Why FreeBSD not popular on hardware vendors

[Polytropon]

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:19:14 -0500, Jerry <gesbbb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Define: 'Actual Work'? What you are referring to is that it meets your
> criteria. Everyone's work platform might not be so narrow.

ometimes, "actual work" may be entertainment, gaming, or
programming obscure hardware platforms. :-)


> I use FreeBSD for may things; however, it is by no means a perfect
> system. There are just too many things that either don't work, or don't
> work well.

I may say this: At home, I'm using FreeBSD exclusively since
approx. 2000 (at least since release 4.0). Here everything
worked without any (!) problems, no need for problem reports.
At work, FreeBSD and Solaris are present. For some fields of
use, I would not FreeBSD instead of Solaris. However, I found
no operating system that could replace FreeBSD in the fields
where I use it.

As in many other topics, this is only my very individual point
of view. 

I do see "FreeBSD's problems" in most cases where hardware
support isn't up to date, but that's mainly a thing of the
hardware manufactureres that (a) build black boxes or (b)
do not use existing standards, so accessing their hardware
is a problem. Other problems are usual entertainment stuff
that seems to hook that deeply into the operating system that
it leads into problems - yes, I'm talking about "Flash"
especially.

Hardware vendors are mostly interested in operating systems
that already have a huge market share. Allthough FreeBSD is
a very professional OS and has a growing usage share, its
market share isn't that big, so it is considered to be
unimportant. Furthermore, FreeBSD is considered to be an
OS for servers, allthough it scales very well from desktops
over mixed forms to servers. And servers usually don't contain
bleeding edge GPUs and strange WLAN USB sticks, so that's why
the support isn't that good.

Personally, I'd prefer an OS that supports a narrow subset
of hardware excellently and efficiently instead of an OS that
claims to support everything, supports most things poorly
and through "binary blobs" where you can't be sure what it
actually does.


-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...