I think the trade off for using FreeBSD, is
That's, of course, too.
But I like to put it more general:
There are always trade offs.
In real life there is no such thing as the perfect jack-of-all-trades.
That's just the human longing for comfort you can sell lots of crap with.
Real life is always about to make compromises.
That means decisions to make (also known as 'freedom')
For that you need to know how, and why.
And that needs learning, which for many is experienced as weary, and uncomfortable.
It was already pointed out here:
There is no operating system supports every piece of hardware.
With free-to-use open-source operating systems (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Linux, ...) you may not get support for every top recent hardware, but the widest support for any hardware at all.
In the contrary with Microsoft or Apple you always get support for all top recent hardware (with Apple mostly exclusively Apple only HW [just to prevent some bean-counter may point this one out extra]),
but you may face the fact you need to buy new hardware when your system was upgraded.
And there are also other aspects, like being milked, or spyed on - or to have the control to be not.
With a free-to-use open-source operating system it's not to first buy the most fanciest hardware you like, and then demand the OS supports it.
It works quite the opposite way:
You decide to use a free-to-use open-sourse OS, and then see which hardware is suitable.
Also there are compromises, especially with laptops.
Laptops are a fix assembled bundle of hardware on a single board. Maybe drive and RAM are exchangable. But with the rest you stick for better or worse. Additionally laptops contain lots of special toys, like those special buttons for multimedia, direct access to browser, or e-mail, and special laptop features.
Those are done completely manufacturer specific, and most often without any standards, or even documentation how to address those.
Since I don't care about those anyway I always try to buy hardware with as few of this junk as possible.
So I don't bother if a button I don't want anyway doesn't work.
To me a laptop is a secondary, mobile machine, the dinghy I have additionally to my main desktop computer, the one with more than one large monitors and a proper keyboard.
It's a makeshift solution for travels.
The WLAN adapter in my ASUS laptop is also not supported under FreeBSD.
So what?!
I bought a short, small WLAN-USB-dongle for 9€, and voilá: WLAN access.
But of course this is my personal style, since I'm doing most of my work in my office and not travelling most of my time.
Anyway,
using a free-to-use open-source operating system is an attidude.
An attidude neither means better, nor worse.
And it must not become a religion.
But it's primary an attitude.
You want to do/have things different.
Therefor things are different.
If you simply expect getting Windows, but just without paying license fees, you came to the wrong shop.
All free-to-use open-source operating systems so far may differ in targets, details, especially their ideas how to do things right.
But they are all united in having one common idea:
To do things right from computer scientists point of view.
While commercial OS do things from their how-to-sell-best point of view.
Or to put it even more short, and flat:
The primary focus is on to do scientific things right, the scientific way,
not to look cool, not to use the newest, most fancy toys available.
One may compare it a bit like being a vegetarian.
If you are one you do it because you developed an attidude. By conviction.
Doing it just because you see it as some trend you need to join because anybody cool is doing it,
means to do it wrong.
Also doing it as some kind of religion is also wrong.
Of course vegetarians like to become their move, the attidude more popular. Convince more people.
But not for any price. Especially not for giving up core principles.
Once you got a taste of it being the right thing for you,
you don't go into a veggie shop and say:
'You know, how you could gain even more popularity?
Sell meat.'
Of course, you're right. This would gain more popularity.
But you also know the answer you'll get:
'You came to the wrong shop, pal!'
Because you miss the core point of the whole idea.
