Easiest desktop BSD distro

[Tom Worster]

I only know FreeBSD so I can't recommend any other BSD as being "easier".
And I don't use a windowing system on it. But I've an answer to a question
you didn't ask:

FreeBSD in VirtualBox a convenient way of learning. It saves a lot of
uninteresting messing around. And it allows me to save my project (by
saving VM state), get on with some other work and come back to it later.

Regarding your problems with internet speed, I think you can download one
of the small FreeBSD images, run that and instruct the FreeBSD install
program to get the files via FTP. Configure the installer to install only
the set of OS parts you want. That should save a lot of download relative
to the ISO images that contain everything. I've never done this but I
expect others can help if you run into difficulty.