This is an operating systems post. If you don't care about computer operating systems, please read something else.

I've been using Linux (occasionally known as GNU/Linux) for about the last 13 years. I'm not really an expert, just an enthusiast. Along the way I've heard about these other, more niche UNIX-like operating systems operating somewhere in the Ether. The so-called BSD's, open source descendants of the Berkeley Software Distribution of UNIX. They have been a little less progressive as Linux, being mainly used in server situations. I just haven't spent the time. I still barely know enough about Linux to use it efficiently as a programmer.

But, you know, I here things. I heard that there's a distro of FreeBSD offering a graphical installer and a modern, KDE desktop by default. It's called PC-BSD, and the latest version, 8.1, matching the release of FreeBSD 8.1 is out. I thought, what the heck? I'll give it a try, see what it's like. Most Linux distros are a compilation of a recent Linux kernel, a bunch of standard GNU userland tools, X.Org (the Unix graphical interface), some desktop environment, usually Gnome or KDE, and a bunch of standard open-source software packages. In contrast, PC-BSD is the FreeBSD system (which includes the kernel and standard userland tools -- not GNU, for the most part) as well as X.Org, KDE and some of the same open source software packages you might see on a Linux distro, like Firefox, OpenOffice, Java, etc.

Truth be told, I spend most of my time with the higher-level tools. I don't care or think about kernel-level things like file system drivers or operating system memory management. So, I guess I don't know what I was looking to see. Honestly, the whole experience turned out to be slightly disappointing.

Installation was a bit of a nightmare. I had to use Linux tools to shrink my partition to make room for a new partition on my hard drive to install PC-BSD. The installer wasn't capable of this as it is on the installation disks of most modern Linux distros. The greatest little swiss-army knife of partition fiddling is Parted Magic. OK, so I get the think installed. Word to the wise, if you want to dual boot Linux, don't use the PC-BSD boot loader. It can't boot Ubuntu properly. Grub, the boot loader that comes with Ubuntu and many other fine Linux distros can boot FreeBSD / PC-BSD properly.

So, I got PC-BSD running on my laptop. It detected the Nvidia chipset handily and the modern KDE 4 desktop was quite stunning, as it is I'm sure in Linux. I tried to connect via the wireless chipset in my laptop. I found the Network configuration, selected the wlan0 device, had it scan for wireless connections, it found mine. I selected it, selected WPA encryption, entered the password, clicked OK. Everything seemed to be going fine, but right then my laptop rebooted. Just a nice, hard reboot for my troubles. OK, so PC-BSD isn't ready for my laptop. Ubuntu runs on my laptop fine, BTW, detects the wireless perfectly and just works.

Not to be defeated, I installed PC-BSD on my desktop computer at home, which also is running the latest Ubuntu distribution without issue on any of the hardware. I got it up and running, opting for a network install which involved running CAT-5 across the house to get it connected to the network. It took a long time to install. When it was done, I put away the CAT-5 cable and went to configure the wireless device on this machine. No reboots, but the signal strength was extremely low and the connection was cutting in and out constantly, making it completely unusable.

So, I guess I didn't get very far. I went into the terminal and poked around a bit. Some things are in different places on the file system, the shell, which I think was the C-shell by default, worked about as I expected it. Vim was there, too, so I think I could probably use FreeBSD fine, if I could only get any of my wireless devices working properly. KDE seems quite snappy. Much better than the last time I used it, actually.

In conclusion, I don't think the kernel and core operating system tools are of much concern to me, as a programmer. All the tools I use for productivity are available on FreeBSD / PC-BSD as far as I could tell. The wireless support, regarding breadth of hardware supported, seems to be limited, at least from my random sampling. I didn't really look too far into the FreeBSD ports system or PBI's but it seems maybe a little bit of extra work compared to the ease and ubiquity of Ubuntu/Debian software packages.

For now, I see no immediate benefit from using FreeBSD to outweigh the hardware support issues. I don't have anything against it, either, it seems like they maybe just need a bit of wider desktop/laptop support to be a viable alternative, to my already viable alternative to the closed Microsoft and Apple desktop operating systems. For now, I'll stick with Ubuntu, but I'll try each new release of PC-BSD as they appear. KDE is looking nice these days. Who knows, I may boot it up in Ubuntu (you can do that, you know) for fun.