Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2011 20:39:43 -0800 From: Royce Williams <royce.williams@gmail.com> To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: hardware Rosetta Stone? Message-ID: <CA%2BE3k93BbveHC038DCM2w33TtK1EzsDdL1=tnEDTY6k=HxpKFw@mail.gmail.com>
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The tl;dr version: Let's start documenting our implicit knowledge about hardware. It will be significant force multiplier. If we start a stub on the wiki, it could become useful relatively quickly without a lot of effort. The long version: I've followed a few list threads that end with "Go talk to Vendor X about that." Developers, vendors and hardware owners are all busy, so this can be hard. Most hardware vendors don't have someone like Intel's Jack Vogel - competent, constructive, and paying close attention to the relevant freebsd-* lists. Even if Jack misses a message, everyone else on the lists knows to say, "Hey, send that to Jack." I've also spent a lot of time painstakingly reconstructing knowledge from multiple forums in order to arrive at The Whole Truth about a specific piece of hardware. Someone knows the answer off of the top of their head, but that person is busy frying bigger fish -- and they should be. Caching the results of that work would be a high-leverage activity. I propose creating a hardware Rosetta Stone of sorts. It would be sort of a cross between the Hardware Compatibility list, parts of Jeremy Chadwick's list of known issues, some FAQs, and a list of FreeBSD folks to coordinate between vendors and the project. As a quick start, I propose a wiki page that would contain something like these tuples: * Hardware family * Name of vendor * Brief advice on how to work with that vendor. * Identifying device info (PCI/USB IDs, etc.) * Links to significant PRs. * Link to a FAQ page/section for that hardware/drivers. * Name of coordinating volunteer(s) I'd bet that there are already some de facto vendor "ambassadors" of sorts who could seed parts of the initial list pretty quickly. Benefits: * Developers (who already get peppered with questions about given hardware) only have to answer a question once, and simply link to the Rosetta Stone thereafter. * Non-developers can take their hard-won research and put it where others can reliably find it. * Newbies spend less time chasing their tails and FAQing the lists. * Vendors get a consistent voice from, and more deliberately connect with, the FreeBSD community. * Developers who want to tackle a hardware family can easily survey the state thereof. * Vendors who are hard to connect with might be swayed by a large list of "this vendor won't work with us, but hey, their competitor is totally helpful" data points. * People could rotate through ambassadorship, to spread knowledge and prevent burnout. * Everyone gets to spend more time doing what matters. If I'm reinventing a wheel, any breadcrumbs appreciated. (I got this idea from a club I'm in that has a semi-official ambassador to eBay -- which has really benefited both eBay and the club -- and also thinking about Jack, and Jeremy's list). Royce
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