When I find things in FreeBSD difficult to accomplish (eg. first time upgrading 
world & kernel from source) I reflect on something I read I think in the 
introduction to 'Learning Perl' which applies equally to FreeBSD.

If there is a choice between making things easy to learn and easy to use, the 
design principle is to make it easy to use - even if that comes at the cost of 
a steeper learning curve.

Once you've scaled the learning curve, you will appreciate how easy it is to 
achieve things with FreeBSD compared to other OS which attempt to make things 
'easy' for you (wireless networking springs to mind - in my experience if 
Windows can't do it 'automagically' then you haven't a hope in hell of finding 
out what's wrong and fixing it).

So the easiest BSD? Any of them, if you're prepared to invest the time learning 
it.

--

Peter Harrison
www.4harrisons.blogspot.com

-original message-
Subject: Easiest desktop BSD distro
From: "Jason Hsu" <jhsu802...@jasonhsu.com>
Date: 29/03/2011 21:14

I want to learn BSD.  I find that the best way to familiarize myself with a 
distro is to adopt it as my main distro (for web browsing, email, word 
processing, etc.).  

But the challenge of BSD have so far proven too much for me.  It would take too 
long to configure FreeBSD to my liking.  I couldn't figure out what to enter in 
GRUB to multi-boot Linux and BSD.  I tried PC-BSD, GhostBSD, and DragonflyBSD 
in VirtualBox.  I've found PC-BSD agonizingly slow to install and operate, and 
KDE didn't even boot up when I logged in.  GhostBSD has too many things that 
don't work, such as the keyboard on my laptop and my Internet connection on my 
desktop.  DragonflyBSD didn't boot up in Virtualbox.

I recommend Linux Mint as a first Linux distro.  It's user-friendly, 
well-established, widely used, includes codecs/drivers that Ubuntu doesn't, and 
has a Windows-like user interface.  For those with older computers, I recommend 
Puppy Linux or antiX Linux as a first distro.  I'm looking for the analogous 
choice in the BSD world.

So what do you recommend as my first desktop BSD distro?  What desktop BSD 
distro is so easy to use that even Paris Hilton or Jessica "Chicken of the Sea" 
Simpson can handle it?

Please keep in mind that I have a slow Internet connection, and these BSD 
distros are ENORMOUS.  It took some 12-14 hours to download PC-BSD.

-- 
Jason Hsu <jhsu802...@jasonhsu.com>
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