I'm not calling it one of the BSDs, but you still have to consider who's running the show. The FreeBSD part behind pfSense is as important as the Debian beind V

I'm not calling it one of the BSDs, but you still have to consider who's running the show. The FreeBSD part behind pfSense is as important as the Debian beind VyOS (although I'm not suggesting VyOS here). If things are completely same from a management/security perspective, then I'd be wrong but it does make a difference when it comes to management, updates, and compatibility etc. Your definition of technically capable is a bit vague. What can a technically capable user do? It can vary from barely being able to use the cli and minimal understanding of basic networking, to being able to compile/tune the kernel by themselves and write drivers in case they are missing.