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"Let's see how this #RaspberryPi plays out with a lightweight Graphical Environment under #FreeBSD."
pkg install xorg fluxbox
"Cool, only like 120MB to download and 800MB or so of space used. Let's do this."
40min later and it's still unpacking the contents... I really should get a fast SD card rather than re-use the ones from my 10 year-old smartphones.
... buuuuuut it worked! RAM usage is at about 140MB with a busy tmux session. Not sure if I can keep going forward, but it's definitely doable!
@kzimmermann Silly noon question from someone that is reading about the differences between the two, is there a practical reason you went FreeBSD intsead of OpenBSD? Like apps availability, ease of install?
@DavidBosman not a silly question at all! I actually pondered about this myself a little before beginning the quest. I had no strong reason to choose FreeBSD over OpenBSD but had to start somewhere, so opted for the first one I could find and get my hands dirty.
Later, I was told that OpenBSD is more desktop-oriented, but from my experience so far, FreeBSD on Xorg is good enough for me.
The install is actually very easy, similar to most text-based installers like Debian.
@kzimmermann I see, thx. Very interesting to see you share your thoughts as I am also considering giving *BSD a chance on one of my machines— just to see how I could work on something else than a Linux-based system.
@DavidBosman if you're thinking about starting on it, my initial notes on this switch might be of interest:
https://tilde.town/~kzimmermann/articles/learning_freebsd_as_linux_user.html
@kzimmermann Reading it and this linked post: https://tilde.town/~kzimmermann/articles/dumpster_diving_hacker.html
"There was also some weird Japanese porn left in it, which serves as a reminder to always encrypt your hard drives if you want privacy..." 
It's impressive the number of people that do not encrypt their drives and see no reason to do so—weird porn addiction or not 
@kzimmermann Regarding the question 'why do these people keep replacing good things like that?' (https://tilde.town/~kzimmermann/articles/dumpster_diving_hacker.html)
The beginning of an answer could be: because it's much simpler, and because one has to learn there are other way to be a consummer.
Though I never was taken in a frenzy of consummerism, it took me quite a few years and a pandemic to realize I could do a lot more just by not using thrown-away/unfixable shiny devices and use those that could be maintened over the years.
@DavidBosman I can totally understand that. Though I never "left" it completely, I distanced myself from #FreeSoftware quite significantly between 2018~early 2020.
The pandemic, though pretty horrible, had the effect of not only bringing me back to Free Software, but also learn a huge deal more about it (Arch Linux, the BSDs) and start salvaging discarded hardware. It's amazing what a little knowledge can give back to you.
Unimaginable if I look back 25 years, these SoCs now just crunching away the same workload as huge and expensive servers then did!
Looks like we're on the same boat — says the absolute Linux noob I am, after 35+ years using and writing about Apple (and 20 years Windows)