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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.'
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...
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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.
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...
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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)
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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"
If nothing else works, ask one of the FreeBSD lists... which ever is most aplicable. Of course telling where you looked and was unsuccessful would be helpful (cuz no one likes to help when they think the person was just lazy).
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...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
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
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.
So, the big question is... which Adaptec card are you having problems with? Both BSD and Linux support a large range of Adaptec cards.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
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!