Re: The thing about Linux Desktop
Jon, I'm not sure if you're using sloppy terminology, but whilst yes, applications are updated separately from the OS on BSD, one of the major BSD/Linux differences is that BSD features an integrated kernel and userland, and Linux does not. There's then ports/packages on top of the base userland, but for FreeBSD it seems pretty necessary to do an update on a regular basis when installing new apps as even on STABLE components can get out of sync. Course, if you're mainly running apache this is likely to be less on an issue.
systemd has nothing to do with this architecture, and is a very Linux specific solution. If it existed under FreeBSD it would be maintained as part of base.
In the nicest possible way, if you don't have money to buy Office, the companies that would create a decent e-mail based collaboration system don't care about you. This isn't going to happen for free, it needs a large population of users to sign up for it. At the home user end this will not happen, because they'll use Google apps instead.
FreeBSD hasn't hit the mobile market because there's no room for it. For better or worse Android went with Linux, and everyone else except iOS have failed to make any dent on the market - the technical underpinnings are irrelevant too, as Android really was awful when released, and it's hardly perfect now.
Also, the FreeBSD team lack the resource. FreeBSD support on laptops is barely adequate, forget mobiles. It took until FreeBSD 11 before my ten year old laptop stopped shutting down due to heat, something that doesn't occur on any version of Windows, probably didn't happen under Linux, and didn't happen under the other BSDs either. The FreeBSD mailing lists freely admit laptop support is sub par.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
