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Have you tried VirtualBSD?

Paul Venezia is not wondering why more folks aren't using FreeBSD on the desktop: on the first page he tells us about the uptime of his server (which runs FreeBSD) and whatever he has to say about other uses of FreeBSD is on page two -- and quoted in full in the summary. In other words, he's not making a strong case in favor of FreeBSD on the desktop, except for a generic reference to "performance and stability" which, let's be honest, could be said just about any recent OS.

That said, my desktop of choice is FreeBSD and not because I dislike Linux, but because I like FreeBSD better and, assuming you have the right hardware, it makes for a more than viable desktop. And no, I don't think that hardware support is as limited as it used to be: for instance my little ZOTAC HD-AD01 is fully supported (video, audio, wired and wireless network all work with a plain FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE).

Anyway, since Paul Venezia also mentions virtualization, I'll go ahead and leave with a shameless plug about VirtualBSD which, as the name implies, offers a virtualized (but desktop oriented) FreeBSD that can be used with VMware or, after a few tweaks, VirtualBox.

Oh, and version 9.0 will be out as soon as FreeBSD 9.0 is ready! ;-)

RT.