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

[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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[mzs.112000]

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.

I found several gigabit ethernet cards on Amazon, some are as low priced as $9.99(US)... If it gets to the point where a company now has to pay someone else to maintain a driver and/or a fork of the OS itself, it would just be cheaper to buy some new hardware. Sure, the server might be so old that it only has an ISA slot, well in that case, I can find bunches of old Dell PowerEdge servers on eBay for as low as $250(US). Sure these servers are old by 2018 standards, but still new enough to support modern hardware, and will be at least 5 times faster than anything that still uses ISA-based ethernet as it's primary network connection...
In any case, by the time someone needs to pay someone to maintain ancient software/drivers, it usually ends up being cheaper to just replace the hardware, with something less ancient...

[jabl]

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.

There were lots of cheap tulip clone cards from a variety of manufacturers long after DEC ceased to exist. I had one made by, IIRC, Linksys.

IIRC back in the day it had, among Intel and 3com, the best Linux driver.

[wizard69]

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.

The removal of drivers can be understandable in some cases but if support is still there they need to stay in the kernel. If you work in industries where hardware is expected to work for years, even decades, it is extremely frustrating to see common network drivers being pulled.

I mentioned RS232 because it is similarly needed for long term support. In fact in industrial settings I don’t see RS232 and related serial interfaces ever going away 100%. People always say “upgrade” but that is never easy and may require stringent validations to be done. A validation can blow out the cost of a computer replacement by 10 or even a 100 times.

In any event it is decisions like this that means FeeBSD can never be suggested as a solution where long term support is expected. Dropping Ethernet support just isn’t rational considering how wide spread it is. It might make sense in a constantly updated data center but out in the larger world it just looks like a dick move.