I have downloaded the FreeBSD 9.0 CURRENT ISO and I am planning to install that UNIX distribution to get more practice using a UNIX based operating system instead of always using Debian based Linux distributions. I want to try out the Intel KMS patch that is available for the FreeBSD 9.0 and later releases, therefore I could not use my existing FreeBSD 8.1 DVD to install and test out the patches. Compiling a custom kernel on FreeBSD is very easy and it should not be too hard to get the KMS code working. This code supports the Intel chipset, which I just happen to have and I am wanting to get this working. I would be tempted to switch from Linux to BSD if I can get the Kernel Mode Setting code working and have a nice accelerated desktop instead of using the slow vesa driver that is the fallback default for FreeBSD if it does not support your hardware. I have had FreeBSD working nicely before on a laptop with Intel graphics, but that was not using KMS and it worked perfectly. After the KMS code is available for FreeBSD it will be a worthwhile competitor on the desktop against Linux; which is strongly engrained in the Internet, powering websites, and many desktop computers around the world that are used for many and varied tasks. I want to write more tips on my BSD page about various tasks required for maintaining the FreeBSD system and more information on using Ports
I wonder if FreeBSD will get the GTK 3.0 code and Gnome 3/Shell. That would be nice, as the Gnome 3 desktop is quite customisable and attractive. I have a spare IDE hard drive that I may use to install the FreeBSD 9.0 distribution on to, and if I unplug my other drives, then I can just use the defaults to install the operating system and then set up the latest KMS patch and see how I go with that. And as I said, I want to run another operating system to gain more experience with computers. My website has been hit hard by the latest Google Panda update and I have been trimming back the cruft on my website to optimise the experience. I have removed countless useless comments from my blog, most were just spam comments that were linking to pointless unrelated content. Cleaning up your website by removing the spammers comments and spam links will help your website as you will not be linking to pointless casino, iPad and affiliate website links. Getting back to the FreeBSD distribution of UNIX, the KMS code does not seem to be available for this release yet, this means that FreeBSD will continue to fall behind Linux when it comes to supporting modern computer hardware. This is a shame, but the community around FreeBSD is smaller than the massive Linux user and developer community that use and support many Linux distributions.