Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 09:07:43 +600 CDT From: "Larry Dolinar" <LARRYD@bldg1.croute.com> To: owner-questions@FreeBSD.org Cc: questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Disappointed by lack of ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM support Message-ID: <121A50140D61@bldg1.croute.com>
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This may have (and probably has been) mentioned before: FreeBSD is much more standards-driven than, say, Linux. End users often make the argument that because something works with DOS/Win3.1/Win95, why doesn't it work with this? For one thing, the aforementioned commercial offerings don't stress a system as much, or test how well the hardware cooperates. Some hardware manufacturers get by with doing less in the name of supporting *just* those offerings, particularly to get it on the market. After all, how many times has an HP or Sony or whoever come up with something new, only to have a score of competitors offer it 3 or 6 months later at a fraction of the price? For another, anything added to FreeBSD passes through a lot of hands for the most part before being blessed. This hopefully keeps most of the bad surprises to a minimum. And the people involved are doing this as a volunteer effort. I wish I had that kind of dedication. The bottom line is: it tends to take longer for some of these things to shake out in FreeBSD than in some other OS's (and pretenders). A lot depends on how much manufacturers will make available to the core team. Some just won't divulge anything, thinking they're somehow giving up some kind of advantage. Some don't document it correctly. It's too bad, but that's life. Myself, I use SCSI, but I can deal with the attendant configuration issues since it mirrors much of what I do at work. But I can sympathize with users who "just want it to work". On the other hand, I can't see applying that philosophy to Un*x in general: there's a lot that goes on that you can't just throw in a batch file, to make a gross analogy. I will say this: we took a comparison program for our CAD group that ran under DOS, and when we hit the conventional memory wall, I made a couple of changes (library compatibility), put it on FreeBSD, and it ran *3 times faster on the same hardware* And that was a Pentium 75. That, folks, is power. I'll put up with some low- end compatibility issues for that anytime. my $.02, larry
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