Instead of doing what everybody else does, run a linux, why don't you give PC-BSD a try?
http://www.pcbsd.org/
It's older, cooler and a direct descendant of the original UNIX.
Ports do not need to be compiled as root. But you do need to set WRKDIRPREFIX to somewhere the user can write. Ports will be build in this directory. By default the port system will use a subdirectory in the port itself, which indeed can't be written to by a normal user. It's all pretty well documented in the ports(7) manpage.
As for the second, nothing I can do about that. ARM is still a Tier2 supported architecture:(
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Instead of doing what everybody else does, run a linux, why don't you give PC-BSD a try? http://www.pcbsd.org/ It's older, cooler and a direct descendant of the original UNIX.
Ports do not need to be compiled as root. But you do need to set WRKDIRPREFIX to somewhere the user can write. Ports will be build in this directory. By default the port system will use a subdirectory in the port itself, which indeed can't be written to by a normal user. It's all pretty well documented in the ports(7) manpage. As for the second, nothing I can do about that. ARM is still a Tier2 supported architecture :(
May I ask what made you conclude FreeBSD wasn't for you?