I've been a life-long Linux user and took a dive into the deep-end with FreeBSD recently. I find it extremely difficult to articulate the why. For example, you can say things like, the entire stack is maintained by the same entity. Ookkayy... so what? But it matters, and it matters in a nuance ways that's difficult to articulate but you notice it when using the system.

Kinda feel bad for not being able to articulate it. It's not like I can point at one thing, e.g. the system call function foobar(2) is better. I either don't have enough FreeBSD experience or I'm not smart enough. Here are some things I've enjoyed:

- I didn't realize how terrible iptables was until I used pf on FreeBSD

- I didn't want to master yet another networking abstraction that docker introduces for configuring containers. Granted, I have not used VNETs on Jails.

- I like to _invest_ in the tech stack that I learn and not have it change the next release. I have more trust in the stability of FreeBSDs choices and roadmap.

- I like how light-weight the base OS install is.

- I like that FreeBSD doesn't use systemd and I like the simplicity of rc(8).

- I like that jail has stronger integration with the OS, like installing packages into a jail.

- I like that the book, "design and implementation of freebsd o/s 2nd edition" is available and my hope is that it's still relevant.

Something things I don't like:

- There are subtle differences in tooling and outputs that surprise me. Nothing I haven't been able to work-around. E.g. I learned that GNU Make has made _vast_ improvements to make that's available on BSDs. Not a big deal but had to install gnu make and invoke it as gmake.

- I miss cgroups.