Why are BSDs not recommended?

The recommended desktop OS section only lists Linux distributions.

I wonder if there is a reason why the BSDs (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) are not mentioned? They are all FOSS, don’t have any privacy issues and probably have a reasonable level of security (especially OpenBSD and HardenedBSD).

Is it because they are relatively hard to use for a beginner? But so are Arch and NixOS and they’re listed - and newbie distros like Mint and Ubuntu are not listed because they have slow (“stable”) updates.

Is there any other reason why Linux is preferable to BSD from a privacy point of view? Or the other way round: is there anything where the BSDs are “more private” than Linux?

It’s a number of things, generally the BSDs tend to have lesser documentation and really aren’t aimed at newbie users. That page is not meant to be exhaustive of “only these things are recommended”.

It’s a list of things we recommend, because we use them and know they work fairly well in regard to our other guidance.