Quote:
Originally Posted by oscurochu
I am a desktop user, I would like to use enlightenment, firefox (unless i find a lightweight browser i like AND gives me great performance), flash player, webcam (the one build into the dell mini 9's), wireless (Broadcom BCM4312 built in wireless), amsn, pidgin, cheese, evolution (or thunderbird, or possibly a more lightweight alternative), and rhythmbox. If any of these programs (or dirvers) aren't natively available for BSD , please let me know.
|
- All of the BSD's have a port of the Enlightenment window manager, at various versions..
- Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are supported.
- Flash is evil, emulation would be required.. several discussions on the forum here and elsewhere.
- amsn, pidgin, cheese, evolution and rhythmbox are also available.
Driver compatibly is has very much improved for all of BSD derivatives, but saying that one has "more" drivers is inaccurate.. drivers exist for a wide range of hardware, from traditional hardware.. to more exotic things, sometimes things are ported between the individual BSD projects, and even eventually used by Linux (
..it is very likely that one of the drivers you use in Linux was based off of a related BSD driver).
USB Webcam.. OpenBSD supports UVC compatible cameras, implementing a V4L compatibility layer for video applications.
Broadcom is a very awkward company, they do not release documentation for their chipsets.. BCM4312 revision 1 is supported by OpenBSD via
bwi(4), but revision 2 is not, I'm not sure how the other BSD projects fare in this regard.. so you'll have to try things out for yourself (
..FreeBSD supports the morally questionable ndiswrapper, so that might be an option for you).
The integrated graphics in this laptop is from Intel, so it should work on all of the latest releases of OpenBSD/NetBSD and FreeBSD.. DRM/DRM acceleration is supported by all of them as well.
Your wired Ethernet chipset is supported by all of the BSD projects via the
re(4),
re(4) and
re(4) drivers.
Sounds, SD Card Reader, Bluetooth.. it all depends on the capabilities of the individual BSD projects, but they should all work fine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oscurochu
Also, what programs are NOT natively available for BSD? I would like to know before I make the switch so Im not surprised when something doesnt work like I expected.
Thanks
|
Flash player is not natively available for *BSD, but it really shouldn't be.. Flash is horrible and soon to become obsolete post HTML5 adoption.