# Why no PCBSD?  What about hardware detection?



## debguy (May 12, 2021)

Why was PC BSD canceled?  Why doesn't FreeBSD have any hardware detection like 501c enabled Win10 does?

I mean, ok, it's kinda easy to get intel based sound working (it did NOT work through my TV's speakers, er, not yet?).  But increasingly there are SO MANY things to get working ... you know, like a mountain of things to read about to install.  Why is it some kind of policy not to detect, make a check list of what the user (wants to enable) and enable it?  I assume that's part of what PCBSD did?


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## fjdlr (May 12, 2021)

> Why doesn't FreeBSD have any hardware detection like 501c enabled Win10 does?


serious ?


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## jardows (May 12, 2021)

PC BSD was a separate project independent from FreeBSD.  They used FreeBSD as a base, but that's as far as the relationship between the two went, officially anyway.  

FreeBSD provides the base operating system, and does not assume what you want it to do.  For people who want to use it as a server or firewall or embedded OS, having a tool like you want would be pointless.  There are ports that provide this function, and derivative projects like Ghost BSD, Hello Systems, and the late PC BSD that attempt to implement a more desktop-friendly option.


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## Alain De Vos (May 12, 2021)

When you install void-linux or alpine-linux your radeon videocard or intel-audio soundcard is also not automatic detected.
Even debian linux install does not detect my sound card.


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## scottro (May 12, 2021)

I suspect that everyone who makes hardware makes sure it will work with Windows. They don't necessarily take the same care with Linux and/or FreeBSD. They  probably pay more attention to Linux if they are going to create drivers.  
However, FreeBSD does a pretty good job of hardware detection. On a brand new laptop, I don't know, but, for example, FreeBSD-13 got everything on my T495 Thinkpad which isn't that old. 

PCBSD was bought by a commercial company and I guess it just didn't have enough potential. However, there is GhostBSD, NomadBSD, and Hellosystem (but I think that's still alpha) if you're looking for something that makes set up easier to do.


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## Beastie7 (May 12, 2021)

helloSystem is cooking up some interesting things I have to say. It's looking like somewhat a spiritual successor to PC-BSD. Simon seems to understand the desktop and it's user base pretty well. Much like the Moore brothers.


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## Deleted member 30996 (May 13, 2021)

debguy said:


> Why was PC BSD canceled?


They were overcome by love of the root of all evil and lost their way after Xsystems saw how wads of cash made their eyes sparkle. It blinded their vision and they made decisions based on what was best for business not what was best for users of their Operating System in terms of security. 

I helped them identify that character flaw and to do what was right for the users. Then they turned on Weixiong and Ghosted him and 7 years of his life with him.

But he's with me here at trihexagonal.org and where is anything to show they ever existed?


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## SirDice (May 13, 2021)

debguy said:


> Why doesn't FreeBSD have any hardware detection like 501c enabled Win10 does?


Because you can't just slap a Windows logo on your product. 





						Windows Hardware Lab Kit - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				








						WHQL Testing - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## debguy (May 15, 2021)

Right.  Nor an Android label since that requires 100% android compliance.

To answer the wtf questions.  Drivers working are important for the future it is needed to keep end users ... using the system.  You can say "supporting Steam games is crazy", but it means "drivers working", meaning libs that work and ASM code is not so different it won't work: which is important even if games are not.  I do not mean to say they should be triggered by default during install messing up servers 

Thank you that answers my PCBSD question:  they were not affiliated with FreeBSD!  Hard to believe but good answer.


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## debguy (May 15, 2021)

FreeBSD has devfs and devd which use PCI to auto detect and trigger some scripts not others.

Gnome3 makes use of some of these making (wifi) a matter of enable/disable:  but you don't want gnome running on a production server.

So what I'm saying is "you check the PCI tree and kinda throw away what you learn", then some hidden scripts trigger and enable some components but not others.

It's a shame that there is no "SIMPLE CHECKLIST" of what is detected and has corrolated drivers that can be enabled/disabled.  (and /etc/rc.conf ... well that is a list of hand-added enable disable, it's not a prepared list ready to use).  That is basically what win10's "Device Manager" is.  A simple list of what is detected and what device driver is connected.

_I'm saying "they are so close but kinda throw away what is learned about the system", leaving users to hand add "YES/NO" by reading handbook and learning magic strings.  Which isn't necesary considering this info was found during boot and which drivers could work are "mostly" known ahead of time._

Now, then there are the DirectX and OpenGL hardware/driver discovery tools.  FreeBSD has GL discovery tool, I think no sound discovery.


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## debguy (May 15, 2021)

"When you install void-linux or alpine-linux your radeon videocard or intel-audio soundcard is also not automatic detected. Even debian linux install does not detect my sound card."

Yea.  Win10 detects my sound but keeps killing the TV speaker sound driver for the motherboard sound driver.  Win10 is not so far ahead of where FreeBSD is as you would hope


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## a6h (May 15, 2021)

debguy said:


> Yea. Win10 detects my sound but keeps killing the TV speaker sound driver for the motherboard sound driver.


Regarding the sound card in Windows (internal, external, with/without especial DSP), you have to visit sound manufacture website, download the latest driver, uninstall windows driver and install downloaded driver. Most of them are very old though, and windows-shipped may not enable all extra features of the card. Sounds are always tricky.
Still it depends on sound card. I had external sound blaster card, which was working fine on FreeBSD, but I had to jump through hoops to make it work on Windows.


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## Alain De Vos (May 15, 2021)

I wonder if there are no soundcard firmware blobs in the drivers ?


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## kpedersen (May 15, 2021)

debguy said:


> Yea.  Win10 detects my sound but keeps killing the TV speaker sound driver for the motherboard sound driver.  Win10 is not so far ahead of where FreeBSD is as you would hope


It is a fact that FreeBSD supports vastly more hardware than Windows 10.

For example, try to find a Windows 10 driver for an older ICH (pre snd_hda) sound card. Or try to find a Windows 10 driver for the Intel GMA 915 GPU. Or the obvious ones like a Raspberry Pi 4 and PowerPC MacBook.

Windows 10 does not set the base standard. We have already surpassed it and are aiming for much better than that.

Of course if you buy hardware specifically meant for Windows 10... you should have really bought hardware from the FreeBSD compatibility lists instead. Even the RedHat enterprise lists would have been a smarter option.


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## jardows (May 17, 2021)

debguy said:


> It's a shame that there is no "SIMPLE CHECKLIST" of what is detected and has corrolated drivers that can be enabled/disabled.


It depends on how you define "simple" for this task.  FreeBSD does have `pciconf -lv` that will list all detected hardware devices and whether or not there is a driver attached.  If I'm dealing with some more complex driver installations, I will usually pipe it into a GUI text editor (I usually install editors/leafpad and thus the command becomes `pciconf -lv | leafpad`).  I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to write an X widget or even a QT or GTK widget to do the same report and place it in ports for others to use.

edit:  spelling corrections.


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## Tieks (May 17, 2021)

jardows said:
			
		

> FreeBSD does have  pciconf -lv that will list all detected hardware devices and whether or not there is a driver attached.



If they would add information like that to sysutils/bsdstats, bsdstats.org could have a good list of supported hardware. Especially useful when choosing a laptop.


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