When comparing Kali Linux vs FreeBSD, the Slant community recommends FreeBSD for most people. In the question“What is the best operating system for a developer?” FreeBSD is ranked 5th while Kali Linux is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose FreeBSD is:
Ports provide a wide collection of software which are easy to build, install and modify. They contain recipes and patches to build various software, so you can simply run "make && make install" to build and install the software. You may also keep local patches and it would be picked up automatically. It also allows you to use the latest software even if you are not using the latest version of the operating system.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Better than ParrotOS, BackBox for hacking purpose
Contains too many tools for hacking. Those tools are not already included in BackBox or ParrotOS.
Pro Standard pentest tool set
Pro Live session distro used for forensics
Pro Powerful ports collection
Ports provide a wide collection of software which are easy to build, install and modify. They contain recipes and patches to build various software, so you can simply run "make && make install" to build and install the software. You may also keep local patches and it would be picked up automatically. It also allows you to use the latest software even if you are not using the latest version of the operating system.
Pro Batteries included
Base system contains basic developer tools, including compiler, debugger and system utilities.
Pro Jails mechanism
Jails allow for partitioning a system into several independent "mini-systems", a feature not found in many of the popular OS choices.
Pro Stable updates
Pro Great philosophy
FreeBSD won't change everything from a version to another, it tries to keep and maintain old tools as long as possible, and won't replace half the system every two versions like GNU/Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Arch or Fedora does. everything is stable and also pretty minimal. FreeBSD is designed for performance.
Cons
Con Not intended to be a daily driver
This distro was written for pen testing and security work. It is not meant to be a day-to-day OS (unless that's your job).
Con Very old packages
E.G. Firefox's current version is 61 but Kali linux consists of its 52th version. Though kernel is not that old.
Con Pathetic third-party application support
Need to run Photoshop? No luck. Even most software that's portable to Linux will have a hard time running on FreeBSD. You're stuck with ONLY running the free software.
Con Inferior driver support for workstations
Lack of drivers for some modern personal devices.
Con Not for beginners
If a user needs an easy way to navigate around the filesystem, a text only Unix-derivative is not his best choice.