BSD users - anyone here mess with any of the variants?

I tried to run some BSD based OS's a while ago and came up against a brick wall. I couldn't even get the OS to install as it seemed like a foreign language. If switching from Windows to Linux is like switching from American English to Proper British English, then switching to BSD is like changing to Greek. Even after years of Linux administtration, I've still to be able to figure out how to install BSD and deal with the mount points (which should be fairly simple but they seem nebulous).

I looked at the newest BSD desktop release and it looks pretty clean - though minimal - and I'm not sure there is a more secure public OS available.

I've run some routers that are BSD based and tried to install some router OS's onto standard PC hardware (make my own router) and even these packages are tough to wrangle and can be SUPER touchy with drives and BIOS issues.

Anyone have experience with this or any advice?