After reading this post and
that one, I dont figure out a short term solution about linux desktops in FreeBSD.
I come from Windows as a fw/sw developer and user for many years and never liked linux, I don't want to talk about this anyway. Not many years ago I installed some linux systems to take a look and finally come to FreeBSD, an OS with a more serious background (as DutchDaemon explained in the other thread).
I don't have enough knowledge about X windows to talk about it, but as stated on
http://www.x.org/wiki/XorgHAL the support for HAL will be stopped on future releases in favor of udev. Someone suggested to make a proprietary desktop, but this problem is not about a desktop, it's about the whole graphic environment. All the existing desktop environments are based on the X window system, avoiding udev means reimplement the graphic environment. I think the less painful solution is to implement a BSD's devd plug-in for X windows system with the same udev APIs (or something alike). The best should be a common API not related with the base drivers, but this is a matter of xorg folks
Code:
--- HAL --------
/ \
X Windows IO --> ---- udev -------- --> X Windows common IO APIs
\ / (for desktops' developers)
--- BSD devd ---
FreeBSD is capable of such architecture, most non-FreeBSD components (3rd party software, plugins, drivers or what the proper name is) aren't, but as I said, my knowledge about unix-like OSs is very limited.