Re:Technical reasons to choose FreeBSD over GNU/Linux (2020)
by teakettle42 on Saturday August 06, 2022 @06:41PM
(#32372264)
> basic stuff like wifi
Wi-fi is not basic.
Having written a wifi driver, that’s something I’m comfortable stating unequivocally.
The hardware is almost always proprietary and undocumented, and in many cases (looking at you, Broadcom), a poorly-designed shitshow of complex errata, proprietary magic numbers required for initialization, and in general, an absolute dogshit technology stack.
The only reason Linux has working Wi-Fi at all tends to be because it was used to power a lot of cheap consumer access points, and Wi-Fi chipset manufacturers released binary and open-source Linux drivers — generally of horrific quality, but drivers nonetheless.
Wi-fi is not basic.
Having written a wifi driver, that’s something I’m comfortable stating unequivocally.
The hardware is almost always proprietary and undocumented, and in many cases (looking at you, Broadcom), a poorly-designed shitshow of complex errata, proprietary magic numbers required for initialization, and in general, an absolute dogshit technology stack.
The only reason Linux has working Wi-Fi at all tends to be because it was used to power a lot of cheap consumer access points, and Wi-Fi chipset manufacturers released binary and open-source Linux drivers — generally of horrific quality, but drivers nonetheless.