BSD on the desktop is possible, especially if you use something like FreeBSD where the hardware support is generally ahead of NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD and OpenBSD, and support for newer technologies is more available (binary drives from NVIDIA are pretty important as well if you want 3D acceleration), sadly though support is lacking for a lot of drivers. FreeBSD for example is just getting around to implementing the parts required for Intel graphics [1].

However compared to Linux I wouldn't use BSD as a desktop/laptop system. Linux is simply further along in supporting what is required for power saving, for clocking the cpu up and down, newer technologies and even older technologies if you are using older devices (in [1] for example, only gen4-6 graphics are supported, so if you have older Intel it won't work, or not correctly).

The other major issue is that many of the projects such as Gnome, KDE, XFCE and others have started using so many different Linux only interfaces for which no good documentation exists to replicate the functionality in the BSD's that you will find that certain features just don't work. See for example [2] which is a post from a Xfce developer on why XFCE had to drop support for the BSD's... on that same post you see a comment from Warner Losh the creator of devd(8) on FreeBSD asking where he can find good documentation on udev in Linux so that he can implement the compatibility stream on top of devd(8) [3].

No, I would not use BSD on the desktop unless it is by purchasing Mac OS X. Personally I am a HUGE FreeBSD fan, I absolutely love it. I run FreeBSD almost exclusively on my servers unless a specific piece of software very specifically requires Linux. I build software for FreeBSD, I deliver to clients FreeBSD installs and do consulting based on FreeBSD. FreeBSD on the server is absolutely fantastic, it is rock solid, I've had machines running for years on end without issues (no, not internet facing ones, yes they were all patched for remote exploits, local exploits I cared less about in this particular setting). Unfortunately I no longer run FreeBSD as my desktop, I used to for the longest time but unfortunately that time has come and gone.

Personally I am currently using a MacBook Pro running OS X 10.8 for my desktop/laptop needs, which provides me the same interfaces as FreeBSD does so it makes programming fairly simple. If it compiles/builds on Mac OS X it is almost guaranteed to compile/build on FreeBSD and run without issues.

[1]: http://wiki.freebsd.org/Intel_GPU [2]: http://gezeiten.org/post/2011/01/Xfce-4.8-on-BSD-flavors [3]: http://gezeiten.org/post/2011/01/Xfce-4.8-on-BSD-flavors#c14...