Hi there. Yeah, Gentoo is probably the most flexiable and comprehensive distro of them all. Portage is like ports, but with caching and indexing in a database instead of using flat files layed out in a tree like pkgsrc and ports. If you are married to commercial/proprietary applications, you're stuck for now. Java is now native, and I've ran Acrobat Reader 7 and Realplayer 10 fine under FreeBSD with it's Linux compatibility layer. Most things will run, of course VMware and Flash are the most notible products that do not support *BSD.
My reasons for atleast giving it a try each few releases is: Stability, it is very reliable based on production ready code dating back to AT&T's original UNIX operating system. It is a complete operating system, everything, including the SSL libraries, kernel sources, and userland applications are audited and modified by the BSD core team, who have strict rules on what gets in. It is secure, the code is not as chaotic, and many of the committers work for big companies, are responsible, and knowledgable. BSD is chiefly used in science and high-performance computing environments, so it is scalable, and is portable on a handful of architectures.
I have used FreeBSD on i386, AMD64, PowerPC, and SPARC64. The main thing I like is consistancy, you don't have to relearn stuff twice generally. The installation routines indicated by my Walnuat Creek FreeBSD 4.1 for the most part still work, even after all of those releases.
There are other reasons, but a big one is the ports system. There are about 10,000 ports available. Essentially all open-source software written in a POSIX/ANSI compatible manner will work on *BSD. There are also a lot of commercial titles in the ports system, which can be installed by passing options to the make command. You could compare this to unmasking if you liked.
I've used FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Gentoo myself, as well as many other systems, distros, etcetera. I really like how the FreeBSD releases are solid and work with the majority of my daily problems by being able to handle the demands of my business.
As I said on BSDtalk #43 when I was interviewed by Will Backman, BSD to me is just better, but I really need Flash, no matter how little such a thing may be. Hopefully if people actually get up, download a copy, install it, read some documentation from the site and from some of the great O'Reilly books, and understand it, then we'll have more BSD users. I really don't like the rivally between the systems, and I really emphisize that writing cross-compatible code is important.
I can use GNOME, KDE, Fluxbox, WindowMaker, Firefox with Java (Native now, thanks to the FreeBSD Foundation), and thousands of other common titles if I like, just by using packages available from 20 or so FTP mirrors, or via ports if I want to build extra features like Gentoo USE flags.
Gentoo is currently having problems with chaotic release structuring and proposal acceptance, I heard. Maybe they can borrow another idea, not just ports from the BSD projects, that being the control over releases to assure quality and consistancy.
Actually GNOME has generally the same features as KDE, but it lacks the graphical widgets and controls to customize certain aspects. Most of GNOME customization is done through the included preferences, although gnome's gconf-2 editor will let you do the rest. While it is true that KDE is probably more advanced, GNOME does have the extra polish. KDE can also be made to have this so called polish too, but we're talking about desktop use here. People want a desktop out of the box with a decent looking desktop, well organized, and not extreme on ram usage. GNOME is chiefly based on C, although it does have Python and Perl integration also. I really would love the Portland project to work out between the two projects. As far as commercial applications, Alsa needs to always be a plugin or second bet, because if you drop OSS support, you are dropping compatibility for Solaris and *BSD. I can run Skype under FreeBSD with linux-compat-8 fine, but if Alsa is the only option, FreeBSD kernel developers will have to pump out a kernel module to translate the calls. Right now it's essentially native. There are a few things missing from BSD on the desktop which I outlined in BSDtalk #43 with Will Backman. Visit http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/ and subscribe if you want to keep in touch with BSD developers, users, and enthusiasts. Mac OS X will always have the edge over Linux and BSD because of the patenting issues, so it's very moot comparing them. Of course XGL and GNOME are far more flexiable then Aqua to customize, but there is definitely a limit which should be imposed to reduce confusion, when it comes to knobs and gizmos.
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Hi there. Yeah, Gentoo is probably the most flexiable and comprehensive distro of them all. Portage is like ports, but with caching and indexing in a database instead of using flat files layed out in a tree like pkgsrc and ports. If you are married to commercial/proprietary applications, you're stuck for now. Java is now native, and I've ran Acrobat Reader 7 and Realplayer 10 fine under FreeBSD with it's Linux compatibility layer. Most things will run, of course VMware and Flash are the most notible products that do not support *BSD. My reasons for atleast giving it a try each few releases is: Stability, it is very reliable based on production ready code dating back to AT&T's original UNIX operating system. It is a complete operating system, everything, including the SSL libraries, kernel sources, and userland applications are audited and modified by the BSD core team, who have strict rules on what gets in. It is secure, the code is not as chaotic, and many of the committers work for big companies, are responsible, and knowledgable. BSD is chiefly used in science and high-performance computing environments, so it is scalable, and is portable on a handful of architectures. I have used FreeBSD on i386, AMD64, PowerPC, and SPARC64. The main thing I like is consistancy, you don't have to relearn stuff twice generally. The installation routines indicated by my Walnuat Creek FreeBSD 4.1 for the most part still work, even after all of those releases. There are other reasons, but a big one is the ports system. There are about 10,000 ports available. Essentially all open-source software written in a POSIX/ANSI compatible manner will work on *BSD. There are also a lot of commercial titles in the ports system, which can be installed by passing options to the make command. You could compare this to unmasking if you liked. I've used FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Gentoo myself, as well as many other systems, distros, etcetera. I really like how the FreeBSD releases are solid and work with the majority of my daily problems by being able to handle the demands of my business. As I said on BSDtalk #43 when I was interviewed by Will Backman, BSD to me is just better, but I really need Flash, no matter how little such a thing may be. Hopefully if people actually get up, download a copy, install it, read some documentation from the site and from some of the great O'Reilly books, and understand it, then we'll have more BSD users. I really don't like the rivally between the systems, and I really emphisize that writing cross-compatible code is important. I can use GNOME, KDE, Fluxbox, WindowMaker, Firefox with Java (Native now, thanks to the FreeBSD Foundation), and thousands of other common titles if I like, just by using packages available from 20 or so FTP mirrors, or via ports if I want to build extra features like Gentoo USE flags. Gentoo is currently having problems with chaotic release structuring and proposal acceptance, I heard. Maybe they can borrow another idea, not just ports from the BSD projects, that being the control over releases to assure quality and consistancy.
Actually GNOME has generally the same features as KDE, but it lacks the graphical widgets and controls to customize certain aspects. Most of GNOME customization is done through the included preferences, although gnome's gconf-2 editor will let you do the rest. While it is true that KDE is probably more advanced, GNOME does have the extra polish. KDE can also be made to have this so called polish too, but we're talking about desktop use here. People want a desktop out of the box with a decent looking desktop, well organized, and not extreme on ram usage. GNOME is chiefly based on C, although it does have Python and Perl integration also. I really would love the Portland project to work out between the two projects. As far as commercial applications, Alsa needs to always be a plugin or second bet, because if you drop OSS support, you are dropping compatibility for Solaris and *BSD. I can run Skype under FreeBSD with linux-compat-8 fine, but if Alsa is the only option, FreeBSD kernel developers will have to pump out a kernel module to translate the calls. Right now it's essentially native. There are a few things missing from BSD on the desktop which I outlined in BSDtalk #43 with Will Backman. Visit http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/ and subscribe if you want to keep in touch with BSD developers, users, and enthusiasts. Mac OS X will always have the edge over Linux and BSD because of the patenting issues, so it's very moot comparing them. Of course XGL and GNOME are far more flexiable then Aqua to customize, but there is definitely a limit which should be imposed to reduce confusion, when it comes to knobs and gizmos.