Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 15:05:12 -0400 From: Victor Salaman <salaman@teknos.com> To: 'Scott Mitchell' <rsm@acm.org>, "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>, Colin Eric Johnson <colinj@cs.unm.edu> Cc: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, David Kulp <dkulp@neomorphic.com>, freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: compatibility list Message-ID: <608F4F76C94DD211B93100805F29063A8D83@TEKNOS>
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It's about time someone said this Scott... Linux is not that great, it's mostly smoke and mirrors. But in the eyes of mainstream everyone, FreeBSD is the underdog. And if we don't capture that marketshare, Linux could improve their networking/stability/vm, etc... and be up to par or even better than FreeBSD, that would mean "Let's all run Linux, why FreeBSD". The attack has to come from everywhere. If I were not a technical personal, I wouldn't have been able to make my notebook PCIC controller work. Not even with 4.0-CURRENT or anything, just because the motivation in the core team is not out there... -----Original Message----- From: Scott Mitchell [mailto:rsm@acm.org] Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 1999 2:16 PM To: Jordan K. Hubbard; Colin Eric Johnson Cc: Mike Smith; David Kulp; freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: compatibility list On Mon, Mar 08, 1999 at 11:36:08PM -0800, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > What can I do (as a fan of FreeBSD, and an owner of a Dell Lattitude) to > > help the pccard code move forward? > > Be a capable Unix programmer who hopefully also understands at least > something about the mechanics of the various PCCARD/CARDBUS > controllers and range of available cards out there. That's who it > would take to get the support code merged from PAO into the mainline > on an ongoing basis and also deal with various user reports when it > all doesn't work and someone (see above) needs to figure out why. > Simple testers we have plenty of. EVERYONE is a tester at this > stage. :) > > - Jordan Well, I believe I have the programming skills, although I'd have to read up on the PCMCIA/CardBus stuff, and I'm willing to commit time to this (modulo getting my thesis and the Xircom ethernet driver done, switching jobs and moving house in the next few months). It's not a single-person job though: from other comments on this thread, my own reading of the existing code and the general anti-PAO feeling on this list I guess what's needed is a complete rewrite of the PCCARD code, as a special case of some generic removable device support (does this actually exist? is it documented anywhere?) Presumably that would be less work in the long run than endless hacking on the current code. Of course all this is beside the point if FreeBSD is just a 'server focused' OS, and no-one on the core team really gives a shit about pushing desktop, let alone laptop, support. That may not be the case, but it is the impression a mere user like me (can't speak for anyone else) gets from reading the lists when these subjects come up. So, is anyone actively maintaining the current PCCARD code? Case in point: the macro used to register a PCCARD driver changed someplace between 3.0 and 3.1 -- if nobody updated the ep driver to reflect this change, it probably explains why Jordan's getting this "Driver allocation failed for ep0" error. My point is, if no-one on core/committers cares about making this stuff happen, there's not much motivation for the rest of us to "do the work", as we are always exhorted to do. If I'm going to invest my time (and probably money) in this, I don't want it to end up as another PAO...if that's the way it would be, we may as well all switch to Linux now. Should probably clarify my idea of desktop/laptop support here. I don't think that we, or Linux for that matter, are any kind of serious competition for MS, or Apple, or anyone else, for the hearts and minds of the average desktop user (as in someone who really doesn't care what's under the hood, but just wants to get their work done, play games, whatever) yet; we never will be unless we make some kind of effort to keep up, which for the time being I guess means being at least as good as Linux...then maybe we'll see some more mainstream application developers coming across to BSD. Getting way too off topic here, will stop now. So consider me volunteered to do (some of) the work...anyone else who wants in, please stand up now. That means 'political' and logistical as well as technical contributions; eg. is the project in a position to loan cards, PCMCIA specs, etc (laptops?) to those producing the code? Wow, that all's quite a rant coming from me...time to get back to the thesis I think :) Ducks behind his desk, expecting flamage... Scott -- =========================================================================== Scott Mitchell | PGP Key ID |"If I can't have my coffee, I'm just <scott@dcs.qmw.ac.uk> | 0x54B171B9 | like a dried up piece of roast goat" QMW College, London, UK | 0xAA775B8B | -- J. S. Bach. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message
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