Personally I'm using FreeBSD _exclusively_ (!) on the desktop since version 4.0, and I haven't missed _any_ "common desktopy thing" that is required for my daily work.
I was referring to general intent when I wrote that. For example, bsd has poor support for things like sleep/suspend/hibernate. While desktops and laptops would certainly take advantage of those things, severs generally don't, so fixing it has traditionally been low priority. In contrast, linux has that working out of the box on almost all hardware. Likewise in my experience a number of other home-use things like laptop wifi are generally better supported under linux.
A similar situation exists for software, especially non-business software and oddball utilities. On bsd you can usually find something to do what you need, but you'll often be limited to one or two choices, whereas with linux you might have half a dozen. (Whether all these packages are GOOD or not is a separate issue :)
I'm not saying that bsd *can't* be used for a home desktop, it certainly can, but it was never aimed at the grandma+laptop market and the hardware support and software selection reflects that. But I don't hold that against bsd. You can't be all things to all people, bsd is very good for servers and linux is good for home use, and they each have their place.
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