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From: "Larry Dolinar" <LARRYD@bldg1.croute.com>
Organization:  CompuRoute, Inc.
To: owner-questions@FreeBSD.org
Date:          Thu, 31 Oct 1996 09:07:43 +600 CDT
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Subject:       Re: Disappointed by lack of ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM support
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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