If I was going to build a private home server, I would choose SmartOS as well. It has all the parts needed and most importantly, virtual networking OOTB via CrossBow. I have not found any feature complete virtual networking in Linux or *BSD. Have to use XEN or VMWare.

With that said, I use Linux for my desktop as it gives the best user experience on a laptop. IMO, FreeBSD and variants still don't cut it at this time for dekstop.

> IMO, FreeBSD and variants still don't cut it at this time for desktop.

Sadly, I agree. My experience running FreeBSD on a laptop has been terrible. I do have one ancient laptop running OpenBSD that works perfectly. But due to the smaller number of developers and less enthusiastic support by hardware companies, hardware support is far behind Linux.

On the server, this is less of an issue, because there is less hardware to support, and virtualization, it becomes even easier.

Too late to EDIT: What I meant to say was: and WITH Virtualization

Have you tried SmartOS as a desktop by chance? I’d love to use SmartOS for my workstation but am currently using Ubuntu with ZoL because I doubted the level of GPU support on SmartOS.

SmartOS isn't really for workstations, unless your workstation doesn't need a GUI (mine does). That said, I'm about to create a blog post and youtube video on how to run SmartOS at home for real cheap (as in cheap hardware and electricity)

I’ll be interested in that article.

I have not tried it yet but the OpenIndiana project is designated as a desktop distribution of Illumos. SmartOS is based on Illumos as well. OpenIndiana seems promising but I would not set my expectations too high for the desktop experience. However, if you virtualize Ubuntu or another *Nix distribution under OpenIndiana, it may fill some needed gaps.

Thanks, may try OpenIndiana at some point. It’s fairly low on the priority list... but running an Ubuntu/Debian container might be a good approach. Though containers and sharing GPU resources could be tricky.