My first experience with Linux introduced me to the Bash shell so it's the one I'm most comfortable with. By default, FreeBSD comes with the tcsh(1) shell which is a perfectly capable shell. However, old habits die hard so here is how you can install the bash(1) shell following the FreeBSD Handbook.

NOTE: You should never change the default shell of the root user. To avoid doing this, we will perform the following steps as a normal user and escalate our privilege with sudo. Please see the FreeBSD Quickstart Guide for Linux Users for more information.

Install bash:

$ sudo pkg install bash

Change your shell:

$ chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash

The next time you log in, the bash shell will be automatically started.

$ echo $SHELL
/usr/local/bin/bash
$ echo $0
-bash