If you don't want to touch any config files, you can get PC-BSD.
Setting up FreeBSD is easier than, say, Arch Linux. The OS install is a menu based "next, next, next" process like in Debian. Installing a desktop environment… honestly I can't imagine how it CAN be difficult. `pacman -S xfce`, `pkg install xfce`, same thing everywhere.
PCBSD is great, unfortunately it lacks better support for functional keyboards and screen brightness controls on laptops, but it's great anyway. I prefer it over ArchLinux.
Comparing with Arch and saying it is easier - well, gee, sure - not a particularly high bar to clear! The same about installing the desktop using a package manager.
If you have to actually do any of that, you have lost already, at least as far as a productive desktop is concerned. My point is not that it is hard to do but that you shouldn't have to do it in the first place!
Desktop OS should come with a working desktop out of the box - many desktop Linux distros actually give you a choice during the install and preconfigure one of the major ones for you.
BSDs make excellent servers and there this simplicity and Unix-like approach to running things are a large benefit. Modern Linux distros tend to be way too complex and "black-box" like in this regard. However, having to go through all this to run a desktop is an unnecessary masochism for people who have way too much time on their hands, IMO.
Well, everyone has different "productivity" needs. I'm productive when everything is customized for, uh, productivity. When my config files aren't overwritten by package managers and the settings aren't replaced at runtime by some-settings-daemon that I never wanted.
You must be that mythical Hacker News commenter who's proud of using default settings everywhere and not customizing anything :D
Anyway, setting up any BSD, or Arch, or even Gentoo doesn't really take "way too much time", come on.
Arch used to have an installer like that, but they dumped it in favor of the current boot-into-heavily-customized-live-environment-that's-nothing-like-the-default-installation-and-install-pseudo-manually-by-running-these-shell-scripts-in-the-proper-order-and-hopefully-you-memorized-the-handbook “installer”. I can't prove it, but I suspect they did that sheerly out of elitism, to keep the newbs out.
Setting up FreeBSD is easier than, say, Arch Linux. The OS install is a menu based "next, next, next" process like in Debian. Installing a desktop environment… honestly I can't imagine how it CAN be difficult. `pacman -S xfce`, `pkg install xfce`, same thing everywhere.