>The kernel and base system is completely separated from the third party applications and base system configuration goes into /etc while all third party configu

>The kernel and base system is completely separated from the third party applications and base system configuration goes into /etc while all third party configuration goes into /usr/local/etc. Everything you can configure and everything you can tune or setup is very well documented in the man pages. One thing I find ironic about BSDs is that their top billing feature is being a "complete integrated (base) operating system" rather than a collection of software maintained by different projects, but at the same time, they're almost always discussed as server/poweruser operating systems rather than desktop operating systems. This seems completely backwards to me. If I'm a sysadmin running a server, I probably know what I'm doing and feel confident replacing parts of it. I likely studied this and relative to a typical person I'm much more likely to find the way it works to be interesting. By contrast if I'm a desktop user there's a very good chance I don't know what I'm doing and don't really want to. It seems like the second situation is the one where you benefit more from having a wall up that separates the system from the userlibs. There have been fleeting attempts to make desktop-forward BSD distributions over the years, including PC-BSD and a few short-lived initiatives by the NetBSD project, but it never gets off the ground. Is this a missed opportunity?