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.
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.
Daniel Feenberg
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