i give up

[Gavin Atkinson]

Hi,

On Fri, 28 Nov 2008, Conrad J. Sabatier wrote:
> It's been two-three months now since I bought this new machine, and I'm
> no closer to seeing any solution to the failure on FreeBSD's part to
> recognize and/or utilize my SATA controller.  I've been monitoring the
> lists and the CVS repo, even offering suggestions as to how I might help
> to resolve this issue, but no one seems to be interested in helping me
> to get this thing working.

I've had a quick search through problem reports and the mailing list 
archives and I can't actually find any mention of this.  Is there any 
chance you could provide me with a link to either of those.  If you can't 
find them, I'd appreciate at least the output of "pciconf l" (or "lspci 
-nn" if you've already moved over to Linux).  The reason I'm asking is 
that information on several nVidea controllers were figured out recently, 
and I'm wondering if your machine is one of them.

Also, it would be useful if you could tell me which board this is, if it's 
cheap enough I'll go out and buy one...

> So, it looks like it's fare-thee-well to FreeBSD after 12+ years of
> dedicated usage, and now I'm off to the Linux world. <sigh>  At least
> there I know that *all* of my hardware is recognized and working
> properly.

That is a shame.  It does depend on what you require from an operating 
system, however.  For me, I'd think nothing of buying a 12 quid SATA card 
or a different graphics card/webcam/wireless card if absolutely necessary, 
just because of the pain I associate with administering Linux boxes.  By 
day I'm a sysadmin on FreeBSD, Solaris and Linux, and I kow which I 
prefer.

Obviously, if you just want things to work first time, no matter what, 
you're going to be disappointed eventually whichever OS you choose.

> If FreeBSD hopes to remain viable as either a server or desktop
> platform, then I would think the developers would be willing to bite
> the bullet and consult with other OS developers to see how they're
> handling the latest and greatest hardware developments.  Hell, the fact
> that even at this late date we still don't have an amd64 nVidia video
> driver speaks volumes, in my opinion.

I think there is a certain amount of truth in this.  However, I think it's 
a long way off yet.  FreeBSD has improved vastly in the last few years, 
and all signs look like it's going to continue.  Support for hardware will 
often trail Linux, but when supported, often it will be "done right" 
rather than hacked together.  To an end user, FreeBSD appearss to be 
slower at supporting the hardware.  But for those who want to tweak the 
operating system, to people embedding FreeBSD into routers and satnavs, or 
to people who want years of uptime from their servers, the diference 
matters a lot.  It's hard to get the border between the conflicting camps 
correct.

Gavin