The C compiler is in fact part of the FreeBSD base system (if it weren't, you would need to install a port just to update from source. You don't.) You are right

The C compiler is in fact part of the FreeBSD base system (if it weren't, you would need to install a port just to update from source. You don't.) You are right that it's one of the few pieces that is developed outside the project (and periodically imported into the tree). It is, on the other hand, fully supported. Bugs in the C compiler are considered bugs in the OS and will be fixed. I don't need a desktop environment or care about having one, so it not being part of the core OS doesn't bother me. I'll copy-and-paste my thoughts on why I like FreeBSD from an earlier comment I made: "Every one I have used installs the source code to the entire OS in /usr/src and make it very easy to change and recompile the system. On the BSDs I mentioned, if you don't understand how something works or you want to fix some bug, it's usually pretty easy to go find the source code, read it and learn how it works, and fix it. On most Linux-based OSs you would have to go figure out which random organization makes the component that has a bug (Linux project for the kernel, GNU for a lot of utilities, zillions of others for everything else), figure out how to download and build the source and install it into your distro (which is probably totally unsupported since your distro will expect to be using RPMs or DEBs rather than random stuff installed from tarballs...) This is the most salient feature of the modern pc BSDs to me. It's impossible to describe how different it feels to be truly in control of your system and understand/change it however you want."