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BSD Operating Systems

FreeBSD driver database now covers *BSD 60

Posted by Nik from the Who-says-we-can't-get-along? dept.
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.'
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FreeBSD driver database now covers *BSD More

FreeBSD driver database now covers *BSD

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  • 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.)
  • 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
  • ... 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.
  • ... 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.

    For people who are actually interested in getting their hands dirty, there are drivers examples in /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:

    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).
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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...
  • Usually you can find precompiled bins for most of the various BSDs. You just have to look on the FTP sites.
  • 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.

    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 ;). 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 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...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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.

    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 ;). 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 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)

  • Re:BSD driver differences (Score:3)

    by NovaX ( 37364 ) on Tuesday October 26, 1999 @01:59PM (#1586284)
    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)
  • 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.
  • Did you actually read the first clause?
    Specifically the part about "redistributions must retain the above copyright notice"

    sheesh.
  • 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).
  • 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 :)
    ----------
  • ...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.....
  • 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.

  • Bloody good show! (Score:3)

    by Victor Danilchenko ( 18251 ) on Tuesday October 26, 1999 @08:19AM (#1586293)

    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

    --

  • Yeah, I don't know anything about drivers, but you'd think that Linux and FreeBSD were 'similar' enough operating systems so that if the Linux driver code is open source, it wouldn't be that much work to port to FreeBSD..?
  • 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...?

  • 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.
  • I actually tried a recent 2.2.7 kernel (back then) and even added verbose scsi support analysis.
  • Some drivers are fully interchangable between the various BSDs. The one that comes to mind right off the bat is the USB support.

    -sw

    *why is it that every thread you want to moderate is the same ones you want to post to?*
  • SUUUUURE there is.
    *ROTFLMAO*
  • 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.


  • So, the big question is... which Adaptec card are you having problems with? Both BSD and Linux support a large range of Adaptec cards.

  • 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. For example, here is part of a message to tech@openbsd.org:

    Things that would be nice to have in future releases of OpenBSD -------------------------------------------------- ------------- - i386 multi-processor support (FreeBSD has it, even BSDI has it, and little cousin linux is bragging that is has it.) (I have machines that are dual processor that I had go linux because no no OpenBSD port :( )

    Is it necessary to denigrate linux with "little cousin" and "bragging"?

  • Meeting 1/2 way. (Score:4)

    by mr ( 88570 ) on Tuesday October 26, 1999 @09:09AM (#1586315)
    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.
  • you need to to know the port and interupt settings for that card.

    when you boot FBSD, use the visual configuration mode, and change the config for the aha0 device to match what your card is.

    you might also want to disable anything you arn't using, before proceding.
  • No, that change was a change in the 4.4BSDLite license. FreeBSD's (as well as Open and NT) licenses remains unchanged.

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