From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 20 18:13:47 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A4EC416A4DD for ; Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:13:47 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from j_guojun@lbl.gov) Received: from smtp114.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com (smtp114.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.198.213]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id A4C8743D7C for ; Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:13:28 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from j_guojun@lbl.gov) Received: (qmail 52791 invoked from network); 20 Jul 2006 18:13:28 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?192.168.2.10?) (jinmtb@sbcglobal.net@68.127.175.91 with plain) by smtp114.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com with SMTP; 20 Jul 2006 18:13:27 -0000 Message-ID: <44BFC80C.8040000@lbl.gov> Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 11:14:36 -0700 From: "Jin Guojun [VFFS]" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20060317 X-Accept-Language: zh, zh-CN, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org References: <200607201318.k6KDIOKH092991@lurza.secnetix.de> In-Reply-To: <200607201318.k6KDIOKH092991@lurza.secnetix.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: Improving FreeBSD's hardware compatibility X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:13:47 -0000 Oliver Fromme wrote: >Intron wrote: > > Peter Jeremy wrote: > > > Getting action from vendors has been unsuccessful in the past - the > > > Free OS community (Linux + *BSD) is too small for vendors to be > > > concerned about. > > > > I cannot agree with you. Linux has achieved much more support from > > hardware vendors than FreeBSD. > >Interestingly, when I looked for a new laptop last year, >it turned out that the number of laptops that ran FreeBSD >was greater than those that ran Linux. (I finally chose >a Samsung X20-XVM 1600-V, which works perfectly fine for >me except for the built-in winmodem [which I don't need >anyway]. A Linux live CD didn't even boot on it.) > > Really depends on what environment you are in and things are case by case. Not long ago, I post some question to hardware list about booting FreeBSD on a Sony PCG-6J2L laptop, which cannot be even found/supported on Sony web site :-( , for my friend. I got no answer back. A couple of issues: (1) all FreeBSD releases can be installed on a USB drive, but none of these release can boot after FreeBSD installed. (2) I build a live FreeBSD CD (Freesbie), which can boot, but cannot configure the NIC (Yukon-FE). So, I tried different Linux. RedHat is the worst one to forget. Debian is ok and Suse Linux 10.1 seems to be the best for this laptop. Suse Linux detected the NIC as sky0. > > You may look in Linux source code. > > In linux-2.6.x/drivers/, there are so many hardware drivers. > >Yeah, most of which are crap. :-) The raw number of >drivers says _nothing_ about hardware vendors' support. > > FreeBSD has its merit and other OSs have their merits. If we want to make FreeBSD more stronger, we need to learn others advantages, alert all disadvantages, not just blame them. Blaming makes things going backward, and learning makes history moving forward. I agree with originator's idea although it is not easy because free OS community is small. -Jin