Improving FreeBSD's hardware compatibility

[Intron]

Peter Jeremy wrote:

> On Tue, 2006-Jul-18 22:11:45 -0300, Charles A. Landemaine wrote:
>>Aside from the fact that some vendors don't cooperate to release
>>hardware specifications, is there something we could do to revert this
>>situation?
> 
> I suspect the major problems are lack of interface documentation for
> the various chips and non-compliance with standards on things like
> ACPI.  I don't believe there's a general solution to the problem,
> rather work-arounds need to be developed on a case-by-case basis.
> 
>> How could the community act to change things?
> 
> 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. You may look in Linux source code.
In linux-2.6.x/drivers/, there are so many hardware drivers.

On the other hand, so many hardware vendors (especially some small
enterprises, which are eager to obtain software support)
have publicized data sheets of their integrated circuit products,
but so few people would write hardware driver for FreeBSD.

> 
> I suspect the best solution is to publicise configurations that are
> known to work and what problems exist with other configurations.
> 
> -- 
> Peter Jeremy

FreeBSD must be more open than before. Otherwise, it will lose
developping energy/vitality and fall behind the time.

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                                                From Beijing, China