Best first desktop BSD distro

[Jason Hsu]

Thanks for your thoughts on making the move from Linux to BSD.  I'm not making the move because I don't like Linux.  Instead, I want to learn BSD.  I find that the best way to familiarize myself with a distro is to adopt it as my main distro (for web browsing, email, word processing, etc.).  But the challenge of BSD have so far proven too much for me.  It would take too long to configure FreeBSD to my liking.  I couldn't figure out what to enter in GRUB to multi-boot Linux and BSD.  I tried PC-BSD, GhostBSD, and DragonflyBSD in VirtualBox.  I've found PC-BSD agonizingly slow to install and operate, and KDE didn't even boot up when I logged in.  GhostBSD has too many things that don't work, such as the keyboard on my laptop and my Internet connection on my desktop.  DragonflyBSD didn't boot up in Virtualbox.

I recommend Linux Mint as a first Linux distro.  It's user-friendly, well-established, widely used, includes codecs/drivers that Ubuntu doesn't, and has a Windows-like user interface.  For those with older computers, I recommend Puppy Linux or antiX Linux as a first distro.  I'm looking for the analogous choice in the BSD world.

So what do you recommend as my first desktop BSD distro?  What desktop BSD distro is so easy to use that even Paris Hilton can handle it?

Please keep in mind that I have a slow Internet connection, and these BSD distros are ENORMOUS.  It took some 12-14 hours to download PC-BSD.

-- 
Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com>