I keep wanting to try one of the BSDs out on a preliminary basis to see how it compares to Linux, but honestly every one of them has irked me from the point of installation. I've tried FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and PC-BSD.
The former two were somewhat cryptic to me, despite 10 years of Linux experience. I've done everything from manage servers to develop for embedded systems, and I always managed to figure things out. But FreeBSD, for example, gives me this somewhat counter-intuitive menu to go through, most of which I figured out, despite my lack of understanding of BSD partition types and all that. The problem though came from the packages. If you don't do anything, it just defaults to a console installation. And that's fine for some situations, sure. But actually trying to install the GUI was another story. I felt like a complete idiot trying to figure out their menus. It wasn't smart enough to just realize that the packages it might need aren't on the basic install CD, so initially I couldn't even find Gnome to install it. Immediately I was turned off by this seemingly primitive package system. But even when you get into the menu to select an internet source, it's a huge mess. I tried to pick Gnome, but it seemed that no matter what I did, I ended up with a plain CLI installation without even basic X. I had no idea where I was going wrong. I tried sysinstall afterward, read some stuff online, but I could not make the damn thing work. So I ended up trying to do it from the command line instead, which in fact was a million times more straightforward than their interface. But without knowing what all packages I actually needed for a full install without digging around, and upon realizing I still would have to manually edit my config files to make X launch with Gnome and all, I just threw my hands up and said forget that mess. If I wanted to go to that much trouble just to try something out, I'd install Arch or Gentoo or something. It's also worth pointing out that pkg_add is a very ugly tool, and not nearly as informative of progress as, say, APT. Perhaps I'm spoiled from all of my Linux use, though.
PC-BSD is supposed to be the most friendly, yet not only did it contradict itself in how much space it would require between two different install attempts, but the first time it failed after the install began, and the second time it said it needed more space than I had allocated in the partitions (and that was both with auto-allocate as well as me doing it manually). Considering there's absolutely nothing different you can choose at that stage of the installation to affect disk space or anything (selecting basic stuff like keyboard type), I have honestly no idea why it was different on each attempt. The third time, when I gave up and just created a bigger virtual partition than I wanted to originally allow it, it then appeared to start downloading a single huge image rather than separate packages. I canceled it after realizing it would take a million years to get from their slow server.
I heard that the release candidate for FreeBSD 9 had a friendlier installer, but a) it seemed pretty much the same text-based one to me, and b) none of the download mirrors in the installer would acknowledge the version I had and wouldn't let me download any packages.
I'm sure many BSD veterans will simply think I'm a moron, am too impatient, or maybe I just had a string of bad luck. And maybe you're right on all counts! And sure, I could go read tutorials on how to do it "properly." But honestly, after using so many variations of Linux over the years, all the way back to the much more cryptic Red Hat installations of yesteryear, you'd think I would be able to figure out BSD no problem. Instead, I just gave it a big sigh, threw my hands up, and said forget it. I haven't needed it so far, so I probably won't need it anytime soon either.
And yet the (stubborn) geek in me still wants to know if it's any better once it's actually up and running, because I know the kernel is supposed to be much cleaner and more optimized than Linux, so I doubt this will be my last attempt.