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PC-BSD is pretty much FreeBSD with a nice installer, a binary-based package installer and preconfigured DEs. In other words, FreeBSD's very thorough hardware compatibility list is what you should be looking at. It even says so several times in the PC-BSD docs.
To save you some reading, pretty much any business class x86/64 workstation will be supported, most wireless devices are supported, and nearly every wired Ethernet device is supported. Video support is best on Nvidia and Intel but still iffy on AMD/ATI. The Intel driver still has issues with virtual terminals, I believe. And of course just about any x86/64 server hardware works fine.
In my experience, the only times I've had hardware issues were when I tried FreeBSD or PC-BSD on low quality consumer grade hardware, especially laptops. On business workstations and laptops it's pretty solid. Which, of course, makes good sense given its pedigree.
You can read all about the sound system here:
http://wiki.freebsd.org/Sound




Member since:
2011-04-11
And as usual, the list of compatible devices is buried somewhere deep, and no list of compatible systems is provided. When will these guys learn? We users do not want to play roulette. What we want is: Here is our OS and here are the devices and systems it supports. Optional: Here is where to buy systems with our OS preinstalled.
Also, what's the point of having a compatibility check tool that can be run only after you 've downloaded the OS? Can't they release a version for Windows and OS X?
Anyway, I really like the concept of PC-BSD. I 've heard you can run it over OpenGL (without losing the GUI) and not have to tolerate X. Also, what audio system does PC-BSD use?
Edited 2012-12-23 16:49 UTC