FreeBSD vs Linux

[David Kelly]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 05:00:26PM -0500, Tamouh H. wrote:
> 
> 
> > Just get a different sound card.  There are lotsof
> > inexpensive sounds cards that are probably supported by
> > FreeBSD for just a few (10-30) $
> 
> Oh come on, I've been working with all Linux, FreeBSD and Windows.
> 
> Getting a different card is not the solution. It is actually an absurd
> suggestion which goes to prove further that Unix has not matured yet
> to compete with Microsoft.

That or the user(s). Microsoft doesn't write any sound card drivers,
they make manufacturers do it then pay and beg to be included on the
master distribution CD/DVD.

For a device to work in FreeBSD someone who wants it bad enough to do
the work has to have the skills and want it bad enough to do it. Of
course "wanting" is no small part of how such skills are developed.
Someone has an unsupported sound card with a Linux example. All the
tough details about the hardware are spelled out in the Linux driver.
Plenty of FreeBSD drivers have been ported to Linux and vice versa.

In the early days of FreeBSD if one wanted a reliable CDROM then it had
to be SCSI. Those who were doing the work liked SCSI, SCSI drives were
much more consistant between makes and models than non-SCSI. So that was
about the only choice one had in FreeBSD.

Linux was very IDE-centric. Tuned around mass storage devices which were
single-tasking. Resulting in Linux kernels which had an awful time
dealing with SCSI devices which could queue multiple requests which
might not respond in the exact same order as asked. SCSI was a four
letter word in Linux camp.

Today FreeBSD does an excellent job of supporting ATAPI, EIDE, and ATA
devices. I don't know but expect Linux has matured and handles SCSI much
better than in the past as features of ATA devices today closely
resemble SCSI.

The FreeBSD 6.0 kernel has a wrapper for using binary Windows device
drivers. IIRC the main motivator (see above) was for broad WiFi hardware
support. Might be able to use Windows sound card drivers for all I
know.

-- 
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly at HiWAAY.net
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Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.