Date: Sat, 01 Jun 96 20:04:25 -0400 From: "Francisco Reyes" <reyes01@ibm.net> To: "Darryl Okahata" <darrylo@hpnmhjw.sr.hp.com> Cc: "Andrew V. Stesin" <stesin@elvisti.kiev.ua>, "FreeBSD doc Mailing list" <doc@freebsd.org>, "John Fieber" <jfieber@indiana.edu> Subject: Re: Hardware compatibility list. Second round. Message-ID: <199606020009.AAA25556@pop01.ny.us.ibm.net>
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On Sat, 01 Jun 1996 14:09:17 -0700, Darryl Okahata wrote:
>> For each piece of hardware we could have a checkbox button indicating if it w
>> orked or not or we could have another form for incompatible hardware.
> Wouldn't it make more sense to assume that any listed hardware
>works (which would be the usual case, otherwise people would probably
>not be using them with FreeBSD ;-), and, if there are problems, list
>them in some comments? With the above checkbox approach, I believe most
>entries will have the box checked, making the checkboxes less useful.
I had thought of using the checkbox for hardware that didn't work. In that case then it
would be mostly unchecked.
> I'd say that most people reading the hardware list will be doing so
>to see if their *existing* hardware will work, with the people building
>a new PC being next.
I think you touched in three things with that comment. I believe that people will find it
usefull to have hardware that works, hardware that doesnt' work, and what configurations
are used for what. For exising users not finding their hardware in the trouble list is not
guarantee that it work. If they find in the list of compatible hardware then they may
at least give it a try.
>It's not very useful as an "accomplishments list"
>("See? BinkyCo's new 1000 Gigaflurb system runs FreeBSD and supports a
>million users!"); such a list, while useful, is best put elsewhere.
As to what a configuration is used for and the number of users it will certainly be usefull.
Some people that may try FreeBSD it do it solely because they have heard some frriend
became and ISP and is supporting X number of users with FreeBSD. Another case is
that someone wants to know if their current hardware will be enough to support 100
newsgroups or 10,000 newsgroups. In that section I was thinking of not having brands just
bare hardware sizes (eg 16MB, 1.2Gig SCSI HD). I had in mind having a few of those
sample configuration separate from the compatibility list.
> Assuming most people reading the hardware list will be doing so to
>see if their *existing* hardware will work, it's unlikely that they'll
>find their particular combination of hardware listed in the list. There
>are just too many commodity part makers out there. Because of this,
>having a list of known problem parts or known problem part combinations
>would be more useful.
For the same reason (too many combinations of hardware) just having what doesn't work
is not enough. Should someone believe that their hardware will work because it is
not listed in the "incompatible" section?
They may not find the exact match of hardware, but at least they may find some.
It may be also helpful in troubleshooting to have both. Perhaps the HD and controller
are compatible, but the network card isn't. By having the information at least the
user may be warned in certain cases of what they can expect if they try to
install/use FreeBSD.
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