I am one of those strange people that still prefer FreeBSD to any Linux desktop/server distribution.

I also used Linux for several years before I started to learn and use FreeBSD, and sometimes I still use Linux, but only when I am payed to do so.

After several years with FreeBSD I even tried to move back to Linux, hearing all these 'advertisements' how good it is on the desktop, how painful FreeBSD is on the desktop etc.

So I used Ubuntu Linux for a whole year on the desktop/workstation without using FreeBSD. My experiences with that quickly got me back to FreeBSD, let me tell You why. First, hangs and crashes that was fixable only by reboot, the sound mostly. I did not turned of that workstation, as that was not needed, so every 2-4 days I was forced to do the reboot just to have the sound back. No matter if I used that sound (play music) during that 2-4 days or the machine just stayed idle, it hanged anyway. Reloading the ALSA modules did not help. Maybe it was a bug, but I always was 'up-to-date' and ALSA and the kernel were upgraded many time, even two time to the 'next big release'.

The other 'awful' thing is the updates. They work the same way like in Windows, for 9/10 times, they fix things, but on the 10/10 You end up with totally broken system that even can not boot, and like with Windows: "With minor problems reboot, with major problem reinstall."

That never happened to me on the FreeBSD land every upgrade/update of the FreeBSD's base system succeed.

There are other distributions You say ... yes there are, but which ones? Linux Mint is basically the same as Ubuntu, but with different default GUI and with some more codecs loaded in by default. I also have an allergy to anything that Lennart did, so for example Arch Linux is dead for me because it uses systemd and pulseaudio. Fedora 'the Lennux'? No thanks.

The whole Linux ecosystem seems broken to me because of all the things explained here: http://www.pappp.net/?p=969

Also, I do not longer want to go back to OSS vs ALSA discussion, where OSS from the FreeBSD base system just works for me with everything I do and ALSA does not on so many ways.

I do not want to 'flame' again the 'initrd' mechanism in Linux where some drivers are in the initrd and some other are in the kernel and others are in the modules, but modules are not for initrd but just kernel, the kernel and initrd is under /boot but the modules are under /lib/modules /... this is just plain mess for me.

On FreeBSD You have one directory with kernel and modules /boot/kernel period. No other subkernels like initrd just to boot and then pass the machine to the 'real' kernel.
Using FreeBSD on the desktop requires knowledge and experience, and that makes it hard to use as a desktop/workstation. PC-BSD tries to change that, we will se how far can it go with it.

A lot of people ask, why You use FreeBSD when there is Linux?

I would ask the opposite, why You use Linux when there is FreeBSD?

I have here ZFS with latest 5000 version, yes, this is the next version after ZFS v28, this is ZFS Feature Flags.

I have ZFS Boot Environments with sysutils/beadm, the same way as it works on Solaris (even better), so I can create a bootable snapshot and destroy everything in my system, even rm -rf /* but after the reboot I may choose to boot from BE created just before that disaster and ... nothing happened.

I do not use DTrace, but many probably do. Jails are very nice thought. I already spoken about OSS in the base system, I already written about deterministic and reliable upgrades. I can also repeat the 'known' properties of FreeBSD like great documentation, great community, a very logical attitude in OS mechanisms and filesystem hierarchy ...

FreeBSD is no panacea to all operating systems problem, it has its own issues, the FreeBSD team has a lot of less resource (and hype) then the Linux world, but taking all the 'cons' and 'pros' its a lot less painful to use FreeBSD then to use any Linux.

If You are interested in FreeBSD desktop workstation, then check these:
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=35308
https://cooltrainer.org/2012/01/02/a-freebsd-9-desktop-how-t...

... and I do not want You to see this comment as Linux bashing, these are just my thought about using Linux and using FreeBSD.

Regards,
vermaden