On digital ocean you get a very limited set of boot options. You can't provide them your own installer, boot image, kernel, iso, or any of that jazz. You also

On digital ocean you get a very limited set of boot options. You can't provide them your own installer, boot image, kernel, iso, or any of that jazz. You also don't get a pre-boot console. For linux, they don't even let you provide your own kernel in userland or the like, so there's actually no way to install a BSD from a linux shim on DO. FreeBSD on DO is the only way to get an instance that is capable of booting anything non-linux, so it's necessary to start from freebsd. Edit: It looks like the kernel limitation has been lifted for some linux instances too. See: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-update-a-digitalocean-server-s-kernel https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-upda...