And the man pages. [...] This first thing I had to do was learn to NOT google for how to accomplish something, but just read the man page.
I'm only learning, but I've had a very similar experience setting up and hardening a FreeBSD box using the FreeBSD Handbook (at least as my primary resource):
You just pick the section of interest (or sit down and start from the beginning) and.. start reading. And when you're done, you understand the overall design of the system, its processes and system tools. With GNU/Linux, I quite often feel that when there's a problem, I'm looking for a quick fix. (Granted, it may simply be due to my limited experience / few years of exposure.)
In any case, I do thoroughly recommend everyone dabbling with fbsd not to underestimate the power of fbsd's documentation, and the uniformity (and the resulting empowerment of the system administrator because of this) of the overall system. As I understand it, OpenBSD is very much alike in that sense.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/
You just pick the section of interest (or sit down and start from the beginning) and.. start reading. And when you're done, you understand the overall design of the system, its processes and system tools. With GNU/Linux, I quite often feel that when there's a problem, I'm looking for a quick fix. (Granted, it may simply be due to my limited experience / few years of exposure.)
In any case, I do thoroughly recommend everyone dabbling with fbsd not to underestimate the power of fbsd's documentation, and the uniformity (and the resulting empowerment of the system administrator because of this) of the overall system. As I understand it, OpenBSD is very much alike in that sense.