Collecting hardware compatibility, Was: i give up

On 01/12/2008, at 5:17 PM, Tim Kientzle wrote:

> Andrew Reilly wrote:
>> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 10:37:39AM -0800, Tim Kientzle wrote:
>>> I wonder if there's some way to partially automate
>>> collecting some of this information.
>> There is.  Just install ports/sysutils/bsdstats, set the
>> appropriate frobs in /etc/rc.conf and be happy.  Look at the
>> http://bsdstats.org/ page from time to time.
>
> This is a start towards what I had in mind, but
> still has a ways to go.  Here are a few questions
> I would like to ask of such a database:
>
> "What ethernet cards have people used with FreeBSD 7.0?"

Exactly. The problem with that site, although useful, is that the  
front page comparisons of BSD flavours makes it sound like a  
competition (despite the text to the left). Most of the statistics are  
useless on the basis that they are completely skewed by the collection  
methodology.

However, it forms the basis of something that would be incredibly  
useful. Imagine it also allowed users to note whether the particular  
hardware is:

[ ] not recognised
[ ] not reliable
[ ] occasional issues
[ ] no problems

Or something like that, with additional option for making comments.  
Plus you'd want to be able to see the dmesg for each person who  
reported the status of their hardware, otherwise it is pretty useless.

As Tim said, an extension of this concept would be incredibly useful  
to the developers and users of FreeBSD. If someone was interested I'd  
be able to help work on such a project, although my time is relatively  
limited so I'd not be able to take the lead.



Ari Maniatis


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