What is the best derivative compatible with FreeBSD?

Offtopic:
This is moot because both distributions appeared more or less at the same time, and in fact Wikipedia tells Arch Linux is a few months older...
The inspiration source for Arch Linux was CRUX and PLD (Polish Linux Distribution) not Slackware.
On topic:
What is the best derivative compatible with FreeBSD?
The simplest answer is: FreeBSD.
 
A lot of FreeBSD-based OSes variants die out because it's easy to customize FreeBSD itself, and on the desktop, because hardware support is behind Windows and Linux and people want something that "just works".

People who want an easy to use Unix desktop just go for something like Ubuntu/Mint/Elementary or macOS. They don't want to struggle with bad hardware support on their random consumer-level laptop or be told to buy a refurbished ThinkPad to have good support when they already have a laptop which works well with Linux.

I have struggled with FreeBSD on a Dell Inspiron N5010 and a 2018 HP Spectre x360, of the latter which I'm using right now to type this message. I have to use CURRENT with special patches on the Spectre and a WIP HID-over-I2C module to have a working setup, and I even had to write kernel code (that has been committed). And on top of this, I have to put up with stability issues. At least my name is in the commit logs now, I always wanted this.

But I'm really an exception: I have to use FreeBSD even if support is mediocre (using Docker on Ubuntu LTS is more painful, and that's for college credit). However, I'm the exception, most people won't be willing to do this, especially beginners, but even many "experienced" users. They want something which works. Heck, there's a reason why Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu are popular: they are easy to use and generally work well.

There's no good reason to use TrueOS over FreeBSD since TrueOS refocused. You might very well just run CURRENT. It's not like Ubuntu or Devuan where there is a great reason to use a fork over raw Debian, it's like how Scientific Linux or Oracle Linux aren't much different from RHEL or CentOS.

The FreeBSD-based OSes who are strong are the ones who serve a specific purpose, like pfSense or FreeNAS, and aren't desktop-focused where you only need to support already well-supported hardware NICs and RAID controllers which have corporate funding, not GPUs, Wi-Fi, HD Audio, and I2C touchpad which is done on 100% volunteer time.
 
You can't have a desktop system that 'just works' when the developers are too reluctant to ship xorg (at the minimum) by default..
 
Back
Top