Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 16:25:55 -0600 From: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> To: FreeBSD-Questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Linux Message-ID: <20060117222555.GA21956@Grumpy.DynDNS.org> In-Reply-To: <20060117220235.5886D43D46@mx1.FreeBSD.org> References: <3040838B-3C5C-4505-926F-524ABE1B6B15@shire.net> <20060117220235.5886D43D46@mx1.FreeBSD.org>
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On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 05:00:26PM -0500, Tamouh H. wrote: > > > > Just get a different sound card. There are lotsof > > inexpensive sounds cards that are probably supported by > > FreeBSD for just a few (10-30) $ > > Oh come on, I've been working with all Linux, FreeBSD and Windows. > > Getting a different card is not the solution. It is actually an absurd > suggestion which goes to prove further that Unix has not matured yet > to compete with Microsoft. That or the user(s). Microsoft doesn't write any sound card drivers, they make manufacturers do it then pay and beg to be included on the master distribution CD/DVD. For a device to work in FreeBSD someone who wants it bad enough to do the work has to have the skills and want it bad enough to do it. Of course "wanting" is no small part of how such skills are developed. Someone has an unsupported sound card with a Linux example. All the tough details about the hardware are spelled out in the Linux driver. Plenty of FreeBSD drivers have been ported to Linux and vice versa. In the early days of FreeBSD if one wanted a reliable CDROM then it had to be SCSI. Those who were doing the work liked SCSI, SCSI drives were much more consistant between makes and models than non-SCSI. So that was about the only choice one had in FreeBSD. Linux was very IDE-centric. Tuned around mass storage devices which were single-tasking. Resulting in Linux kernels which had an awful time dealing with SCSI devices which could queue multiple requests which might not respond in the exact same order as asked. SCSI was a four letter word in Linux camp. Today FreeBSD does an excellent job of supporting ATAPI, EIDE, and ATA devices. I don't know but expect Linux has matured and handles SCSI much better than in the past as features of ATA devices today closely resemble SCSI. The FreeBSD 6.0 kernel has a wrapper for using binary Windows device drivers. IIRC the main motivator (see above) was for broad WiFi hardware support. Might be able to use Windows sound card drivers for all I know. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@HiWAAY.net ======================================================================== Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
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