Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 19:48:23 -0500 (EST) From: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu> To: Francisco Reyes <reyes01@ibm.net> Cc: FreeBSD doc Mailing list <doc@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Hardware compatibility list. Second round. Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.93.960601192218.23200H-100000@Fieber-John.campusview.indiana.edu> In-Reply-To: <199606020009.AAA25556@pop01.ny.us.ibm.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
[cc list trimmed...]
On Sat, 1 Jun 1996, Francisco Reyes wrote:
> 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?
FreeBSD is in an awkward position with regards to publishing
hardware compatibility. It "PC compatible" enough that
maintaining any *comprehensive* list of compatible hardware is
wildly unrealistic, yet we do not have anywhere near the
resources to be able to accurately state that any PC with 8
megabytes of ram and a 100 megabyte hard drive will work.
So, buing stuck in the middle, what sort of hardware information
is most useful to:
* People who already have their hardware and want to run
FreeBSD.
* People running FreeBSD but having some hardware difficulties.
* People in a position of purchasing hardware with the
knowledge that they will be running FreeBSD.
The first group just wants to know *if* it will work. The second
wants to know *how* to get to work, and the latter is probably
more interested in how *well* it will work.
I suspect the latter group is probably the easiest to satisfy
because a fair population of FreeBSD users use pretty high
powered systems, and a few are in dealership positions with
opportunities to try out the latest and greatest.
Information for the second group can only come from existing
users war stories about how they managed to get the Zingle 987FX
PCI bus vacuum cleaner controller working.
The first group is the hardest because they will have *lots* of
questions about hardware nobody here has ever heard of. A lot of
it will be stuff the "power users" among us wouldn't dream of
buying (like ide cdrom drives). I don't think we will ever be
able to completely satisfy people in this department, but some
effort is warranted.
A lot of information to address these three needs exists in
collective FreeBSD user community. The task at hand is to
enhance access to this. Currently it lies burried in peoples
brains, mailing lists, and newsgroup archives. Francisco is
working on some web forms for collecting information from people,
normalizing it so that it isn't quite so scattered about.
Although we may want to put it in the handbook, I'm thinking it
may be more useful as an interactive piece of software (web based
or otherwize)...
-john
== jfieber@indiana.edu ===========================================
== http://fallout.campusview.indiana.edu/~jfieber ================
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.NEB.3.93.960601192218.23200H-100000>