[Redroar]

Hey all.

I'm not currently running FreeBSD, but in the planning stage of moving to it. I'm one of those people that likes to get everything figured out ahead of time, and then get through configuration quickly. Right now I'm in Arch Linux, but I plan on changing that soon.

I plan on using FreeBSD as a workstation with Openbox, X.org, Zsh, and as of yet I'm undecided about the File Manager.

I have heard....not so good things about HAL on FreeBSD. It seems to work well enough on Linux, but it sounds like it's core is so tied to the Linux API that the port just has issues with the FreeBSD API. I want to have some form of relatively easy mounting through my file manager, and I know of several I enjoy using that work with HAL, but not so many that work otherwise.

I have read that Thunar has some sort of removable media support on FreeBSD that doesn't require HAL, but I can't get much information about it. Does anyone know how well that works? I also know that with configurable actions I can probably use Thunar without any sort of internal volume management, but that is kind of a last ditch option for me...mostly because it quickly becomes a nightmare when using multiple partition USB drives.

I also know that the DesktopBSD traymounter is supposed to be pretty good, except it seems the only way to get it is by downloading ALL the DesktopBSD utilities, which I don't want.

Finally, if I do need HAL for what I'm looking for, is it reasonable to force it not to use policykit? I don't have any need for policykit (considering I'd end up just opening up the HAL rules anyway), but I don't know if it's something necessary for it to work on FreeBSD.

Phew...thank you for any help here. I like Linux, but FreeBSD looks a lot more organized, and the code seems tighter. Plus there isn't that whole 'GPL' thing...