Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 07:48:52 -0500 From: Jason Bacon <bacon4000@gmail.com> To: Alexey Dokuchaev <danfe@freebsd.org> Cc: wireless@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Ars Technica article Message-ID: <38f5e668-1398-6fa2-33dc-f15f905f68d6@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20200413061928.GB90880@FreeBSD.org> References: <e4d576e2-8405-474c-ea94-3822731e1cea@gmail.com> <3049612.rJTJeGpjCJ@saskatoon.bionicmutton.org> <20200410001102.GB23747@lonesome.com> <4e3bf6be-aecf-7c62-df98-1cc4b01b8db9@gmail.com> <qjPID4gTE2NvAVjSZKmSBSLDOK7gxaJbnPw46O71vKnmV0b7uoMZ7xTv3RI30bRpPqphZAXTHd3r3RYSQ8UGaRVO45afo-EcYB34INKVAM8=@protonmail.ch> <43f83193-e495-2bf2-f85d-91aa0b36c1a0@gmail.com> <slUQwwm1giIIEaqmUKBQ1G5UIlVSvzfWkk3vZm-dBYNRA-wng7tDluv_Es3eOiaNYDE9yNtKFfd-2iOEozSGK1JNIjFbqCXV1a1sgkQ1sHE=@protonmail.ch> <0e205fe8-fbc6-5d91-99b0-1bd4870b8a5d@gmail.com> <CAGwOe2ZHZFhVwSvjk7JDe0szY-1oZH_HvDhMqp-zXXV9%2BePtHg@mail.gmail.com> <d263368c-5dcc-61c2-9c77-3d59c5493182@gmail.com> <20200413061928.GB90880@FreeBSD.org>
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On 2020-04-13 01:19, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote: > [ setting CC to a more appropriate -wireless@ list ] > > On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 07:20:14PM -0500, Jason Bacon wrote: >> ... >> I think [well-working gfx stack] a great long-term goal, but it will >> take a significant investment of man-hours to get us there. In the >> meantime there's a lot of lower-hanging fruit, like minor improvements >> to the bsdinstall UI, external media mounting, etc. > What I find more frustrating when reading similar articles (they are > all more or less the same) is that they rarely focus on FreeBSD's *real* > problems (and no, that's not the awkward installer, having to manually > find working DRM port + xf86-video driver combination, search for the > scattered knowledge of which magic lines to add to /etc/rc.conf and/or > /boot/loader.conf, read the Handbook N times before one can set up their > bluetooth mouse, et cetera). While installer's issues, better defaults, > bash vs sh, sudo, modelines, and those other little things might seem > significant for someone coming from Ubuntu, it would take them a day > to learn, adopt, and get back most, if not all, from their previous > environment. Our real problems aren't solved that easily, and being > solved painfully slowly. > > Leaving X.org/DRM mess aside, we lack a lot in our laptop department. > Our WiFi stack is essentially maintained solely by adrian@, and he's > currently not very active. Some ~4 y.o. cards like BCM43228 are still > not supported [1]. If you search for "atheros" in our Bugzilla, it > returns 13 bugs, the latest action being on 2019-01-26 (reassignment). > > AR5B22 WLAN+Bluetooth combo does not work/broken, discussion [2] had > ended nowhere. > > Realtek 5209 card readers are quite common and also do not work; the > WIP OpenBSD driver porting effort [3] is stuck because apparently > something is missing in FreeBSD [subsystems], although [the] driver > seems to faithfully implement the OpenBSD [code]. No kernel hacker > had chimed in to help. :-( > > Our WMI stack is unmaintained and incomplete: brightness and multimedia > keys do not work on many laptops despite corresponding kernel modules > being loaded. > > This list goes on. Yes, these are deep, hard problems, not the low- > hanging fruit, but if Foundation decides where to spend some money, > I'd rather see it considers these rather than bsdinstall UI, external > media mounting, or some other "lipstick on a pig" type of tasks. > > ./danfe > > [1] https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=202501 > [2] https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-wireless/2019-April/008660.html > [3] https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=204521 Just to be clear, I was not suggesting that the foundation spend money on low-hanging fruit. What I'm saying is that we can make the desktop experience significantly better by fixing the easy issues before the foundation considers an investment. I suspect that some developers might not think fixing a WiFi issue is worth their time when there are so many other problems with setting up a desktop system. On the other hand, if it's easy to build a desktop machine that mostly works, and WiFi support is one of only a few obvious shortcomings, that perception might be different. I'll also add that I'm not a proponent of of even trying to make FreeBSD attractive to people hung up on some of the trivia mentioned in articles like this one. I think our primary focus should be on attracting potential contributors, not average Joes who will only make demands on our time. For that, we don't need a desktop experience for the technically clueless, just one that a reasonably savvy user can easily manage so they can focus on their real work. JB -- Earth is a beta site.help
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