Having switched from windows 2000 to FreeBSD in 2001 as a desktop OS, all i can say is there is no benefit if you want something that does stuff all pointy clic

Having switched from windows 2000 to FreeBSD in 2001 as a desktop OS, all i can say is there is no benefit if you want something that does stuff all pointy clicky just like Microsoft does (gnome/kde's apparent objective). My desktop is a terminal and browser and pretty much sod all else. If you don't embrace the whole Unix philosophy and start using it as intended rather than with a layer of glitter over the top, there is no point at all. I switched because i didn't have to spend as much time piddling around to get stuff to work. Rather than spending hours in VB/VC++, arguing with COM, dealing with horrible amounts of stateful black box configuration and absolutely no composability past defined IDL/COM interfaces, i could glue some shit together that talked lines of text in literally minutes, perform better and still be running 12 years later with no modification. Productivity waned for a year but once I'd got my shit together I'm doing the work of 5 people in half the time.