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FreeBSD driver database now covers *BSD
phatlipmojo writes "'The FreeBSD Driver Database, a resource to encourage driver development, has been expanded to encompass all open-source BSD operating systems. The site has been renamed to the BSD Driver Database to reflect this change. The BSD Driver Database is designed to help device driver developers who need hardware or volunteers to test their drivers, find people willing to donate equipment and/or their time. The goal being to increase the base of supported hardware for all of the BSD-derived open source operating systems.'
Until quite recently, there was a FreeBSD Device Driver Writer's Guide on the www.freebsd.org. Presumably it's being updated to cover the changes to the driver model.
No!
4.4BSDLite's license was changed. Not the *BSDs, as UCB has no authority over them.
Free, Net, and Open's license remain unchanged, each with the adveriting clause (but _they_ no longer _have_ to keep it.)
-bugg
I searched for documentation several times for texts that explain the concepts and details of writing a device driver for FreeBSD or drivers in general. Most texts explains device numbers but that's it. Do you know where to learn more? I'm a bit to lazy to browse tons of source files, most without any comments in them. I assume that is what most divice driver authors do....
I think that argument is overused... What goals would be compromised by adopting something like UDI? Its a perfect fit for xBSD, the main concern with linux namely the fear of proliferation of binary drivers isnt a problem... BSD already allows binary drivers anyway.
AFAICS only because they are maintained by people who keep them interchangable. (extra work not all maintainers feel like doing I imagine) A very short look at the USB source for instance showed up a good amount of ifdef xBSD's. To me that makes it more 3 non interchangable versions rolled into one :)
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Marco
www.linuxhardware.net
... you wouldn't found so much antagonism if you checked out the places where people who *use* FreeBSD use to talk. I mean, IRC? Please, do me a favor: go to a popular, well-known, IRC Linux channel (#linux? :), and say you are a BSD user who never used Linux before and want to try it. I'd be very surprised if you go a different reaction.
Anyway, the BSD communities, AFAIK, use mailing lists. IRC channels and Usenet get a very different crowd.
As for web sites... what web sites are you talking about? The official FreeBSD site is www.freebsd.org, and I don't think there is anything denigrating Linux there. If there is, please e-mail me and I'll personally remove the offending text immediatly.
(8-DCS)
... UTSL. Frankly, it shows that you are a bit too lazy to browse "tons" of source files, because you obviously haven't ever looked at one to claim something like "most without any comments". Hah. Pfff.
/usr/share/examples, though I'm not sure how up-to-date they are. There are a couple of bumps in the road for FreeBSD developers:
For people who are actually interested in getting their hands dirty, there are drivers examples in
1) From 2.2.x to 3.x, the SCSI subsystem was dumped and replaced with CAM. Alas, now that 3.x is the -stable line, one need not concern with that.
2) On 4.x we are introducing the "newbus" architecture. This makes the probe&attachment of drivers quite different between -current and -stable. Anyone who *actually* wrote a driver knows, though, that probe&attachment is just a minor part of the driver.
The VM system has been revamped, though most drivers don't get affected by that. The VFS is in line for a complete revamp too, though it's dubious whether this will be done before 4.x becomes -stable.
Aside from that, just pick a driver that's similar to what you intend to develop, subscribe to the appropriate mailing list, and go ahead. If you want recommendations on what drivers would be good models, ask on the appropriate mailing list or on -hackers (don't cross-post).
(8-DCS)
Well you're right. But the various pieces of #ifdef-ed code are only to glue in the differing kerneldevice driver and device driverhardware interfaces. Not really a lot different than the necessary interfaces to support, for example, both x86 and Alpha architectures in the same code tree. Any USB related changes, such as adding support for new devices or fixing bugs in the current devices, will go to the other camp automatically.
-sw
There were, like, dashes and greater than and less than signs in there where it looks run together.
-sw
There is a killer license problem.
Hehe, that's a point of course, but it still seems like a very nice initiative from the guys at the BSD Driver Database.
Every journey has a first step and all of that, and this is a good example of one. Hopefully this will start a trend.
- JJ
Adaptech it says in the bootup (pre os loading screens) something about SCSI Rom Bios v1.0 For Adaptech 18x and 16x. The drivers that work in dos are for the general 18x type. It's just baboozling.
I wonder why it is that every *BSD coder/user i meet has to slam Linux this way? are they scared thier little OS will get forgotten and trampled by popularity of linux? probably. Personaly I can see a LOT of parallels of the old OS/2 vs. Windows wars in the *BSD vs. Linux wars. I think they also see this and are deathly afraid of being forgotten like OS/2 was. If I were the *BSD guys i would stop being so closed and simple minded and go out and make people aware of thier OS in a productive way. Simply screaming "But MY os is better than yours!" isn't going to win any IT managers. PROOVE IT. And no i'm not talking of places like ht tp://www.spatula.net/proc/linux|0687a4b2bf8e7f720f 6b1bf144e39acb4fd9/index.src that the #FreeBSD kiddies are spreading around. (BTW this page is so out of date and biased it's funny just to read. :) )
Sincerely,
another FreeBSD user.
What I really hate is the supposed necessity of having everything being compiled from scratch on BSD. At least with things like debian I can get precompiled binaries revised constantly and not have to spend 100+ hours compiling everything. Also If at some point I want to run that really nice comercial application that is on linux I think I would rather like to.
Actually, I believe with the change in BSD license to remove the advertising clause that it is now possible to release the same driver under both licenses. (I may be wrong since I'm not an attorney and don't pretend to give legal advice.) I believe that Rhino (the Javascript interpreter written in Java) from Mozilla is released under the NPL and GPL. This means as a user that you have the choice of license that you use the software under and as a re-distributor you also have the right to re-distribute under either or both licenses. Howver, for this scheme to work as contributor since I also have license choice, I could mess this up by only contributing may chnage under one of the two licenses. This would really give the maintainer two choices: 1. Not accept my changes. (I could always fork and distribute my own under the license terms that I agree with). 2. Accept my license (either NPL or GPL) terms and distribute the next release under that. With that in mind, I see no reason that I couldn't release core code under BSD and GPL license and give the user a choice of their terms and ask for contributions to be given in the same terms. Since some of the interface APIs into the Kernel have their own terms, I may have to have some differences between each OS but those pieces can be distributed under the correct license.
hmm.. I've been reading freebsd-newbies and freebsd-advocacy, and nothing even close to that has ever popped up. Its been maybe a year at most.. but linux, when brought up, is never casted down. However on my LUGs, I usuall don't see anything negative towards BSD, except that once or twice the installafests might conflict with a BSD installafest (or they're just wandering around and hit on of BSDs.. or something), and people seem to love to get in the BSD guy's fce with a linux cd and try to get them mad. When enough linux guys shove cds in your face while installing a BSD OS on someones computer, and god knows what they're muttering about at the BSD guy and user... I'm not surprised there's some people getting annoyed.
That's the only excuse I can come up with. Other than that, neither is attacking the other in vile hatred...
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
Usually you can find precompiled bins for most of the various BSDs. You just have to look on the FTP sites.
Ungh
Recently I decided to use FreeBSD on my machine at work and use OpenBSD as my firewall at home. Each works well. I dutifully subscribed to and read the relevant mailing lists. What is sad is the anti-Linux overtones that permeate the lists.
;). After playing around a bit i wanted to try FreeBSD. To my surprise, FreeBSD was a little less easy to install than OpenBSD, probably because its install program is a little more detailed. After appx. 30 minutes i had a nice fresh FreeBSD system. I still have it running at the moment, it replaces my old Debian installation i had running on my test pc. I'm quite satisfied with it, it's my programming system, and i use it as a stimulus to make my programs less dependent on Linux-specific stuff.
I have had the same experience. I was interested in the bsd's for a while since my internet provider runs its shell machines on bsdi/os, which i liked. So i browsed the *bsd sites a bit and hung out on a couple of irc channels for a while, and the thing that struck me the most was the relentless continual Linux bashing. "Linsux lusers", "Linux Unix wannabe's", "Wintel or Lintel, whats the difference", etc. Both the websites and the IRC channels are permeated with in the most positive variant an air of superiority and in its worst form plain pompous snobism and elitism. This disappointed me greatly. I was expecting a mature, intelligent crowd of people, since BSD has touts its long Unix heritage, and instead i got a herd of elitist snobs. The shocking thing was that it wasn't even a single Irc channel or site, but that it was displayed throughout every BSD source of information i walked in to. I really didn't expect this. If you have to get your identity by means of running a certain operating system you're a really sad bastard as far as i'm concerned. The BSD crowd seems to care more about bashing Linux users than to attract people to their (undoubtedly) great OS's.
For hours i had to hear and read how incredibly superior BSD was to Linux, and how i, lowly Linux user, would never be able to install it, because Linux users are unskilled script kiddies and Windows refugees. Linux was something for Windows haters, and BSD something for Unix lovers i was told, and since i never ran BSD i should rather give up and go run Windows or its next cousin Linux. People also questioned the technical abilities of Alan Cox, Linus, and other kernel hackers. The old asynchronous metadata updating dispute was dragged out of the closet again to prove that Linux kernel hackers really didn't knew what they were talking about. It must be devine intervention that i have never had a single byte lost using ext2fs then.
After this little "friendly encounter" with the bsd culture i went forth installing the actual software. OpenBSD took me 15 minutes to install, all went well the first time. Very nice, clean software, the install was sober but well-done. Apparently i'm a genius amongst Linux users, if i should believe the bsd folks at least
I have reached three conclusions after this little installfest:
1) I'm a longtime Debian 2.0 (hamm) user. When comparing the install program as well as the installed operating system, there are hardly any noticable differences. FreeBSD is just as easy to install as Debian 2.0 which i'm used to. With only Debian experience, i had a bare running system in 20 minutes and a complete customized system in a couple of hours. It looks, feels, and acts completely the same as my old Debian install, except Debian is a little more complete and user-friendly in some area's. FreeBSD has some places where it feels a little spartan, which makes it not more difficult but simply a little inconvenient in some places. Gets familiar quickly though.
2) OpenBSD in its raw form is less suitable for home/desktop usage than FreeBSD which comes with standard with more software and is more tailored to Intel PC's. A thing that irked me about OpenBSD was its vt220 support for the virtual consoles. I want normal Ansi/vt100 emulation with IBM chars. Maybe its something in the setup i missed, or that can be adjusted, but i couldn't find anything about it. For a home system i simply want a good text console like Linux/FreeBSD has, i refuse to do without. However, if i was to install a firewall or server system i would choose OpenBSD. It feels like it's a very well-done, mature piece of software.
3) Large amounts of BSD users behave like pompous, elitist snobs who spend more time bashing Linux and Linux users than they spend advocating the virtues of their system. I can hardly remember any occasion where i have been more offended and abused than when i tried to get some info on BSD, both by websites and irc. Even most official BSD websites host articles that do basicly nothing else than bash Linux and Linux users. When i asked in an IRC channel what the reason of this childish bashing was i got the answer "Oh, Linux users bash BSD too". They must know different Linux users than i do, since most Linux users i know have actually praised the BSD's a lot. The one thing the BSD crowd appears to be good at is scaring away and offending potential users, which ofcourse is one way to stay elite.
So, my advice to Linux users wanting to try out a BSD variant is: Go ahead, especially FreeBSD works very nice for a home-system, its easy to install and it looks and feels very much like a clean Debian install. The software is very good, but avoid the crowd that hangs around it, they are not worth your attention.
1) What is the fundamental difference between *BSDs in terms of driver compatibility, or can drivers be ported easily? Specifically interested in PCI-related stuff.
Porting drivers is not easy. I remember seeing some documentation about it, but can't remember where, what or how.
2) Which of the BSDs has 64-bit support for Alpha? Again, interested in 64-bit memory and PCI access. I have a feeling FreeBSD's alpha port doesn't, whereas NetBSD might.
Both FreeBSD and NetBSD have full 64 bit support, IIRC. There are some glitches in the alpha port of FreeBSD since it's relatively new (and FreeBSD's first port), but from what I hear it's stable as hell.
However GNU creditted FreeBSD, Inc for solving the problem upon request. Of course, since each driver is written by different people, the liecense can vary. However, it is not uncommon for either to look at the other's code to get an idea of how to write their own driver, etc. Both sides do it. That's not stealing code, but why do the revserse engineering all over again? If you understand.. then you can port. Lots of drivers go back and forth that way...
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
You can install a binary using pkg_add
There are binary packages and source ports.
Debian is modeling after BSD which is good. But it is in no way making a "new" way of packaging.
Recently I decided to use FreeBSD on my machine at work and use OpenBSD as my firewall at home. Each works well. I dutifully subscribed to and read the relevant mailing lists. What is sad is the anti-Linux overtones that permeate the lists.
;). After playing around a bit i wanted to try FreeBSD. To my surprise, FreeBSD was a little less easy to install than OpenBSD, probably because its install program is a little more detailed. After appx. 30 minutes i had a nice fresh FreeBSD system. I still have it running at the moment, it replaces my old Debian installation i had running on my test pc. I'm quite satisfied with it, it's my programming system, and i use it as a stimulus to make my programs less dependent on Linux-specific stuff.
I have had the same experience. I was interested in the bsd's for a while since my internet provider runs its shell machines on bsdi/os, which i liked. So i browsed the *bsd sites a bit and hung out on a couple of irc channels for a while, and the thing that struck me the most was the relentless continual Linux bashing. "Linsux lusers", "Linux Unix wannabe's", "Wintel or Lintel, whats the difference", etc. Both the websites and the IRC channels are permeated with in the most positive variant an air of superiority and in its worst form plain pompous snobism and elitism. This disappointed me greatly. I was expecting a mature, intelligent crowd of people, since BSD has touts its long Unix heritage, and instead i got a herd of elitist snobs. The shocking thing was that it wasn't even a single Irc channel or site, but that it was displayed throughout every BSD source of information i walked in to. I really didn't expect this. If you have to get your identity by means of running a certain operating system you're a really sad bastard as far as i'm concerned. The BSD crowd seems to care more about bashing Linux users than to attract people to their (undoubtedly) great OS's.
For hours i had to hear and read how incredibly superior BSD was to Linux, and how i, lowly Linux user, would never be able to install it, because Linux users are unskilled script kiddies and Windows refugees. Linux was something for Windows haters, and BSD something for Unix lovers i was told, and since i never ran BSD i should rather give up and go run Windows or its next cousin Linux. People also questioned the technical abilities of Alan Cox, Linus, and other kernel hackers. The old asynchronous metadata updating dispute was dragged out of the closet again to prove that Linux kernel hackers really didn't knew what they were talking about. It must be devine intervention that i have never had a single byte lost using ext2fs then.
After this little "friendly encounter" with the bsd culture i went forth installing the actual software. OpenBSD took me 15 minutes to install, all went well the first time. Very nice, clean software, the install was sober but well-done. Apparently i'm a genius amongst Linux users, if i should believe the bsd folks at least
I have reached three conclusions after this little installfest:
1) I'm a longtime Debian 2.0 (hamm) user. When comparing the install program as well as the installed operating system, there are hardly any noticable differences. FreeBSD is just as easy to install as Debian 2.0 which i'm used to. With only Debian experience, i had a bare running system in 30 minutes and a complete customized system in a couple of hours. It looks, feels, and acts completely the same as my old Debian install, except Debian is a little more complete and user-friendly in some area's. FreeBSD has some places where it feels a little spartan, which makes it not more difficult but simply a little inconvenient in some places. Gets familiar quickly though.
2) OpenBSD in its raw form is less suitable for home/desktop usage than FreeBSD which comes with standard with more software and is more tailored to Intel PC's. A thing that irked me about OpenBSD was its vt220 support for the virtual consoles. I want normal Ansi/vt100 emulation with IBM chars. Maybe its something in the setup i missed, or that can be adjusted, but i couldn't find anything about it. For a home system i simply want a good text console like Linux/FreeBSD has, i refuse to do without. However, if i was to install a firewall or server system i would choose OpenBSD. It feels like it's a very well-done, mature piece of software.
3) Large amounts of BSD users behave like pompous, elitist snobs who spend more time bashing Linux and Linux users than they spend advocating the virtues of their system. I can hardly remember any occasion where i have been more offended and abused than when i tried to get some info on BSD, both by websites and irc. Even most official BSD websites host articles that do basicly nothing else than bash Linux and Linux users. When i asked in an IRC channel what the reason of this childish bashing was i got the answer "Oh, Linux users bash BSD too". They must know different Linux users than i do, since most Linux users i know have actually praised the BSD's a lot. The one thing the BSD crowd appears to be good at is scaring away and offending potential users, which ofcourse is one way to stay elite.
So, my advice to Linux users wanting to try out a BSD variant is: Go ahead, especially FreeBSD works very nice for a home-system, its easy to install and it looks and feels very much like a clean Debian install. The software is very good, but avoid the crowd that hangs around it, they are not worth your attention.
NO!!! The BSD gods would get angry!!! I hate to say this but I am a staunch FreeBSD user. I love Linux for it's attempt at being compatible with everything, but look where that put Microsoft with 98. The buggiest, slowest bunch of letters compiled in to some sort of GUI. FreeBSD keeps it self together with people who decide what features get in. Otherwise it'll end up like 98. Dare I say it, Linux is to 98 as FreeBSD is to NT. Stable, sound, and picky with hardware.
JR Boyens
lone_ranger@usa.net
jboyens@programmer.net
ICQ (1667732)
And even Compaq is interested in FreeBSD Alpha, and later put the other BSDs up. One of the guys there is working on FreeBSD Alpha SMP... (from DDN article/posts)
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
The problem is not individual drivers but the
system as a whole.
If I write code myself, thus am the sole copyright
holder, I can make it available under ANY licence
I choose.
I could put it under a Microsoft-Style EULA,
the GPL, BSD, and the QPL and distribute them all
at once.
Why? The licence is one I am offering...I, as the
author, am not restricted by the licence (unless
we had a contract stating that I was issuing it
under such a licence and agree not to release it
under any other licence ever)
In any case...the main problems are this:
I The BSD people and Linux developers will
never agree on 1 licence. Many BSD dislike the
GPL and will never agree to their code being
distributed under it, and vica versa
II Any author who did not agree to any needed
relicencing, their code could not be used. Thus
the code base shrinks (this includes people who
can't be reached)
III BSD and Linux use very differnt development
models. Which model (or what hybrid model) would
the new FreeLSD (love the name BTW) use?
IV somehow I think a project of this size would
amount to herding cats.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Did you actually read the first clause?
Specifically the part about "redistributions must retain the above copyright notice"
sheesh.
-bugg
The majority of slamming of linux that I have seen has been on this forum. It seems people like to argue here. I don't see how it different from any other story on this site where you'll see people arguing.
:)
:)
Second to that, there's irc. People on irc like to talk shit. #freebsd on efnet turns into flame101 as soon as anyone event mentions linux (or NT for that matter)
I think it's just the medium. The mailing lists are a little less "noisy". I don't blame people for saying "RTFM" whenever someone asks a stupid question in a channel though. Newbies just have to learn how to use documentation and mailing list archives
----------
This is exactly the situation I'm in. I have written a Linux driver for a device, and wish to port it to *BSD (FreeBSD initially, others later), but for the life of me I can't find any decent documentation on how to do it.
"Linux Device Drivers" was instrumental for me in writing the driver - if something like that existed for FreeBSD, I'd buy it in a second.
No, I do not wish to grovel through thousands of lines of kernel code. As enlightening as it would be, my time is too valuable for that.
Someone please write one. I'll wager if someone does, the range of device drivers available for the BSDs would soon increase dramatically.
You forget, Linux can already include *BSD code. That's one reason people get so bent out-of-shape over the GPL: it, combined with Linus' pragmatism, results in Linux being able to include both BSD and Linux (meaning GPL) code, while the reverse is not true.
...Is there such a thing for Linux in general as well? Or for one particular port/architecture? Seems like a similar thing could be needed in other places, or maybe one general one for all open source OSES.....
Funny and I thought Perl == Paid employment recently located
Now if we can just get BSD to mix with Linux in a huge cooperative movement to make the super OS (read: BSD's quality with Linux's compatibility ( making FreeLSD? :) ), we'll make progress.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
I think this is a very good example of cooperation among people with common goals but minor ideological or technical differences. I think it's a great thing, that various BSD fractions can work together on something like this.
I just hope for more such cooperation in the future -- we are in the same boat after all, we all want the same thing -- a world of free, high-quality software
--
--
Victor Danilchenko
Anyone know anything about the software that is used to drive the database? We've been working on a software package that would connect two groups of users trying to find each other (in the case above, it would be driver developers and driver users) using a database-backed web site.
We've thought about generalizing the software and then open-sourcing it, but I'm curious if this problem is already solved...?
Can your IM do this?
you might need to compile a new kernel to support scsi cdroms. i think that was disabled by default in the last one i did.
Ok the first person who can get my crappy Adaptech SCSI card in my machine will get my use of the *nix OS weather that is BSD or Linux. It really gets my goat when I get the red hat cd (or even I I got a *BSD cd it would take forever to transfer data to my 100Mb partition and then to the unix one.
I wonder if it will also cover drivers that will eventually be released for the Darwin OS. Mr. Sanchez (head Core BSD guy at Apple) said that the reception for Darwin at FreeBSDCON was pretty good.
He said that he wanted to check out the FreeBSD style documentation for use with Darwin so maybe they'll use the driver database too.
Need the synch to MacOS X and IOKit first though.
Since Linux can include *BSD drivers (especially now that the advertising clause is no more), does the database cover that as well? It didn't appear to do so when I poked through it....
Granted, I don't know about Debian, but every /usr/lib/X11 ...
LinSux distribution I know has inconsistencies.
You cannot use LinSux in production unless you
re-compile most of your software again. Else,
you will find X11-libs scattered all over the
place, but NOT in
Your comment about those commercial apps is void,
since you do can run Applix or StarOffice on
nearly any UNIX you want to.
I suggested this, and I guess alot of others did too.
That's what I really like about the BSD community,
they listen to the users and developers.
Now, if we only could get a database for porting the few Linux apps(and drivers) that isn't avail(i.e doesn't work) on BSD.
As always, just my $0.02.
"Last words are for fools who haven't said enough." - Karl Marx
Linux person wants to know:
1) What is the fundamental difference between *BSDs in terms of driver compatibility, or can drivers be ported easily? Specifically interested in PCI-related stuff.
2) Which of the BSDs has 64-bit support for Alpha? Again, interested in 64-bit memory and PCI access. I have a feeling FreeBSD's alpha port doesn't, whereas NetBSD might.
I find the 'why not include linux' comments interesting.
Have you ever asked the LSB or the linuxhardware sites about 'why don't you include BSD'?
The answer is 'we are a linux site' This is a BSD site. It wouldn't exist if the Linux sites were 'more inclusive'.
As it is, the Linux Binary mode in BSD is ignored by most vendors. I'm sure once you get vendors/people to think BSD and Linux together in one thought, then you will see more merging of projects like the hardware database to cover both BSD and Linux.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!