(Despite the title, this is a technical screed, not a religious one.  You have been warned.)

I started using FreeBSD about ten years ago.  A new client had it on his web servers, and I was impressed enough by it to start running it on my own machines, including my desktop.  In the late 1990s, the various Linux distributions were like fraternities making floats for a Homecoming parade: they turned out some impressive work, but you had to put up with a lot of drunken brawling to get there.  I bounced from one Linux distro to another, never really satisfied with any of them.  The BSD community seemed more mature (I saw a poll once that said FreeBSD developers were ten years older on average than Linux developers)  and it showed in the software.  I liked the stability of the software and the release process and the way it was all designed.  It just seemed like the free Unix operating system (OS) for grown-ups.

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