<t>I'm a tinkerer and I wonder whether it is possible to use different operating systems (I'm thinking BSD) on the R-Pi, or if hardware incompatibilities should be expected?<br/> <br/> I have read in another thread that you had to write custom drivers for some proprietary ...

... British 8bit home micros as far as using and programming is concerned and we are pretty close to baremetal. If the kernel is a linux kernel (or *bsd or .... lets not be kernelist and treat all *nix the same) that then takes a rootfs from the sd card then we are effectivly doing what a bootloader ...