Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption
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Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption
1–10 of 57 posts
Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption
#2I think that a major problem is that you can't legally force vendors to open source the drivers they distribute. Most importantly wifi drivers which are critical to making an operating system that people can actually use.
Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption
#3[dead]
Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption
#4I think that a major problem is that you can't legally force vendors to open source the drivers they distribute. Most importantly wifi drivers which are critical to making an operating system that people can actually use.
Isn't Android plagued by all manner of proprietary dependencies for hardware support?
I don't understand all of the pressures on vendors in the Linux case, but at least one of them is that they can't upstream their drivers (and thus unload some of their maintenance burden on the Linux kernel team) unless they license them in a way that's considered suitable by upstream. If they don't do that, they're more likely to be broken by Linux changes, and it makes distributing their drivers more annoying because they have to do that on their own. I also vaguely recall that there are some other ways that proprietary drivers have more limited access to the Linux kernel, of access more liable to get broken by upstream, but idrk.
But isn't the biggest incentive for releasing your drivers as F/OSS (so you can upstream, making maintenance easier) still there in the FreeBSD case?
Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption
#5I think that a major problem is that you can't legally force vendors to open source the drivers they distribute. Most importantly wifi drivers which are critical to making an operating system that people can actually use.
Isn't Android plagued by all manner of proprietary dependencies for hardware support? I don't understand all of the pressures on vendors in the Linux case, but at least one of them is that they can't upstream their drivers (and thus unload some of their maintenance burden on the Linux kernel team) unless they license them in a way that's considered suitable by upstream. If they don't do that, they're more likely to b…
> . If they don't do that, they're more likely to be broken by Linux changes, and it makes distributing their drivers more annoying
So the idea is that having no drivers is better than having proprietary drivers? Seems like a perfectly reasonable and sensible approach..
Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption
#6> organizations prioritizing endpoint security increasingly look to FreeBSD for its secure and stable environment
What is the story there? I've heard nothing about it. It would be an incredible development.
Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption
#7$750000 seems very little amount for this task. I think they should somehow attract companies to invest in FreeBSD development.
Apart from laptop support, FreeBSD is missing important things on server side suck as lack of support for Kubernetes. This is hindering FreeBSD adoption, too.
Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't Android plagued by all manner of proprietary dependencies for hardware support? I don't understand all of the pressures on vendors in the Linux case, but at least one of them is that they can't upstream their drivers (and thus unload some of their maintenance burden on the Linux kernel team) unless they license them in a way that's considered suitable by upstream. If they don't do that, they're more likely to b…
> . If they don't do that, they're more likely to be broken by Linux changes, and it makes distributing their drivers more annoying So the idea is that having no drivers is better than having proprietary drivers? Seems like a perfectly reasonable and sensible approach..
having no drivers and having drivers that no longer work because the source isn't available and the maintainers can't update them is functionality identical.
Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption
#9As a long term FreeBSD user (since 2.0) and advocate, my view is that FreeBSD should focus on its niche as a rock-solid server operating system. For most developers buying a MacBook and SSH-ing into a server is probably the right answer (or running a VM if you really need something local). The level of effort to match the MacBook user experience feels like a lost cause (Linux has been trying to do this for decades with significantly more resources) and it would feel more useful to use this funding to focus on the server side.
Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption
#10$750000 seems very little amount for this task. I think they should somehow attract companies to invest in FreeBSD development. Apart from laptop support, FreeBSD is missing important things on server side suck as lack of support for Kubernetes. This is hindering FreeBSD adoption, too.
FreeBSD has jails if you need lightweight vms. The kubernetes monoculture is a horrible thing for long term.