[Quartz]

> Personally I'm using FreeBSD _exclusively_ (!) on the desktop
> since version 4.0, and I haven't missed _any_ "common desktopy
> thing" that is required for my daily work.

I was referring to general intent when I wrote that. For example, bsd 
has poor support for things like sleep/suspend/hibernate. While desktops 
and laptops would certainly take advantage of those things, severs 
generally don't, so fixing it has traditionally been low priority. In 
contrast, linux has that working out of the box on almost all hardware. 
Likewise in my experience a number of other home-use things like laptop 
wifi are generally better supported under linux.

A similar situation exists for software, especially non-business 
software and oddball utilities. On bsd you can usually find something to 
do what you need, but you'll often be limited to one or two choices, 
whereas with linux you might have half a dozen. (Whether all these 
packages are GOOD or not is a separate issue :)

I'm not saying that bsd *can't* be used for a home desktop, it certainly 
can, but it was never aimed at the grandma+laptop market and the 
hardware support and software selection reflects that. But I don't hold 
that against bsd. You can't be all things to all people, bsd is very 
good for servers and linux is good for home use, and they each have 
their place.

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it has a certain smooth-brained appeal