Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 05:29:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Bill Schoolcraft <bill@wiliweld.com> To: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: Duke Normandin <01031149@3web.net>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: BSDi Acquired by Embedded Computing Firm Wind River Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.30.0104100520280.23718-100000@corten8> In-Reply-To: <000001c0c189$28163c00$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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At Mon, 9 Apr 2001 it looks like Ted Mittelstaedt composed: tedm->>-----Original Message----- tedm->>From: Duke Normandin [mailto:01031149@3web.net] tedm->>> > tedm->>> Many's the time I've seen people complain that FreeBSD didn't support tedm->>> their pet Wonkulating Gronkulator and that Linux did - and after you tedm->>> get into it with them, it always seems to come out in the discussion that tedm->>> their Wonkulating Gronkulator card costs $14, and the card that FreeBSD tedm->>> _does_ support that does the same thing, costs $25. (and is technically tedm->>> a better card) tedm->> tedm->>The way I read your parapraph I can only conclude that Linux et al *do* tedm->>support more $14 cards as an accomodation to the cheaps bastards out tedm->>there, than does FreeBSD. It goes w/o saying that FreeBSD *does* support tedm->>the same functionalities -- but only those of higher quality / or those tedm->>that the developers happen to favor. tedm->> tedm-> tedm->Not always - for example the Realtek chipset-based $14 PCI network adapters tedm->are supported very well under FreeBSD - of course the card may not properly tedm->autoconfig to your network hub, but what do you expect from a cheap tedm->NIC chipset. tedm-> tedm->However, I would say that I think if you were to do a survey and stack the tedm->OS's right up against each other, you would find that Linux _does_ support tedm->slightly more of the $14 cards than FreeBSD. Of course, you would need to tedm->subtract all video chipsets from this ranking - because video cards are tedm->supported by Xfree86, and thus the support is identical between FreeBSD and tedm->Linux. tedm-> tedm->Also, the support for _old_ hardware is a political powder keg as well - tedm->since hobby folks often have very bad habits of picking up $2 cards from tedm->flea markets and saying "Wow, think of what I can build with _this!_" :-) tedm->Is it fair to castigate an OS because it doesen't support _old_ hardware? tedm-> <humbly_snipped> Support for _old_ hardware became a powder keg when I was doing backend support for Mandrake and they released their OS that was compiled for i586 and higher. Customers used to call me and say "I thought Linux said it will run on a 386 if that's all you have?" The "hype" of the i586 compile vs the loss of users running old hardware I'm sure didn't hurt them but once that old adage was broken I smelled a little Microsoft in the air as in "upgrade or die Mr/Ms Enduser." -- Bill Schoolcraft PO Box 210076 -o) San Francisco CA 94121 /\ "UNIX, A Way Of Life." _\_v http://forwardslashunix.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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