BSD vs linux - when to pick one over the other

[happybunny]

I see alot of screen shots this month with bsd as the OS and was curious to know how bsd is as a daily desktop/laptop setup?

My possibly mis-informed little mind has bsd as a backend server workhorse, and maybe not so great/customizable/eye-popping as a modern linux install.

Does bsd offer better desktop performance or options over linux? Does linux have better this or better that? Are applications as availible to both?

For those of you who use both, what determines where you deploy one over the other?

thanks...
m1ke_l

[ooagentbender]

Linux is better for everyday use, in general it is percieved to run on more hardware and has a couple of distros with more polished desktop integration. Performance tests have shown Linux to be faster for many server applications that spawn a lot of threads as well.

I dunno, im not a big fan of FreeBSD but I think OpenBSD is an awesome project (they have stuck to their guns). But I run linux, so Im probably biased.

[soulestream]

Well, I have breif experience with FreeBSD, but I would imagine that gnome,kde, flux, etc can all be used on *BSD. So the only thing making it more or less a desktop OS would be hardware support. I know the BSD kernel is much more compact, but hardware support seems good.

I think it is still a matter of preference. I think desktopbsd is still around too.


Soule

[je_fro]

BSD FLIES on every machine I've ever put it on. Much faster than Linux. But the nvidia 3D drivers are terrible and I have to run several binary-only scientific programs that don't work well on BSD. (though I'm sure I could find a way to make them work with emulation...)
It's the lack of decent 3D that keeps me from using BSD on my desktop, and that's it in a nutshell.