Why FreeBSD not popular on hardware vendors

[Ole]

BTW on the http://forums.freebsd.org number of multimedia-related questions is 
more than server-side ;) 
And this is fact - FreeBSD become to Desktop due to work of many peoples who 
porting multimedia application to FreeBSD. Therefore
this functional be want. But without good supports of hardware device this job  
come to nothing.

On Thursday 11 December 2008 15:36:32 Polytropon wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:19:14 -0500, Jerry <gesbbb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Define: 'Actual Work'? What you are referring to is that it meets your
> > criteria. Everyone's work platform might not be so narrow.
>
> ometimes, "actual work" may be entertainment, gaming, or
> programming obscure hardware platforms. :-)
>
> > I use FreeBSD for may things; however, it is by no means a perfect
> > system. There are just too many things that either don't work, or don't
> > work well.
>
> I may say this: At home, I'm using FreeBSD exclusively since
> approx. 2000 (at least since release 4.0). Here everything
> worked without any (!) problems, no need for problem reports.
> At work, FreeBSD and Solaris are present. For some fields of
> use, I would not FreeBSD instead of Solaris. However, I found
> no operating system that could replace FreeBSD in the fields
> where I use it.
>
> As in many other topics, this is only my very individual point
> of view.
>
> I do see "FreeBSD's problems" in most cases where hardware
> support isn't up to date, but that's mainly a thing of the
> hardware manufactureres that (a) build black boxes or (b)
> do not use existing standards, so accessing their hardware
> is a problem. Other problems are usual entertainment stuff
> that seems to hook that deeply into the operating system that
> it leads into problems - yes, I'm talking about "Flash"
> especially.
>
> Hardware vendors are mostly interested in operating systems
> that already have a huge market share. Allthough FreeBSD is
> a very professional OS and has a growing usage share, its
> market share isn't that big, so it is considered to be
> unimportant. Furthermore, FreeBSD is considered to be an
> OS for servers, allthough it scales very well from desktops
> over mixed forms to servers. And servers usually don't contain
> bleeding edge GPUs and strange WLAN USB sticks, so that's why
> the support isn't that good.
>
> Personally, I'd prefer an OS that supports a narrow subset
> of hardware excellently and efficiently instead of an OS that
> claims to support everything, supports most things poorly
> and through "binary blobs" where you can't be sure what it
> actually does.