Improving FreeBSD's hardware compatibility

Intron mag at intron.ac
Fri Jul 21 01:54:20 UTC 2006


Oliver Fromme wrote:

> Intron wrote:
>  > Peter Jeremy wrote:
>  > > Getting action from vendors has been unsuccessful in the past - the
>  > > Free OS community (Linux + *BSD) is too small for vendors to be
>  > > concerned about.
>  >
>  > I cannot agree with you. Linux has achieved much more support from
>  > hardware vendors than FreeBSD.
> 
> Interestingly, when I looked for a new laptop last year,
> it turned out that the number of laptops that ran FreeBSD
> was greater than those that ran Linux.  (I finally chose
> a Samsung X20-XVM 1600-V, which works perfectly fine for
> me except for the built-in winmodem [which I don't need
> anyway].  A Linux live CD didn't even boot on it.)

Have a look at http://linmodems.org/ before your assertion.
How many modems listed on that website are support by FreeBSD?
Most of them are installed in laptops and nested on PCI bus.

> 
>  > You may look in Linux source code.
>  > In linux-2.6.x/drivers/, there are so many hardware drivers.
> 
> Yeah, most of which are crap.  :-)   The raw number of
> drivers says _nothing_ about hardware vendors' support.

This is a problem of code quality.
But at least Linux community has so many volunteers/vendors to write
drivers.

> 
>  > > I suspect the best solution is to publicise configurations that are
>  > > known to work and what problems exist with other configurations.
> 
> I tend to agree with Peter here.  By the way, a very good
> resource for hardware support information is the search
> facility at Rambler:  http://freebsd.rambler.ru/
> 
> Best regards
>    Oliver
> 
> PS:  I think this thread might be inappropriate for the
> -hackers list.  How about moving it to either -hardware
> or -chat?  (I watch them all, so either is fine with me.)
> 
> --
> Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
> Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd
> Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author
> and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.
> 
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>         -- Dick Brandon
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