8 to 9: Kernel modularization -- did it change?

[Alex Goncharov]

,--- I/Alex (Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:10:31 -0500) ----*
| Being mostly a FreeBSD freeloader (or a marginal contributor), I
| shouldn't be complaining, and I am not, but permit me to make a
| personal biased judgment: losing the ability to do a practically
| important thing (a dynamic sound card tuning) which was available in
| 8, makes 9 a "not ready to be released" OS (GUI isn't relevant here.)
| 
| OK, I'll put my upgrades to 9 on hold... Thanks all for clarifying the
| situation!
,--- You/Alexander (Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:19:34 +0200) ----*
| For many users these days not having sound drivers turned on by default 
| is more astonishing.

Perhaps, but the FreeBSD Handbook has been describing the sound setup
routine very well (the pin assignment methods I learned from some text
you had written -- the man pages or your posts to FreeBSD lists, I
don't remember.  Thanks for that!)

| Luckily most systems don't need hints to get working sound.

Based on my experience, I disagree with you -- I had to do it in all
the laptops that I installed FreeBSD 8 on (2 -- a low number, but 100%
for me)...  I never tried to do it with the desktops, but on my
laptops, I like listing to music while I work.

| So it depends on point of view. And definitely I see no problem in
| this for updating to 9.0, unless you are already biased against it.

I am not biased against 9, and I will complete the setup of the three
systems currently being polished, since there is no point in going
back to 8, but I will be unlikely installing 9 on any new system for
some number of weeks.

A technical question: I have the saved (from 8) copies of
/boot/device.hints for the laptops in question which have lines like:

  hint.hdac.0.cad0.nid22.config="as=1 seq=15 device=Headphones"

there.

What's the best way to use this in 9?  To add to the bottom of
/boot/device.hints?  Or use in /boot/loader.conf somehow, as was
suggested in one of the replies in this thread?  If in loader.conf,
what's the correct syntax?

Again, thank you for the work on the sound cards, documentation and
advice!

-- Alex -- alex-goncharov at comcast.net --