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FreeBSD Device Drivers Book

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Re: FreeBSD Device Drivers Book

#21

Post by shevy-java »

saidnooneever wrote: post #18

theres some questionable quality content in the book, but lets be fair 4.5k pages is hard to manage. if people dont get too 'anti' about it, it might grown into a good book at some point over editions. It would certainly be useful to have such a book be complete and maintained (tons of work ofc). personally id prefer a book that requires abit more prework, like learning C etc. and Unix, so it can be more compact spec…

Books are great. Even if they are not perfect.

I used to point at LFS/BLFS in the past (Linux from scratch), since the idea is great. Unfortunately they are now systemd-only, which kind of defeats some of the points, IMO. But documentation is useful, so FreeBSD improving here is good. Perhaps one day it can compete against Linux again. :D

Re: FreeBSD Device Drivers Book

#22

Post by replooda »

cinntaile wrote: post #12
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's amazing: > Do I need to know C before starting? > No. Chapters 4 and 5 teach C from the ground up, focusing on the parts of the language that matter for kernel work (pointers, structures, memory layout, the preprocessor, and calling conventions). If you already know C well, sidebars in those chapters tell you what to skim and what to read carefully. > Do I need to know UNIX or FreeBSD? > No. Chapter 2 wal…

It doesn't seem like a good book. I would skip it.

What are the perceived issues?

Re: FreeBSD Device Drivers Book

#23

Post by replooda »

saidnooneever wrote: post #18

theres some questionable quality content in the book, but lets be fair 4.5k pages is hard to manage. if people dont get too 'anti' about it, it might grown into a good book at some point over editions. It would certainly be useful to have such a book be complete and maintained (tons of work ofc). personally id prefer a book that requires abit more prework, like learning C etc. and Unix, so it can be more compact spec…

> theres some questionable quality content in the book, but lets be fair 4.5k pages is hard to manage.

Could you be more specific? Maybe open an issue listing points for possible improvement?

Re: FreeBSD Device Drivers Book

#24

Post by treadmill »

LeCompteSftware wrote: post #9
AbbeFaria wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with using an LLM so long as a human takes ownership for the artefact (be that books, code etc). I would rather the author automate the mundane and focus on conveying their ideas clearly. As an aside, is there a Linux version for this ?

There is something wrong with it because LLMs are really not capable of writing a useful book, and this book is 100% LLM slop. Look at this totally useless """introduction""" to C: https://github.com/ebrandi/FDD-book/blob/main/content/chapte... First of all this is an entire book, it's 76,000 words. But look at the first nontrivial example of C after "hello world," under "Bonus learning point about C return values" e…

I am unsure which part of the quoted content you disagree with .

Re: FreeBSD Device Drivers Book

#25

Post by rbanffy »

saidnooneever wrote: post #18

theres some questionable quality content in the book, but lets be fair 4.5k pages is hard to manage. if people dont get too 'anti' about it, it might grown into a good book at some point over editions. It would certainly be useful to have such a book be complete and maintained (tons of work ofc). personally id prefer a book that requires abit more prework, like learning C etc. and Unix, so it can be more compact spec…

Edson Brandi is a very clever guy, and I'm surprised he managed to pull this off considering his other professional engagements.

Re: FreeBSD Device Drivers Book

#26

Post by rbanffy »

inatreecrown2 wrote: post #2

This is a huge book! I would like to know if a LLM was involved in the writing process or if this is the product of a human.

I am pretty sure he's been working on this book since before LLMs were a thing. He's also not the kind of person who'd just delegate his passion to a machine.

Re: FreeBSD Device Drivers Book

#28

Post by mghackerlady »

kernalix7 wrote: post #13

My exposure to FreeBSD has been mostly through routers and firewalls, plus reading about jails and finding the concept genuinely impressive. Always wanted to dig deeper but the existing material assumes you already know the things I was hoping to learn. A book that explicitly starts before that wall sounds like exactly what's been missing. Going to give it a real shot.

Have you poked through the handbook or Absolute FreeBSD? Those are both great starting points

Re: FreeBSD Device Drivers Book

#29

Post by rbanffy »

pjmlp wrote: post #14
SilentM68 wrote: post #4

Never seen a book written that incorporates the programming language as part of the learning material. Awesome work! I await the Linux version :)

Quite common back when books were the main learning source.

Much nicer than the current approach of throwing you in the deep end and expecting you to already know everything the author does.

Re: FreeBSD Device Drivers Book

#30

Post by neoromantique »

futune wrote: post #20
kernalix7 wrote: post #13

My exposure to FreeBSD has been mostly through routers and firewalls, plus reading about jails and finding the concept genuinely impressive. Always wanted to dig deeper but the existing material assumes you already know the things I was hoping to learn. A book that explicitly starts before that wall sounds like exactly what's been missing. Going to give it a real shot.

For me, boot environments are the killer feature. I think it's the only mainstream OS to really support the concept. Void linux (which is great) and (probably?) the Illumos distributions are the other open source choices, but those are much more niche. Or you could bolt it on to another linux distro using ZBM, but then you're on your own. Every update I clone the current boot environment, execute it as a jail, run up…

ublue and alike accomplish similar on Linux, it looks a bit wonky on the first glance, but is pretty good day to day
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