A Call For More Collaboration & Harmony Among BSD Hardware Drivers

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A Call For More Collaboration & Harmony Among BSD Hardware Drivers

The BSD operating system projects tend to not receive as much support from hardware vendors as Linux and their driver support is made even more fragmented on the BSD side due to many subtle as well as not so subtle differences between the major BSDs. NetBSD developer Pierre Pronchery has proposed more "harmony" among BSD drivers with increased collaboration between the major BSD players on driver development...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/2023-BSD-Driver-Collaboration

[kpedersen]

Possibly a good idea. I think at the moment FreeBSD shares more driver code with Linux than it does with any of the other BSDs.

That said, other than the workload on the developers, the situation is still pretty good. Running a BSD OS gets you the same driver support that Linux had in ~2015. Still very good. Better than Windows in fact when dealing with most business hardware (especially ex-surplus).

[microchip8]

All I can say is... Ha! Good luck!

I have a feeling this will fall on deaf ears.

[Volta]

Possibly a good idea. I think at the moment FreeBSD shares more driver code with Linux than it does with any of the other BSDs.

That said, other than the workload on the developers, the situation is still pretty good. Running a BSD OS gets you the same driver support that Linux had in ~2015. Still very good. Better than Windows in fact when dealing with most business hardware (especially ex-surplus).

And unlike on windows Linux and BSD drivers belong to them.

[timofonic]

BSD is dying. They should unfork instead crying all time. Or switching from BSD license to GPL one

[Velocity]

BSD is dying. They should unfork instead crying all time. Or switching from BSD license to GPL one

We're hearing that crap for over a Decade now. Is it finally dead?

Why don't you immature GPL-license-lawyer-fanboys stick with what you like and stop dragging down others. This GPL license thing is becoming a form of fascism; only X is good and everyone not using X is wrong!

It goes against all my intuitions that choice is a good thing for the open source ecosystem. How would you feel if someone wants to force you using KDE or a specific text editor? Everyone has his or her preferences, why cannot we respect choice?

[jorgepl]

BSD is dying, whether that's due to a licensing problem or not is a different topic. But most things tried at first to be compatible with both Linux and BSD. Not anymore, more and more stuff are becoming Linux exclusive.

[Velocity]

If BSD is dying, explain then what that means? https://freebsd.org is dead? Cannot download the sourcecode? Sourcecode does not compile? Compiled sourcecode does not work?

Or you mean that BSD remains a niche among operating systems, with a very stable user base that is loyal and continues to improve the operating system at a relatively slow pace, particularly compared to Linux. But.... is that dying?

Here is what FreeBSD itself says:

https://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/myths/#old-codebase

Personally I have used FreeBSD since 4.x and it works well for me. Just not as a desktop, that requires many drivers to be up to date and even Linux is struggling with that quite a bit. FreeBSD makes an excellent server OS though and has many strong keypoints, my favorite being the excellent integration of ZFS - without all the bullshit lawyer stuff that you cannot distribute with ZFS compiled. Thanks to its permissive license, i do not need to be a lawyer but can instead focus on productivity. I simply love technology, but i hate all the judicial stuff. If all lawyers were removed from this planet.... well, you get my point.

[stormcrow]

Possibly a good idea. I think at the moment FreeBSD shares more driver code with Linux than it does with any of the other BSDs.

That said, other than the workload on the developers, the situation is still pretty good. Running a BSD OS gets you the same driver support that Linux had in ~2015. Still very good. Better than Windows in fact when dealing with most business hardware (especially ex-surplus).

More situational. It's true that certain drivers come from Linux, like AMDGPU. It's also true that both FreeBSD and OpenBSD (no clue about NetBSD) use a ported version of the Linux AMDGPU. Pretty sure much of the rest of hardware support is BSD derived with a lot of sharing going on... how much OpenBSD uses other BSD driver code (as a percentage of total driver code that's shared) is unclear to me. They do a lot of ostensibly security oriented stuff in the kernel that may make porting from Net or FreeBSD harder. They're more the epitome of Fleetwood Mac's Go Your Own Way. Much of the Linux oriented code in the BSDs is because many large projects don't have BSD based contributors so end up picking technologies that preclude easy porting to other systems other than Linux distros. So you end up with stub Linux compatibility functions all over the place in BSD land that doesn't do anything other than return a generic expected value.

I mean, sure it's good at least someone takes notice about driver support being hit or miss in BSD land. For example, the WIFI adapter driver landscape is a lot better in OpenBSD than FreeBSD. But, some of this is down to project personality characteristics. FreeBSD is primarily a server OS. OpenBSD is apparently primarily developed on laptops, so it makes sense they have robust WIFI adapter coverage. WIFI on a server doesn't make a lot of sense strictly speaking. Not saying the situation can't be improved, just saying that developer priorities are different.

BSD is dying....

Windows is dying... Mac is dying... It's the year of the Linux... Reality is a cast iron bitch, you know. She doesn't care if you believe in her.

[Nozo]

If BSD is dying, explain then what that means? https://freebsd.org is dead? Cannot download the sourcecode? Sourcecode does not compile? Compiled sourcecode does not work?

Or you mean that BSD remains a niche among operating systems, with a very stable user base that is loyal and continues to improve the operating system at a relatively slow pace, particularly compared to Linux. But.... is that dying?

Here is what FreeBSD itself says:

https://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/myths/#old-codebase

Personally I have used FreeBSD since 4.x and it works well for me. Just not as a desktop, that requires many drivers to be up to date and even Linux is struggling with that quite a bit. FreeBSD makes an excellent server OS though and has many strong keypoints, my favorite being the excellent integration of ZFS - without all the bullshit lawyer stuff that you cannot distribute with ZFS compiled. Thanks to its permissive license, i do not need to be a lawyer but can instead focus on productivity. I simply love technology, but i hate all the judicial stuff. If all lawyers were removed from this planet.... well, you get my point.

*Laughs at iXsystems after they killed TrueNAS CORE in favor of SCALE like they did to PC-BSD/TrueOS years ago
And that will happen sooner than many imagine.