Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 01:54:16 +0200 From: Rainer Duffner <rainer@ultra-secure.de> To: "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@berklix.org> Cc: mobile@freebsd.org, ghozzy <ghozzy@gmail.com> Subject: Re: FreeBSD-6 fails to install on too many old laptops. Message-ID: <7AEB6780-A5CB-4D96-9F0E-9179692D6E4B@ultra-secure.de> In-Reply-To: <200706122029.l5CKTQ3n071855@fire.jhs.private> References: <200706091602.l59G2psm042173@fire.jhs.private> <200706122029.l5CKTQ3n071855@fire.jhs.private>
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Am 12.06.2007 um 22:29 schrieb Julian H. Stacey:
> FreeBSD has progressively broken support for 5 of my older laptops.
> One needs massive time reading manuals etc, only then to fail anyway,
> getting beyond 4.11. (Only 1 modern here takes 6.2).
I can confirm this for my parents' (formerly owned by my brother)
Mitac Mi-Note 6020.
It works with 4.10, but wouldn't boot 5 or 6 or even the 7-snapshot I
once tried.
I may try with the June snapshots (but how do you backup a computer
whose only network connection is an 11MBit wireless card?).
This is a Celeron 366 with 320 or so MB RAM.
It just panics during probing.
The reason I didn't report this is that
a) it currently works (running StarOffice 7 on KDE)
b) it's physically so broken (all hinges are so hard to open/close
that they are broken out of the case on all sides - the thing is
sitting in a wooden frame that my father built ;-)
c) I also run FreeBSD on servers. I'd rather like developers to spend
their limited time on getting it to work better on the latest server-
hardware and on newer laptops (which are arriving every quarter)
>
> 4.11 is nominally dead, yet on many older laptops is all that Works.
Personally, I suspect really bad ACPI-implementations as the reason
for the kernel-panics I get (no success with safe-mode, ACPI or no
ACPI).
And 4.x _is_ dead. Not only nominally, but really. No fixes. Ports
don't build. End of game. RIP.
(I've got a server with 4.11 in a colo 500 km away that is waiting
for a 'decision')
> Newcomers may give up after 6.2 & dump FreeBSD, not knowing to use
> 4.11
> with working { ATA access, Geom / FDISK, PCMCIA (ether & cdrom),
> PLIP }.
>
Newcomers today will either have one of those 600 Euro el-cheapo
laptops from one of the big electronic-supermarket-chains, or will
have had the sense to buy at least a Pentium3-Mobile-class system on
ebay (can be had very cheaply, usually works like built for FreeBSD).
The other old laptop I own (a Dell Inspiron 4000, Celeron 800 with
512 MB RAM) runs 6.x almost as fast as my Pentium-M 1.6 with 1GB RAM.
So to conclude: I'm all for supporting slow hardware (WRAP, Soekris -
you name it) - but when we talk about hardware that was "new" seven
or more years ago (and with most problems probably caused by BIOS-
bugs), I can also support drawing a final stroke.
cheers,
Rainer
--
Rainer Duffner
CISSP, LPI, MCSE
rainer@ultra-secure.de
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