BSD Hardware Database

by vermaden • 6 years ago

84 65 6 years ago

andarleen3• 6 years ago

Very disappointed by BSDs and FreeBSD in particular. The other day I wanted to build a pihole set-up using it - do you think it works seamlessly with raspberry pi? It doesn't. Wanted to install it on my UEFI bios - have to take more steps than I should. Wanted to run it on an nvidia jetson i have lying around. Good luck with that! Basically it only works with very common or old hardware. A shame really. I don't want to sound entitled, would have been happy to allocate time to build eyecandy apps to make it more suitable for a desktop (had an app included in the ports tree in the past), but I simply can't without spending too much time to even make it work. I wish this would change, as FreeBSD is my first "love", and for good reason - it's tidy and logically organised.

metalliqaz2• 6 years ago

rpi and many other boards use proprietary drivers that are not open to the community. the hardware vendor makes a Linux blob and that's it. What can FreeBSD do about it?

andarleen3• 6 years ago

What can FreeBSD do about it?

That's a good question, and I don't have a clue. I know my comment sounds a bit entitled, because now that I think of it FreeBSD has provided that platform for vendors and the wider community to port drivers, or reverse engineer where possible. If i could do it I would do it myself, but I lack the skill and time. So i'll rephrase my statement: s/Very disappointed by BSDs and FreeBSD in particular/Very disappointed that vendors do not provide better hardware support for BSDs and FreeBSD in particular/. It really is a shame that such a great OS doesn't have wider support and adoption.

numpad0• 6 years ago

NDISwrapper

upofadown• 6 years ago

...FreeBSD in particular.

Which other BSDs did you try?

andarleen3• 6 years ago

Tried NetBSD and OpenBSD in the past, and had worse issues in terms of compatibility. However, I had to rephrase my comment based on someone else's comment, and based on the realization that it's not FreeBSD and BSDs at fault: s/Very disappointed by BSDs and FreeBSD in particular/Very disappointed that vendors do not provide better hardware support for BSDs and FreeBSD in particular/

liveoneggs• 6 years ago

NetBSD supports those boards, iirc

GeorgeTirebiter• 6 years ago

Indeed it does, and I've been running RPi3B+ / NetBSD for years successfully. Try it!

1over137• 6 years ago

If you're wanting to use FreeBSD for something pihole-like, check out pfsense and pfBlockerNG.

LargoLasskhyfv• 6 years ago

Well... you could have tried https://www.invisible.ca/arm/ and https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbarm/ along with https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/

SomeoneFromCA3• 6 years ago

BSD "distro"? Really?

tyingq• 6 years ago

The D in BSD is...distribution.

jbverschoor• 6 years ago

But there's only one distribution. Though dragonfly is a fork, it's not a redistribution.. or is it?

But "Linux" is just a kernel.

colejohnson66• 6 years ago

I think they’re pointing out the duplication in “Berkeley Software Distribution disto/distribution”; similar to “ATM machine”, “PIN number”, “LCD display/screen”, etc.

SomeoneFromCA3• 6 years ago

True, yes true, but it is there for entirely different reason than in the term "Linux distribution". Even more, if we follow your argument it makes even less sense, "distribution distribution". There some genuine "distibutions" among BSD, such as NomadBSD, PC-BSD etc (FreeBSD derived systems), but in most cases, BSDs are very different OSes, incompatible with each other, with very different kernels (OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, DragonFlyBSD).

snvzz6• 6 years ago

Thus redundant.

metalliqaz2• 6 years ago

There are 33 computers in their database.

laxd• 6 years ago

and 33.000 on bsdstats.org. I guess this is a new and unrelated endeavour

drewg1232• 6 years ago

These survey sites tend to miss large numbers of FreeBSD machines in use in corporate environs. Eg, Netflix Openconnect CDN and similar.

samoa422• 6 years ago

idk but wager to say there are maybe a couple of thousand OC machines worldwide. not really "large numbers".

on other fronts i rekon that other infrastructure manufacturers are big on BSD (eg. dell/emc, juniper)

drewg1232• 6 years ago

Yes, openconnect was just one example that I know well because I work on it, and I know we don't report to these survey sites. If we did, we would make up a sizable percent of bsdstats.org, and over 99% of the BSD Hardware Database in the title.

And I'm sure there are others (like your infrastructure manufacturers) that could say the same.

iunternik• 6 years ago

Can someone help me understand what's the difference works and detected?

oneplane• 6 years ago

Detected means you see a device at a certain port or address. Works means that after detection you can actually interact with the device and do things.

snvzz6• 6 years ago

https://github.com/linuxhw/hw-probe/blob/master/LICENSE

What in the world were they thinking. This is now how you appeal to the BSD community.

nix2316• 6 years ago

Damn! I already executed it, my system is tainted!

snvzz6• 6 years ago

It probably automatically uploaded details about your system online, before you could blink.

na854• 6 years ago

One of the biggest turn-offs I have about BSD is the License zealotry that runs so rampant in that community.

nix2316• 6 years ago

Oh, even more than the zealotry of Linux and ZFS?

nmz• 6 years ago

Licensing issues are always a big problem for any community, you can look at the whole tivoization debacle for an example in the linux community specifically. Changing a copyfree project to copyleft is a huge problem. Projects deliberately choose a license that works with their business model, An upside to the copyfree model is incorporating the code into a proprietary project without releasing the code. It is of course in the best interest of the one using the code to keep it in sync and submit their patches with the open source project for security and performance reasons. But they are not forced to do so.

dddddaviddddd• 6 years ago

What is the difference between this and bsdstats.org ?

BSD Hardware Database

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