Which BSD to start with?

If you are coming from Linux, you might give TrueOS a try.

It is FreeBSD but with a focus on desktop polish and ease-of-use. FreeBSD has historically been a server OS.

Linux and BSD are pretty similar in that they share the bulk of the software that would run on either one of them. To a casual desktop user, the BSD desktop will not seem that different.

Big differences are (in my opinion of course):

• Userland (Linux uses GNU while BSD uses BSD)

• Integration (Linux is a collection of different efforts, BSD is much more unified at the core)

• Packaging (Linux typically manages installed software in binary packages - BSD typically manages a "ports" tree that you use to build software from sources)

Personally, I find OpenBSD a great BSD to start with. It's simple, installs no external packages by default, and has excellent documentation. Man pages are a good thing. The installer is fast and incredibly easy to use (no, it's not a gui). And once you have the base system up and running, the online FAQ has answers to pretty much any question you could imagine, and it's not a wiki, the FAQ is written and maintained by the developers, and is up to date. Installing packages is just as easy as on other modern unix like systems, and though they lag behind the latest/greatest they are fully functional. I've been using it as my only desktop OS for years, and I find it's a great first unix like OS.

If you used and understood Arch linux, you will have zero trouble with NetBSD, except for the ps command line flags. All the /etc files are the same, the /etc/rc.d files are similar.