From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 21 18:45:49 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7DE1216A494 for ; Thu, 21 Jul 2005 18:45:49 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from pcasidy@casidy.com) Received: from scotty.galacsys.net (scotty.galacsys.net [217.24.81.5]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5B6F943E1E for ; Thu, 21 Jul 2005 18:45:09 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from pcasidy@casidy.com) Received: from smtp.casidy.net (lns-vlq-39f-81-56-135-122.adsl.proxad.net [81.56.135.122]) by scotty.galacsys.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 49E24C509E for ; Thu, 21 Jul 2005 20:44:59 +0200 (CEST) Received: from casidy.com (unknown [192.168.1.2]) by smtp.casidy.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5CEA8B86C for ; Thu, 21 Jul 2005 20:44:55 +0200 (CEST) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 20:44:35 +0000 (UTC) From: pcasidy@casidy.com To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <20050721133451.GB77633@stack.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; charset=us-ascii Message-Id: <20050721184455.5CEA8B86C@smtp.casidy.net> Subject: Re: Quality of FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 18:45:50 -0000 Hi all! I have read this thread with a lot of interest and I have to congratulate each of you for bringing calm, clever and interesting answers. I too felt that the quality of 5.x is not what I was used to but there are new nice and promising features. Having read most of all the emails it looks like to me that there is a key element : the hardware. There are too many combinations on the market to build an "i386-like" based platform. Isn't it time to build a suggested hardware list or a hardware blacklist? I do not how to do that because maybe there is a high risk of being sued by a company making bad hardware even under the right of free speech. Perhaps it can be done by making a list of hardware company from which FreeBSD has a good support (not saying good hardware but good feedback on how to solve problems). I know of the hardware vendor and supported hardware list but I am not sure if it is up to date and I diddn't manage to get good use of it : how has it really be tested on that hardware? My main problem, and to others after seeing the question from times to times, is to know which is a good (not necessarly the best) hardware to run FreeBSD on? When I buy a new motherboard, which chipset to choose/avoid, which controllers? Twenty years ago, when you bought a computer (not a PC), the system delivered with it used to work well or had known problems with workarounds. Okay, there were simpler but in case of problems, it was easy to try to reproduce and investigate the problem. I am not saying we should choose one defined platform. I don't know if it is feasible but having a list of hardware recommendations from which we are sure to get good support from would be an added value. As it is too hard to support every combination of hardware why not focus on a few ones? Maybe the ones developpers have an esay access to? If someone use another combination, no problem : he will have the same support as today. Thanks for reading my attempt to move forward. Phil.