I don't know - I''ve seen it both ways, though technically the general term is Unix or *ix if talking about multiple branches/variants. Neither bothers me, though, since all that really matters is knowing what the hell the other person is talking about. (I guess it's living here in L.A. - able to understand is everything - grammar and spelling and so on is a very minor concern)
BSD is very good, but I dislike the black box approach to it as well in that there are parts of the system that are licensed and proprietary. It's as a result, tons harder to find patches and user made fixes and so on than Linux derivatives, which are almost the opposite. You log onto a typical forum and they can't hardly stop yammering and tweaking and going on and on about every last detail you never knew you didn't even want to bother with. One is a treasure hunt and the other is a confetti canon.
But if you DO need a quick fix, you can get the answer in minutes just with a few simple searches. Often it's literally as simple as applying a user's custom bit of code/configuration settings or a command that you can cut and paste.
That said, BSD *is* more stable and more secure out of the box, and makes for good business setups. BSD for home use is generally considered to be overkill, though.
For home use, Mint or another similar "enhanced" Linux variant works every bit as well. You load it up, tweak with it for a couple of hours, and you're viewing youtube, posting in your forums, and reading your email. It doesn't play games, run fancy PC-only rendering or CAD software, doesn't grok SQL and the like, but it certainly does 98% of the other normal "computer" tasks that typical users want. Get online, email, watch and listen to stuff, and maybe use a word processor or connect a flash drive or digital camera to it.
