Current breakdown at the time of this post sorted by the number of monthly active users:
- lemmy.world: 101,013 total users / 27,472 active users
- lemmy.ml: 41,972 total users / 4,905 active users
- beehaw.org: 12,270 total users / 4,178 active users
- sh.itjust.works: 17,509 total users / 3,381 active users
- feddit.de: 8,675 total users / 2,935 active users
- lemm.ee: 10,348 total users / 2,751 active users
- lemmynsfw.com: 22,967 total users / 2,310 active users
- lemmy.fmhy.ml: 8,777 total users / 1,704 active users
- lemmy.ca: 5,072 total users / 1,656 active users
- programming.dev: 5,058 total users / 1,242 active users
Woof. I’m glad I’m not the only one that’s done these things!
I want to say that you’re right, but I’m not NEARLY as familiar with *BSD or it’s history as I am with Linux. My understanding, though, is that iOS/macOS are based upon Darwin, and that Darwin derives a fairly significant portion of its code base from BSD. So, in part I believe the answer is yes.
As a total side note: do you have a recommendation for a good BSD derivative distribution to try? I’ve tried probably 15 Linux distros, but never made it to BSD-world!
The thing about BSD is it’s fully POSIX compliant which can be good and bad. The good is it’s highly consistent in terms of architecture and how things operate. The bad is standards constraints can limit flexibility. Linux is somewhat POSIX compliant, but has a tendency to go off the rails at times. In any case if you’re comfortable with Linux you’ll be comfortable with BSD right out of the gate.
Linux can suffer a lot from fragmentation due it’s market bazaar style development. FreeBSD is run by a single entity responsible for design top to bottom. There’s been some big changes to Linux in modern times I don’t really care for (such as systemd). With BSD you always know what to expect. You won’t get blindsided by some off the wall change in architecture or design which happens a lot with Linux.
There’s a number of BSD distributions that are open source and free. The main open source BSD distros are FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonFly BSD. FreeBSD is most popular and is designed to be good all around. It’s probably going to have the best device support, but other BSDs can have other strengths. For example DragonFly BSD is stronger for desktop use.
Honestly the best application for BSD is in a sever or development environment. Linux is more advanced when it comes to support for desktop use. Though I think BSD provides a much cleaner and consistent operating system as it conforms to specific standards. You can get it to work well for desktop use with a little extra work and preselection of compatible hardware.