Linux may soon have a stronger open-source competitor on the desktop if FreeBSD's plans come to fruition. FreeBSD developer Scott Long told ZDNet UK on Thursday that the operating system, descended from the Unix derivative BSD, is "quickly approaching" feature parity with Linux. "Lots of work is going on to make FreeBSD more friendly on the desktop," Long said. "Within the year, we expect to have, or be near, parity with Linux."

I can't comment on the BSDs as it's not a subject I'm at all educated on, I can only speak for Linux which I've been using successfully for years.

You may be correct, however, the market (users & corporate sponsors) have ultimately made their choice, for now. Surely the majority of free *nix offshoots has made a choice and it's pretty clear that the BSDs just aren't getting the attention Linux and it's many thriving distros are getting by personal users and professionals.

Most techies who are interested in alternatives to Windows or Unix would, at this point, not see as much of an advantage using a BSD as they would using Linux just due to the simple fact that there are more people out there to support them in the Linux community.

I'm not saying I'd never be interested in a BSD flavor myself...I'm interested in everything...but Gentoo gives me all of the power and I see no advantage to using a BSD at this point. Gentoo's community has been amazing and is growing fairly rapidly, even today where we now have Ubuntu and a Novell-sponsored SuSE.

In closing...the fact that the BSD "leaders" can swiftly make an abrupt change w/o the permission of its many participants isn't necessarily an advantage. If there were a technical (or social) advantage there I think we would clearly see it rise above. Perhaps we will someday?

"In closing...the fact that the BSD "leaders" can swiftly make an abrupt change w/o the permission of its many participants isn't necessarily an advantage. If there were a technical (or social) advantage there I think we would clearly see it rise above. Perhaps we will someday?"

You mean like OSX? Or Windows?

Linux arguably has more people behind it than OSX, not to mention a huge head start and even billions of dollars invested in it. Apple in the span of only 2 or 3 years created an operating system that is mainstream ready.

Say what you will of the OSS development model, but sometimes there is alot to be said for greater control.

Some numbers show Linux adoption on the desktop even greater (albeit not by much) than OSX. Apple is now considering another kernel, why is that? I'm sincerely asking, I honestly don't know. However, there must be a significant flaw for them to consider this sweeping change. Technically (not legally? not sure here) they could port their desktop to a Linux kernel...and probably do just as well if not better, couldn't they? Again, I don't know squat about Darwin, so I'm just speculating.

Microsoft had to ditch their old development model in favor of one more "open source-like" during the development of Vista because the old way of doing things (and the old code-base) had become impossible to work with. This was said to be done to further help Windows development keep pace with open source development.

I wish I had the Wired article from a few months back that went into great detail on Microsoft and these changes I mentioned, if I find it I'll post the source. However, you should be able to find plenty of publications w/ references to this information.