On 01/04/12 10:38, Daniel Feenberg wrote:
On Wed, 4 Jan 2012, Da Rock wrote:
On 01/04/12 02:10, Daniel Feenberg wrote:
On Wed, 4 Jan 2012, Da Rock wrote:
On 01/03/12 22:10, Jerry wrote:
On Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:44:30 +1000
Da Rock articulated:
On 01/03/12 11:15, Jeffrey McFadden wrote:
Don't ndis(4) ndiscvt and ndisgen(8) essentially accomplish what
the OP is requesting? See the handbook section 12.8.1.1:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/config-network-setup.html
or the man page for ndiscvt:
http://www.gsp.com/cgi-bin/man.cgi?section=8&topic=ndiscvt
While doing the conversion looks a bit beyond what we would expect
of an end-user, it does seem to offer a path for using hardware
whose manufacturer does not support FreeBSD. Is there anything
beyond licensing issues preventing such drivers from being included
in the distribution, or made downloadable in FreeBSD form?
Oh yes, it is possible, just not probable :)
At
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ndiswrapper/index.php?title=Category:USB
almost 800 compatible devices are listed. Not everything, but I have
found that a willingness to spend a few dollars on a different card
helps immensely in enjoying FreeBSD and Linux. For me at least it is
easier to find a compatible card than to write a compatible driver.
Indeed :)
I did notice that the card in question wasn't on that list. But my own
experience with ndiswrapper and wifi cards were far less than
satisfactory- the firmware always got in the road. But I may have just
been too stupid at the time :)
I would also observe that most people involved with computers, whether
as users or developers, have little symphathy for people with
different needs from the device. This is a great impediment to
progress. It is a mistake to assume that because you don't need
something, another person's desire for it is illegitimate. In this
case, I fully agree that it is an injustice that hardware vendors do
not supply FreeBSD drivers, but that does not mean that users
requiring such drivers are immoral or of poor character, and therefore
to be ignored or insulted. There is little that FreeBSD coders and
users can do about that injustice directly, however it is within their
power to mitigate it with the NDIS wrapper. If that wrapper allows
another user to enter the FOSS world, that will (in the fullness of
time) contribute to reforming the vendor.
No they are absolutely not of poor character, I agree. Some messages can
be misconstrued, though, in that the replies can be terse and more
logical than sympathetic. Sometimes it is easier to replace with a
different card than flog a dead horse, although a user may take offense
for emotional or financial reasons more than logical.
Mitigation is a difficult path as I have found personally, although NDIS
helps immensely with wired nics (not so much of a problem these days),
and I believe Luigi Rizzo's work with the linuxulator and drivers is to
be applauded ten fold. It takes a great deal of time though- I put
forward the idea when I was still a BSD pup not entirely realising the
challenges :) Luigi (and his colleagues) has been working hard ever
since to facilitate the more challenging aspects of multimedia drivers
(whether or not that had to do with my comments or not, I don't know).
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