Why I Switched from macOS to FreeBSD: A Personal Migration Experience

This article is not a step‑by‑step technical guide; it is a high‑level explanation of why the author decided to migrate from macOS to FreeBSD.

Not long ago macOS was a daily work necessity for the author because of its BSD Unix foundation and attractive graphical interface, but those same reasons eventually led to abandoning it.

macOS suffers from several drawbacks: the date(1) utility feels outdated, over a hundred Unix processes start at boot serving little purpose for ordinary users, there is no native package manager (only MacPorts/Homebrew/pkgsrc), and documentation for power users is lacking. The latest Big Sur UI is flashy and not designed for advanced users, and each macOS update often breaks pf.conf and automount configurations.

In contrast, upgrading FreeBSD from 12.1‑RELEASE to 12.2‑RELEASE caused no damage, and any system changes are explicitly prompted.

The author tested FreeBSD on a ThinkPad T480 and reports:

Wi‑Fi works (up to 48 Mbps, typically 10‑20 Mbps).

Graphics run normally.

Touchpad supports multi‑finger gestures and can be configured via sysctl .

Bluetooth discovers and connects to devices (Apple AirPods work, though stability could improve).

Video‑conference tools (Zoom, Google Hangouts, Jitsi, WebRTC‑based apps) function without issues.

Thanks to the Linuxulator, Netflix streaming is possible.

Most importantly, FreeBSD is free and open source. After more than a month without touching the MacBook Pro, the author feels no real loss and appreciates the freedom BSD provides compared to the restrictive ecosystems of macOS and Windows.

Future posts will detail the actual installation steps.