I think that for syllable and haiku the interface you face at the command line will probably be the gnu tools (so will look, formally at least, like linux or bsd). And of course as several have said you may have trouble with drivers, so you'll be constrained on your hardware.
Also, as a small correction to the summary that BSDfan666 made, i believe that the syllable server based on linux is not being pursued right now (that's what i heard from them a few months ago, although if somebody wants to work on it they're a friendly crowd and would probably welcome submissions).
However, i think the potential advantage that haiku and syllable offer is that their guis are not based on nor layered on top of X11, but rather are based on some systematic framework with a standard API and look-and-feel.
In other words, the approach would be much more like the Mac or the Amiga (and how is Aros doing, btw?).
That's why the syllable server based on linux would have been so good: you would have all the drivers and stability of linux, but without X11.
And i wonder, is there any free version of BSD or linux which comes with some GUI besides X11? For the BSD side at least, the Mac should be a very strong proof-of-concept.
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