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FreeBSD 6.0 to Target Wireless Devices

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the and-now-for-the-wireless-toaster dept.

BSDForums writes "FreeBSD is hoping to move beyond the server and desktop market by providing expanded wireless support. FreeBSD developer Scott Long said that 'one of the primary reasons for improving wireless support is to give companies the tools to put FreeBSD into their wireless devices. The guy at FreeBSD who is adding wireless support is under contract from wireless companies to do the work.'"

5 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. The reluctant adoption of Linux by HishamMuhammad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is an interesting development. Companies have been using Linux in their wireless boxes due to the lack of any viable alternative. Due to the GPL, these companies were forced to publish their changes to the kernel, which has allowed the number of cool hacks we've been seing. Clearly, those companies would rather keep their changes proprietary, so BSD based systems are much more attractive to them. While it's nice to see improved hardware support to another free operating system, this might bring adverse consequences in the long run. We'll see...

    --
    The filesystem is the package manager
  2. this is really big by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    as someone who works for a company that uses many variants of linux in their products, i can tell you that most companies dont have a clue about the GPL and the parts about giving away _their_ code comes as a shock to them.

    i see more and more companies turn to BSD licensed stuff, such as the *BSD OSes

    (no linux vs BSD flame, please)

  3. Re:FreeBSD on routers? I hope not... by stox · · Score: 5, Informative

    God help us if someone ran FreeBSD on routers, oops, oh wait, someone does. Some little company known as Juniper. JunOS is derived from FreeBSD.

    --
    "To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
  4. Juniper by RT+Alec · · Score: 5, Informative

    Juniper uses FreeBSD (they call it 'JunOS'). Their routers have become quite popular for very high traffic installations, due in no small part to the efficient networking code of the FreeBSD kernel. Also, don't forget that the f-root name server (actualy a distributed network of servers) is exclusively FreeBSD.

  5. OpenBSD by cyberkahn · · Score: 5, Interesting


    This is not intended to be a flame as I really like FreeBSD as well. FreeBSD could learn a lot from the OpenBSD project in this area. I have been absolutely amazed at OpenBSD's out of the box wireless detection configuration. I installed OpenBSD on my laptop over my WPC11 wireless NIC without effort. I also had the same results with the WMP54G.