iptables has been with us for more than 20 years and is only now being replaced (pretty slowly I might add). The old rules are still supported through iptables-nft, you can just import them and forget nft exists.

Distributions I prefer have never used NetworkManager and haven't changed network configuration in a long time. RHEL and its rebuilds have used NM for what feels like an eternity. Ubuntu is the odd one out here with its constant churn, afaik.

Same with firewall wrappers like ufw and firewalld. Either your distribution uses one and you just use whatever has been chosen for you, or it doesn't and you go with nftables (or iptables-nft if you prefer).

This is all only really a problem if your organization uses a bunch of distributions instead of standardizing on one, but then you probably have a lot more other serious problems than learning how to configure your firewall...

As a counterpoint, I evaluated FreeBSD for a project about a year ago and was really put off by its primitive service management (compared to systemd which I know pretty well and use its features extensively, they really do help in your daily work), and the three firewalls which all seem to be approximately equally supported and you never really know where to put your time. (Unfortunately, I had to pass the OS for other reasons which have no relation to its technical merit.)

? FreeBSD ships with three different firewalls in base.

Yes, however, each has a clear set of tools, and it's clear which one are you using. There are no shims to use IPFW tooling with PF and vice versa, while on linux they are all mixed.

Sorry, for such inconvenience, we will stop writing software we want so that we won't risk filling BSDers brains

I really don't get these criticisms, you have choice, having choices doesn't make a system bad, makes you have to make your choices, which can also be going towards systems where stuff is standard

See paradox of choice.

Not having any choice isn't great either. See Soviet grocery shops.

Choice should only be offered after you have a stable foundation/base. Suppose you have a store that sells frozen food only, an incredible amount of choices, but no base ingredients like flour, grains and meat.

Software is utilitarian in nature, the goal is the task, but, how do you accomplish a task with an infinite amount of tools? and not only that, but how can you be sure that the tool is secure and stable?

In the context, you accomplish task with the defaulty installed iptables

What is the BSD idempotent cattle deployment pipeline? It's all just configs selecting packages in the first place is it not?

Or, and hear me out... Don't install it?

Or just to avoid a systemd distro.