just driver question

Kevin Kinsey kdk at daleco.biz
Tue Feb 21 14:28:20 PST 2006


Jeffrey Shi wrote:

>Hi, I am new to freebsd. My question is for my 
>motherboard and VGA CARD to work with freebsd, 
>should I use linux driver or unix driver?  The 
>freebsd I am thinking to install is version 6.0.
>
>Thanks
>
>Jeffrey
>  
>

Hi, Jeffrey, and welcome to FreeBSD.

The answer to "should I use linux driver or unix driver"
is: "neither".

FreeBSD includes drivers that allow it to work on
much of the hardware available today, as well as
many "legacy" systems.  It's generally not necessary
to download or install any "extra" drivers (though a
few are available); occasionally we do have to specifically
instruct the system which ones to load, though.

You *should* read this, though:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/hardware.html

which includes a brief explanation and some links
that should help you with your question.  After reading
these, you might come back and ask some opinions about
your hardware; but, usually, FreeBSD Just Works(tm).

There are "quid pro quos" ... internal modems without their
own processor are generally not supported.  There are, from
time to time, reports of various bugs with some new hardware
type that cause some problems (some SATA Raid controllers,
lately, I *think*).  Support for some rather old processors has
lately been removed IIRC (*).

And, one other alternative ... you could just back up your data
and try it out.  However, I'd really recommend that you study
the Handbook (www.freebsd.org/handbook) a bit first.  Unless
you've used some Unix-like operating system before, FreeBSD
can seem a little 'backwards' --- it's not, but the learning curve
is a little steep to really get it to perform as a desktop system.

That said, I converted my desktop system to FBSD in the fall
of 2004 and haven't looked back.  I've only found a very few
things that I can't do just as well without paying my Microsoft
tax..... YMMV.

Kevin Kinsey

-- 
It gets late early out there.
		-- Yogi Berra


* I'm sure that I could be wrong and someone may correct me on
this ... but there was some discussion, I'm quite certain, and
little objection to whatever-it-was....



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