I’ve never used any BSDs directly, only in the shape of opnSense, but as a fan of Gentoo, which uses portage, that, in turnm is heavily inspired by the ports system, I should probably give one of them a go at some point.
My biggest deterrent so far has been lower performance compared to linux. I objectively understand it’s imperceptible in every day use, but something at the back of my head has been holding me back.
Is that still true comparing to a custom kernel for linux?
If not better, equal. But without doing this, the BSD kernel is bloated.