RE: Silicon Image Sil 3112 SATARaid Controller

At 1:26 AM +0200 2004/03/12, Emil Cazamir wrote:

>  Conclusion: I'm one of many "crappy hardware" users which are happy to move
>  on to other OS'es if this situation persists.

	Are you comparing FreeBSD support to Linux?  If so, then don't. 
If vendors provide any support at all outside of Micro$loth 
Windblows, it's for Linux.  The best anyone else (including the 
FreeBSD community) can hope for is that full specs are made 
available, so that they can develop their own drivers.


	As for the rest, people are trying their best.  But because the 
people doing this support for NetBSD are not the same people doing 
this for FreeBSD, you're bound to find some differences in terms of 
what they are capable of supporting.  You never know when one 
developer will have contacts that allow them to get more information 
than others, which means they have an advantage when it comes to 
developing drivers for that hardware.

	Yes, there is some driver cross-pollination amongst the *BSD 
family, but they have different low-level infrastructures, so you 
can't just bring drivers over from NetBSD and drop them into FreeBSD 
and expect them to "just work".


	If you can provide some help in developing or supporting drivers 
for these pieces of hardware, I'm sure that the driver developers 
would be ecstatic to have whatever help you can provide.  This might 
be a painful process as they ask you to try various different 
patches, but the result would be that you (and everyone else) would 
greatly benefit in the long-run.


	If you are unable to help with this process, then your best 
choice may well be to use an OS that provides you better support for 
the hardware you have.

	That's a rough choice, and I don't want to sound rude, but sooner 
or later you're going to have to do something useful with those 
machines, and if FreeBSD isn't working for you, then you should 
probably use something else.


	In the future, I would encourage you to check for compatibility 
with your chosen OS, before you buy the hardware in question.  This 
would result in your being less likely to be saddled with "crappy" 
devices that are not well supported.


	Please don't misinterpret what I'm saying.  I am honestly trying 
to help you figure out what you can do to solve this problem, and 
decide whether or not FreeBSD is a feasible part of your future.

	I don't want this to sound like a stereotypical rude "put up code 
or shut up" response.  I've had those aimed at me, and I don't think 
that they serve any positive purpose, either to the person or to the 
project.

	That said, there is a limit to what we can do to support the 
hardware you have purchased.  You might or might not be able to help 
us with that problem.  If you can't, and there is nothing else we can 
do, then it seems to me that it makes more sense for you to choose a 
different OS that provides better support for the hardware you have.

	That sucks, I know.  But these are the kinds of choices that we 
face in life.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles_at_skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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