RFC: removing ndis(4)

Brooks Davis brooks at freebsd.org
Thu Dec 3 00:12:49 UTC 2020


I'd like to propose that we remove the ndis(4) driver prior to FreeBSD
13.  It was a clever idea in the early 2000's when the market was
flooded with 10/100 NICs with Windows-only drivers, but that hasn't been
the case for ages and the driver has had no meaningful maintenance in
ages[0].  I'd be a bit surprised if it worked at all today (it surely
won't work with modern Windows drivers).

To try to examine the popularity of ndis, I checked dmesgd.nycbug.org
and there are 5 total entries with the most recent being 2007.

The PC Card attachments are currently marked for deletion prior to
FreeBSD 13.

Unless there is surprising outcry I plan to add (and MFC) deprecation
notices in about a week's time and remove the driver shortly thereafter.

-- Brooks

[0] I noticed today that part of the ndis 802.11 ioctl handler has been
broken since 2005.
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