Which BSD should I use?

[Randux]

I've used several BSDs over the past three or four years including OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and DragonFly. To me they all have things I really like about them but I still use Slackware for my main workstation partly because of my own ignorance and partly because the gnu tools make it easier to build most source on Linux than on BSD. I've been multibooting a bunch of different OS on one box and it wasn't a good way to really learn BSD because I didn't have a dedicated box to live with day to day.

I do now.

I am setting up a new box and I want to choose one BSD that can do what I need. I have three major goals for this box.

One, it should be a good desktop with all the applications I need. I've made acceptable desktops with all the BSD I mentioned so this is not an issue.

Two, on Slackware I'm able to download source for just about anything and compile it and make my own package with the package tools available on Slackware. I don't understand how to do this on BSD because of the dual make/gmake, autoconf, configure, etc. It seems to me that I have to use ports or pkgsrc because things need so much tweaking to compile on BSD. Is there any easy way to do this yourself and not rely on something being in ports or pkgsrc? (I know you can make packages from ports or pkgsrc, but I want to be able to do this on my own. Is it reasonable & possible.)

Three, I need to run Winbloze for some apps I need for my job. I refuse to waste a box on Bloze, so now I'm running it in VMWare. I need to be able to run a winbloze system in a VM or emulator. NetBSD seems to be a little behind FreeBSD on the VMWare version and OpenBSD doesn't have it at all in packages. I haven't checked ports yet.

Thanks for any helpful suggestions.

Rand