I am a long-time power desktop Linux user, or at least based on my typical usage; as I do programming as well as some media work on my current Debian Linux platform.
I use a HP dv6314 laptop with Intel Core 2 Duo 1.7 GHz, with onboard Intel HDA sound, IPW 3945 wireless and e1000 ethernet, NVidia GeForce 7400 mobile and I use the following software:
1. Mencoder/mplayer for video conversion / editing / playing and writing to a DVD.
2. DeVeDe for writing video DVDs.
3. Python programming, PHP editing and maintaining my website.
4. Drawing and editing comics with a WizardPen-based 5.5x4" tablet in GIMP. I'm not sure if the WP driver is supported in BSD.
5. Play SDL-based games (and occasionally 3d games like Flightgear).
6. Occasionally compose music with Rosegarden and Timidity softsynth.
7. Watch YouTube videos occasionally.
I'm not sure if it's worth switching to FreeBSD, but I'd like the opinion of experienced FreeBSD users if I can even accomplish some of the above tasks in FreeBSD. Or even if I can, how much of customization I will need to achieve the results above.
On Linux, most of the hardware on the laptop is supported.
In particular, I'm concerned whether video editing etc. etc. is possible and optimal in BSD as opposed to Linux.
You might ask "why not stick with Linux?"
Actually I'm not sure either way, but of late I am very interested in BSD and would like to really find out if it can be an attractive desktop alternative for me.
I use a HP dv6314 laptop with Intel Core 2 Duo 1.7 GHz, with onboard Intel HDA sound, IPW 3945 wireless and e1000 ethernet, NVidia GeForce 7400 mobile and I use the following software:
1. Mencoder/mplayer for video conversion / editing / playing and writing to a DVD.
2. DeVeDe for writing video DVDs.
3. Python programming, PHP editing and maintaining my website.
4. Drawing and editing comics with a WizardPen-based 5.5x4" tablet in GIMP. I'm not sure if the WP driver is supported in BSD.
5. Play SDL-based games (and occasionally 3d games like Flightgear).
6. Occasionally compose music with Rosegarden and Timidity softsynth.
7. Watch YouTube videos occasionally.
I'm not sure if it's worth switching to FreeBSD, but I'd like the opinion of experienced FreeBSD users if I can even accomplish some of the above tasks in FreeBSD. Or even if I can, how much of customization I will need to achieve the results above.
On Linux, most of the hardware on the laptop is supported.
In particular, I'm concerned whether video editing etc. etc. is possible and optimal in BSD as opposed to Linux.
You might ask "why not stick with Linux?"
Actually I'm not sure either way, but of late I am very interested in BSD and would like to really find out if it can be an attractive desktop alternative for me.