I had something similar happen; don't recall anymore exactly what it was. When I first investigated BSDs (coming from Amiga and Solaris mostly), I could not get FreeBSD working using the documentation.
Next, I tried NetBSD, and was ecstatic; everything just made so much sense. The only real trouble I had at first was with the rc.d system. (I was familiar with the SysV way). But it didn't take long to adapt.
I never got round to trying OpenBSD; I got my machine configured to do exactly what I wanted it to do and that was the end of it.
I'm not sure how it would've been if I didn't have Solaris experience. And in retrospect, if I had known that pkgsrc worked in Solaris, I'd probably still be using it. But I'm glad I'm not.
Also, this was a long time ago now, and FreeBSD is probably different now. I have no idea. I don't even remember what the FreeBSD documentation was like, but I still like the NetBSD Guide . It's like the RCA Receiving Tube Manual. I read it for fun now and then.