FreeBSD Moves Ahead With Deprecating Some Of Their 10/100 Network Drivers

[GreenReaper]

I have one of the DEC Tulip based cards. But in truth, I haven't used it in roughly a decade. Let alone for FreeBSD.

This change means they will lose support in, what, 2021? If anyone cares at that point they can build their own kernel, or pay for that - or to maintain it, which seemingly isn't happening right now; which is its own issue for anyone relying on it now.

[NateHubbard]

That is a bit odd and short sighted if you ask me.

You should look over the list of drivers. Some of them I recognize as ISA era network cards. One of those was even for a DEC chip, and DEC hasn't even been in business for 20 years.
If you really want to run ancient hardware, you're probably going to have to just bite the bullet and run ancient software too.

[Space Heater]

That is a bit odd and short sighted if you ask me. It is sort of like RS232 support, most people don’t have a need anymore but when you do you really need the port.

On the flip side FreeBSD is primarily a server OS and network support platform. It doesn’t have the very wide array of uses that Linux has.

How is it odd or short-sighted? These drivers were not in use and they are an active maintenance burden on the network stack. Linux removes drivers as well when no one uses them, so this isn't at all unique to FreeBSD.

[WolfpackN64]

My guess because 1. fBSD adopted an extremely regressive and Marxist political document which has seen their number of users and supporters plummet, and 2. (some?) developers get paid to work on the project.

Ah. "Regressive" and "Marxist". Two words used together so often by people who have no idea what Marxism is.

[Redfoxmoon]

That is a bit odd and short sighted if you ask me. It is sort of like RS232 support, most people don’t have a need anymore but when you do you really need the port.

On the flip side FreeBSD is primarily a server OS and network support platform. It doesn’t have the very wide array of uses that Linux has.

My guess because 1. fBSD adopted an extremely regressive and Marxist political document which has seen their number of users and supporters plummet, and 2. (some?) developers get paid to work on the project.

[wizard69]

That is a bit odd and short sighted if you ask me. It is sort of like RS232 support, most people don’t have a need anymore but when you do you really need the port.

On the flip side FreeBSD is primarily a server OS and network support platform. It doesn’t have the very wide array of uses that Linux has.

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FreeBSD Moves Ahead With Deprecating Some Of Their 10/100 Network Drivers

Reported at the start of the month were plans for FreeBSD 12 to deprecate many of their 10/100 Ethernet drivers with just leaving the popular fast Ethernet drivers and focusing on Gigabit and beyond networking drivers moving forward...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FreeBSD-Deprecates-Some-10-100