30 days of PC-BSD
It's no secret that BSD isn't as ready for prime time (meaning the desktop) as Linux. There just isn't enough critical mass, not enough hardware supported. I've done a few BSD installs in the past week, some successful (PC-BSD), some not (DesktopBSD, FreeBSD). But I haven't spent 30 days living in BSD, as did Jan Stedehoude of the Ruminations on the Digital Realm blog.
While I ran PC-BSD 1.3, it was super fast -- probably the best implementation of KDE ever. But I couldn't get any resolution above 640 x 480 on my Gateway laptop that ran the installer at the normal resolution of 1024 x 768. My FreeBSD install -- after going through lengthy menus ticking off what packages I wanted -- died because I didn't use a big enough partition (you think the installer could've figured that out BEFORE it began the whole process?). DesktopBSD installed, but it came pretty much software-free. I went into the package manager, grabbed a bunch of stuff, had it install, got about 100 error messages about outdated packages, and then had none of the apps work.
One thing: BSD has a LOT of apps. Everything I ever wanted was available. I just couldn't get it to run.
Then the new PC-BSD 1.4 crashed during its install. It's enough to send me running at full speed back to Debian and Ubuntu.
Still ... that KDE speed ... it does tempt.