ooop, guess I'm going back to debian"
> If you install a server distro, the number of default processes is pretty minimal.
It depends on which processes. If you include kernel threads (which show as processes), the number of processes can get pretty huge, especially on many-core servers (several of these kernel threads are per-core).
I don't know whether on FreeBSD kernel threads show up as separate processes; if they don't, it might explain part of the difference.