I am running FreeBSD 6.2 RC2 on an IBM T21 laptop. It works fine except xorg (the default X distribution) was crashing my machine. So I removed xorg and installed XFree86 from ports. XFree86 is working fine. Here is my XF86Config. The sound driver is csa, so kldload snd_csa if you want sound to work. Or enable it in rc.conf. Power management works well. Just run powerd and the defaults are good. Or put enable_powerd in your rc.conf. XTerm was acting weird so I installed aterm, which is lighter anyway. A disadvantage of using XFree86 is that many binary packages are linked against the xorg libraries. This seems stupid to me since the X API is pretty standard. Why not use standardized X libraries instead of predetermining in the X server software? Anyway, the result is that most packages must be compiled from source. This is a waste of time and electricity and a generator of noise and heat. Compiling Firefox from source takes a long time on a T21. But it completed and works fine.

FreeBSD does not work well by default. You need to do a little bit of hacking to get it nice. Nontechnical people will not be able to do that "little bit of hacking." So nontechnical people cannot set up a FreeBSD 6.2 box. If a nontechnical person wants to use FreeBSD, they will need a little bit of help from a technical person. Unless the system installs by default with X working in a good mode and sound working and the network DHCP'ing, most people will not find the system usable. And the first thing most people will reach for when the system boots is a browser, so they can connect to the familiar and comfortable WWW. But FreeBSD, by default, does not come with a browser. So nontechnical people will not have a pleasant experience.

If the FreeBSD authors want to improve the usability of their system, I suggest that they give installation CDs to nontechnical people and have them attempt to install it and use it. And the FreeBSD authors can keep quiet and watch, and write down all of the places where people struggle and get frustrated, and improve those parts of the system. It will be extremely frustrating for the FreeBSD authors to watch people struggle with such "simple" things. But they need to accept reality first, and then take positive steps.