Wasn't that called Xenix?

I quite agree. That 'window' of opportunity (in a manner of speaking) existed during the entire Windows 8.x fiasco, but neither Linux nor the BSDs seized the initiative. Now, Microsoft is in a comeback mode w/ Windows 10, and it's unlikely that that opportunity will come again anytime soon. Unless another Ballmer replaces Nadella anytime soon.

There are a few derivative distros of FreeBSD, but none of PC-BSD. All those distros are generally either exclusively for servers, or have some special features (DragonFly's SMP, NAS for network storage and pFsense for Firewalls/Routing). So if the BSDs want a single OS to target laptops, PC-BSD it is. They now support a variety of DEs, and have done an excellent job in making most applications behave well under most DEs (exceptions being the GTK3 apps running under anything other than GNOME3)

Lumina is just ONE of the available desktop environments for PC-BSD, and that too, not the default. The default is still KDE. I've used Lumina - had some rough edges previously, but is currently much improved.

It almost is. Consider all those applications that would previously be prefaced by K - KMail, Kontacts, Krita, KOffice, et al. In fact, KOffice has become Calligra, which is reasonably good, but could be better. And they've dealt w/ the multiple platform issue a lot better than Microsoft did: they have KDE Plasma Desktop for desktops, Plasma Netbooks for laptops & netbooks, and Plasma Active for tablets, phones & phablets.

In fact, for a while, PC-BSD, and previously, another BSD called DesktopBSD, was KDE only. It was only in version 9 that they added support for some 8 different window managers.

When I bought a new laptop last year, it came w/ Windows 8.1, which was unusable, due to the hot corners and all that. I had visited a Linux Expo and met the FreeBSD guys, and got a PC-BSD DVD from them. Initially, the laptop had trouble recognizing it, but once I went into BIOS and changed the bootup settings, that got fixed. This was during 10.0, before the current version that includes UEFI support (and which needs to be installed from scratch - that part can't be an upgrade). I made a conscious decision to wipe out Windows 8.1 and not look back (which I couldn't have anyway, since the laptop didn't come w/ a Windows 8.1 DVD - another brilliant decision by MS)

My setup has worked well, w/ a few exceptions. It doesn't recognize the Intel WiFi, so I have to run an Ethernet cable from the router to the laptop, making it effectively a desktop. Last week, somebody needed to have a GoToMeeting session w/ me, and since the webcam is not recognized, that didn't happen. I also have a Brother P-touch label maker that has its own driver internally, and so obviously, that only works w/ Windows and nothing else. But other than this, I have had no issues, since all my usage is either in browsers (I use both Chromium and FireFox) or Thunderbird. For the Office application, I tend to use Calligra, but I guess others will prefer Libre-Office. I've created multiple users in the system for different roles that I play - one account for my office, one for my personal things like banking and other services, one for the various blogs including /., one for games and so on. For each of them, I use different DEs to experiment w/ them and get used to them. I use Lumina (primarily), KDE, LXDE and both GNOME3 classic shell and GNOME3.

One thing that happened a couple of months ago to my surprise. I had to change my router from a Belkin to a Linksys, which changes the gateway address from 192.168.2.1 to 192.168.1.1. I tried going into various text terminals and changing it, but wouldn't work. Ultimately, I found out, by trial & error, that I was supposed to go into the Control Panel and change it from there. Once I did, it worked like a charm. The PC-BSD handbook does a good job in telling you how to do things, but falls flat on its face if something doesn't work as it should.

While it could be a lot better, my PC-BSD experience has been satisfactory.

While iXsystems does own both OSs, I think PC-BSD has a number of things that should be quite independent of what's happening on the FreeBSD side. For starters, device drivers. I've written here in the past about shoddy support for WiFi - INTEL'S. The other day, I tried doing a GoToMeeting session, and it didn't work, despite having both Chromium & FireFox on the box. FreeBSD has no reason to support WiFi or webcams, but my usage was one of the rare but critical instances that causes people to have a second Windows laptop/tablet for precisely that.

If PC-BSD waits for FreeBSD, it'll wait forever, since FreeBSD does NOT have the same priorities that PC-BSD should have. FreeBSD does well as a server OS already deployed by many companies, such as Yahoo!, DuckDuckGo, as well as a router OS for companies like Juniper. On top of that, it's the basis of free Router/Networking OSs such as pFsense, and have a good backing from Apple. So FreeBSD is already a success in its own realm. PC-BSD so far has not managed to go beyond that: it's currently little more than FreeBSD w/ an X11 installer (incidentally, if the BSDs add Wayland support, that too should be a PC-BSD, rather than a FreeBSD project), smooth and admirable package managers (PBI w/ portsng) and a stripped down version of PC-BSD w/o the X11 called TrueOS. This won't do! PC-BSD needs to define its own goals, like being an acceptable alternative to both Windows & Linux on laptops and tablets not made by Apple.

A good list of projects for PC-BSD to have would be

1. 1. Driver support: No, I'm not talking about supporting the greatest cards from NVIDIA or AMD. I'm talking about supporting off the shelf consumer items, in addition to things already found on a laptop. In addition to WiFi, they could support the webcams that come built in. Also, in the consumer marketplace, there are a lot of things, like label makers, which the project could add support for. The best thing about it is that since PC-BSD has already gone fully 64-bit and ZFS, they are unlikely to find themselves in a situation in the future where their added support for newer devices gets lost in an upgrade
2. 2. OS-X compatibility: PC-BSD already has jails for both Debian and Gentoo. Since a lot of the OS-X and iOS underpinnings are FreeBSD, and since LLVM/Clang is official for both Apple and PC-BSD, the project could have a jails system for OS-X. It could also either work w/ Apple directly on allowing the Apple store to be available on PC-BSD (maybe for a price paid by the end users) or w/ developers on making their OS-X applications available on PC-BSD as well
3. 3. Since OS-X is native to the Core series and iOS to the A-series, PC-BSD could port it to ARM and develop a version for tablets that runs iOS apps, using the same approach above. It can then even consider having its own tablet to be a low end alternative to iPads, and raise a bit of cash that way, like Mint does w/ its own box.
4. 4. At some point, consider supporting Wayland, and make it a PC-BSD project: FreeBSD has no reason to add Wayland any more than they work on Lumina

So far, PC-BSD has done an impressive job in making most applications behave the same way, whether run under KDE, Lumina or LXDE. An exception is GTK3 apps, which run fine under GNOME, but misbehave under other DEs, often going fullscreen (not maximized).

Android is not Linux, and OS-X/iOS is not BSD. I'm talking USER EXPERIENCE, not kernels

Sorry, OS-X may be UNIX in terms of certification, but that doesn't make it BSD in the sense that we normally discuss it. The real competition within the FOSS segment is b/w the Linuxes (Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Debian, et al) and the BSDs (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, et al). And while I am a PC-BSD user, the BSDs do have a lot of catching up to do even for Linux.

A good start would be if the BSDs could develop a group of jails to run OS-X and iOS binaries. PC-BSD would certainly do well in doing that, and also being ported to ARM, so that ARM based 2-in-1s can be an inexpensive alternative to i3 based 2-in-1s

Risk a whoosh moment, but BSD != Linux

EFF may back these prisoners using FaceBook. But if RMS, who is a major backer of EFF, had his way, then the prisoners are being made to do exactly what he wants everybody to do - avoid FaceBook. Had EFF checked w/ RMS, he'd have told them that this is a good thing.

The proper solution to this would be to sentence SC prisoners to deal only w/ GNU Social. Which is GNU's AGPL3 licensed social networking site. Prison officials should provide them computers that can only access that, and maybe eliminate browsers from the computers being used. Heck, let's provide all prisoners w/ Libre-Linux computers running only GPL3 software, and then tell them that that's all they're allowed to use.

After all, they are prisoners for a reason. };-)

The bean countress was right, maybe for the wrong reasons. Reason HP/UX is a bad idea on x86 is that if a customer was gonna move to x86, they already have plenty of options - Linux, *BSD, Solaris, OpenIndiana, et al. And I didn't even count Windows Server.

If one does an ROI, it would be a tall order to recoup the costs of an x86 port. If a customer has to replace their PA-RISC/Itanic towers w/ x86, they'll probably try to go all the way, and replace HP/UX w/ Linux. Since HP apparently already supports Linux on x86 w/ their customers, it's not a cost that they've not already sunk. The HP/UX engineers still remaining could either be put on EOL service contracts, or migrated to Linux support at HP.

But IBM has done what Oracle hasn't - port RHEL to Power, and re-brand it the p-Series. It maintains that distro as its own, since it's a different (non-x64) platform. Oracle could have done the same - port OEL to SPARC, and they'd have had the advantage of RHEL doing the development, and themselves just having to recompile and then finetune it to SPARC

It was a beautiful and imaginative logo. Certainly miss that sometimes, and even more so, the original Silicon Graphics logo.

Actually, at this point, is it Intel, or HP, that insists on not killing the Itanium? IIRC, Intel wanted to let go of it, but HP didn't, and kept paying Intel for it. However, last I read, HP was working on porting OpenVMS and HP/UX to the x64 platform, and once that's done, expect an EOL notification from Intel on that line.