Support for "old" hardware (was:Re: kern/148741: [sound] Headphones are deaf (do not work) on Lenovo ThinkPad X300)

[VDR User]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 3:11 PM, Dieter BSD <dieterbsd at engineer.com> wrote:
> Alexander writes:
>> Also, adding special exception for this laptop to the driver is quite
>> pointless because while it will pass next 6 months FreeBSD release cycle
>> this already not new laptop will be out of market for even more time and
>> will be mostly forgotten.
>
> Are we to throw computers in the landfill once they are 5 minutes old?
> Not very green. :-(
>
>> AC'97 is absolutely different beast. It is so old that I have no plans
>> to spend my time on fixing it.
>
> AC'97 may be useful or not useful. This is not a function of how old it is.
>
> Unix is from the early 1970s and we still find it useful and we still
> maintain and improve it.
>
> Better watch out, or the doctors will say that your body is too old
> to spend their time fixing.

You're being very dramatic and over-exaggerating. Also, Unix along
with all of its spawn has gone through significant change over the
years so if you're implying what people use today is the same thing
they were using in the 70's then that's being blatantly dishonest.

Maybe in a perfect world all hardware would be supported forever. But
there comes a time when, for example, maintaining a driver becomes
counter-productive because there simply isn't enough of a user-base to
justify the resources spent doing so. Hardware evolves, software
evolves, computers evolve -- if you don't want to evolve with it then
continue to use the hardware & software from whatever era in computing
history of your choosing so long as you understand the burden of
supporting that stuff may ultimately rest on your shoulders.