Understood... I got confused because the name of the page...

I don't see any relationship with GPL and hardware support, hardware vendors have been always free to deliver opens-source drivers and still refuse to embrace it fully, and as a matter of fact the Linux kernel is shipped by default with an horrific amount of binary blobs. The synergy behind the GPL is elsewhere in all those stacks that made modern computers so awful.

You sure? I listen BSDNow everyday and they are constantly taking the distance from systemd and RedHat. Also they always marks that FreeBSD is a not-profit foundations why Linux is not.

I was undoubted between FreeBSD and OpenBSD but eventually I opted for the first for a bunch of reason: great documentation, more software, great community, ZFS, more automation.

Even if FreeBSD is bigger than OpenBSD the interest around it is 80% server and 20% desktop, although is a general purpose OS the majority of people approach FreeBSD for ZFS and what you can achieve in the server space. From FreeBSD the effort is to keep the desktop relevant but there is any predefined DE hence no one works well as in Devuan for instance.

OpenBSD is a distro that is mainly oriented for the Desktop use, respect FreeBSD has better hardware support, for security reason it still uses FS filesystem (the slowest filesystem ever), nothing works with automation (I mean plugging a pendrive requires the use of CLI), it has its own default WM, CWM, that works perfectly and is perfectly integrated. By default OpenBSD creates a great development enviroment!

If you are on the coding side OpenBSD might be a better options. I found OpenBSD too extreme for my habits, already FreeBSD doesn't do anything if you don't set up it to make that tasks, but OpenBSD goes beyond, I do not want mount a pendrive through a terminal, but most people find this behavior better.

Most important is the hardware compatibility. You may find that FreeBSD and probably OpenBSD are ten years behind Linux. It is well known that Intel stuff (wifi, ethernet, etc...) works pretty good on the BSD all the others hardware vendors are problematic (specially wifi). My old laptop is supported but there is a very annoying bug that prevent me to use the ethernet adapter if I step before on Linux and then in FreeBSD.

The transition is smoother if you have as first requirement the conviction that you want really change your habits; as second suggestion you may use a virtual machine to see how much you will able to reproduce your usual workflow in a different OS even though the difference might be minimal, before to switch I have been using FreeBSD on a virtual machine for months, I decided to use FreeBSD as my OS for my Gemini server, using FreeBSD as server is easier because the installation is modular and by default the only services it enables are DHCP and SSH hence you have very minimal installation by default; lastly your hardware is well recognized and doesn't requires too much troubleshooting, NomadBSD is a derivative of FreeBSD made to run from pendrive it can help you to test your hardware compatibility, if it works fine with FreeBSD then it will likely work with OpenBSD as well.

Last thing is the dual-boot if you want preserve for instance Devuan like I do. These are my considerations but my impression is the BSDs do not consider the dual-booting a condition, they expect to be your only OS like Windows does. If you use efi you can use Refind to manage boot order, if you don't use EFI you must create a manual entry on Grub since Linux doesn't recognize BSD. The Linux behavior is to consider itself as alternative OS to Windows but anything else.

To close my suggestion is go to Virtual Machine, learn how to install FreeBSD or OpenBSD (I have a simple guide for FreeBSD on my capsule), try to reproduce your workflow, check if the software you like are available. Remember that DRM/EME doesn't not work any BSD hence you will not have any streaming services, spotify maybe works through a TUI software, if you rely on closed software these will not be available, etc. There is a compatibility layer between FreeBSD and Linux called Linuxulator that allows to use software that is specifically design for Linux and through which you can install Chrome or Vivaldi but I didn't check that out since I left my Linux partition to use also this crap.

The only missing part here is now just your curiosity! 😉

I feel ashamed because I always wanted to help but never had time to do, starting from the logo.

I am professional designer with plenty of experience also with open-source tools, I am willing to help but I can't focus on this task: I forgot the meaning of free-time; but I can surely mentoring and help with tips and recommendation who want working on this even if he/she feels doesn't have enough experience or skills in the design field.

I installed Debian + Refind, than I installed Devuan. Refind was able to detect the devuan (virtual) CD iso and starting it.

Thanks, this really clarify a lot of things however there is something that I still don't get...

Can I actually mount a disk while using a subvolume?

You wrote

# mount /dev/sdXY /mnt

In my case it would be /dev/sda1, did I understand properly?

Anyway I didn't understand many critics about BTRFS but since I am playing with FreeBSD almost daily I have started to understand the reasons, the filesystem lacks a method to restore itself, like for instance ZFS, and this procedure is a bit cumbersome. Other distros like Ubuntu, Opensuse and Arch implemented an automatic function related with the packaging upgrading to rollback.

Yes sure thing! Thanks!

FSTAB (only BTRFS Volumes)

# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
## BTRFS SUBVOL ROOT
UUID=5a8bbd0d-e862-4e40-86f2-3f8f9b10e110 /               btrfs   subvol=@,defaults,noatime,space_cache,discard=async,autodefrag        0       0

## BTRFS SUBVOL HOME
UUID=5a8bbd0d-e862-4e40-86f2-3f8f9b10e110 /home           btrfs   subvol=@home,defaults,noatime,space_cache,discard=async,autodefrag        0       0

GRUB

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="rootflags=subvol=@ quiet"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

Subvolume List

ID 268 gen 382712 top level 5 path @
ID 327 gen 382712 top level 5 path @home
ID 357 gen 4558 top level 268 path btrfs/snap_20200903
ID 358 gen 4561 top level 268 path btrfs/snap_20200903ro
ID 405 gen 32786 top level 268 path btrfs/snap_20200908
ID 518 gen 365657 top level 268 path btrfs/snap_20211015

Did I miss anything?