# Funding a FreeBSD Risc-V board, would you partecipate?



## freezr (Dec 5, 2022)

Hi folks,

FreeBSD panorama for ARM and RiscV board is very... meh... 
The majorities of these boards are built with Linux in mind and the support for FreeBSD is often very poor... 

However the FreeBSD Foundation may try to taste the ground and open a crowdfund to design and develop a RiscV SBC tailored for FreeBSD that works out-of-the-box from day one!

A crowdfund is a very good method to get something without risking too much, I am pretty sure it would be a great success!

I can already imagining a small sbc with two ethernet ports, 3 to 4 sata slot, 8GB minum of ram...


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## SirDice (Dec 5, 2022)

Based on what CPU? Or do you plan to design the CPU too? One of the reasons why there are very few development boards available right now is the lack of CPUs (global chip-shortage). 
And how much experience do you have designing boards like this? Or should someone else do the PCB design?

An SBC on a relatively small PCB means having 6 or 8 layers. That has it's own design problems (return signal ground planes). It's not as easy as it sounds.



freezr said:


> I can already imagining a small sbc with two ethernet ports, 3 to 4 sata slot, 8GB minum of ram...


One gigabit ethernet port, 2 SATA, maybe an M.2 SATA/NVMe slot, and 1 PCIe x4 slot.  The PCIe x4 slot can be used for additional SAS/SATA controller or multiport ethernet cards making the board a little more versatile. Custom board size is tricky as that would require a custom case. So maybe aim for M-ITX, that way there's plenty of standard cases to chose from.


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## shkhln (Dec 5, 2022)

Why not cure cancer while we are at it? The Foundation's job is managing the project's finances, nothing else.



freezr said:


> I can already imagining a small sbc with two ethernet ports, 3 to 4 sata slot, 8GB minum of ram...


And $600 per board due to low manufacturing volume.


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## freezr (Dec 5, 2022)

SirDice said:


> Based on what CPU? [...]



I generated a misunderstanding... 

I'd like to have the FreeBSD Foundation sponsoring, promoting, making such project and I would be happy to crowdfund it!

I think is the best way to get a ready-made Riscv SBC!


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## SirDice (Dec 5, 2022)

shkhln said:


> And $600 per board due to low manufacturing volume.


Yeah, that's going to be the biggest issue. Low volume also means expensive


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## freezr (Dec 5, 2022)

shkhln said:


> Why not cure cancer while we are at it? The Foundation's job is managing project's finances, nothing else.
> 
> 
> And $600 per board due to low manufacturing volume.



Looks compatible then... Board might pricey but mostly depends how successful the crowdfund is going to be...


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## freezr (Dec 5, 2022)

SirDice said:


> Yeah, that's going to be the biggest issue. Low volume also means expensive


This is the real pain but you might mitigate it with feature...

For instance I have 3 boards, bought in different times, none of those can run FreeBSD but one (maybe, is the RPI2), eventually are $300 buck if you includes also: cases, PSU, usb dongle etc... Run all Linux (and worst Ubuntu) and are ARM based.

Clearly it should be reasonable affordable and having decent specs...


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## Profighost (Dec 5, 2022)

You wish is grateful to FreeBSD, and I also would buy such a board, if there were such (for a reasonable price, of course),

but as an experienced electronics design engineer who already did several mass production pcbs
I'd like to note
do not underestimate the number needed to be produced to get even in a range of a reasonable, comparable price, people will pay.

For something comparable like Raspberry Pi pico you'll need at least job lots of 30k...50k pieces for one production order.
If you want something 'fancy' like Pi 4 we're talking >100k...200k at least (many underestimate the prices of the connectors and plug sockets which are quickly the most expenisve parts.)

And talking cases:
The plastic doesn't cost much, but you have to get moulds for  pressure casting made, which are app. around 20k...30k$/per piece.
You need at least two.
And also the mechanical design needs to be done, too, of course.

If there is a market for special FreeBSD single-board computers this could be done.
But unless you can ensure >200k buyers I'd recommend to check out the existing ones, and put effort in make FreeBSD run on them 
I don't know - I hope I'm wrong  - but I doubt there are so many FreeBSD users interested in using single-board computers.

You're not alone.
Just today HN published a link on that topic:
Installing FreeBSD on a Raspberry Pi

I don't know, if this helps - but I see less effort here instead of start a board.


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## covacat (Dec 5, 2022)

it would be cheaper and more useful to pay somebody to port/write drivers for existing arm socs


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## Profighost (Dec 5, 2022)

...or so


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## freezr (Dec 6, 2022)

Profighost the point is with the crowdfund you ask the market how much is willing before to get the product; then, If you meet the goal, you can start producing it besides that, to reply to covacat, you pay developers to write drivers for the board.


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## freebuser (Dec 6, 2022)

freezr said:


> FreeBSD panorama for ARM and RiscV board is very... meh...
> The majorities of these boards are built with Linux in mind and the support for FreeBSD is often very poor...



Is this a software issue or a hardware issue?

I am not a developer (neither software nor hardware) but my preference would be FreeBSD stick to making great software to suit existing hardware than building hardware.


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## msplsh (Dec 6, 2022)

These are $250.  They use COTS parts, don't need special drivers, run "standard" images and different OSes.  No way anything esoteric like RiscV would cost $300 due to volume requirements and low demand.  Getting anything to work with ARM is already kind of a pain in the rear and it's "popular."

You'd have to compile everything from source and it would have to be really, really fast with enough RAM and storage for compiling Rust/Clang/LLVM because I wouldn't want to set up a cross compiling toolchain just for one computer.

I wouldn't get one of these unless it was cheap and ran out of the box, even then I don't know what I would do with it, and there's no way it would be cheap.

Yes, that would be cool.  It's a pipe dream, tho.


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## Profighost (Dec 6, 2022)

As I understand crowfunding it's a compromise between already done pre-development (you have to present something convincing) and gathering pre-paying customers.

If you got the money you do the final development - and the 'rest' needed to be done until series production is delivered to the customers.
All I'm saying is: 
Don't underestimate that.
e.g. 50kUS$ are a sum most private people cannot afford to lose.
Within professional business, industrial production, 50k are nothing - not even peanuts.

Quickly things are overseen such as forgetting/underestimating product approvals like CE for european market, UL for USA,... and several others depending on your product, licenses... 
you'd better think of them first before running later into:"damn, I didn't thought of that,...didn't knew this...SORRY FOLKS!!"

As far as I oberved things.
A) Crowdfunding is very good thing, I daresay brilliant.
B) Many crowfunding projects fail because of the things I mentioned were underestimated - set up (way) to optimistic 
ending in crowd and project-initiator seperate not in good, often lost (much) money, suing.... - not good.

...it's also a good possibility to scam: "Here, great product. Invest!" - "sorry guys." (muharhar )
But I assume that was not your intention.

So, bottom line - I say it again:
Having an own special FreeBSD board would be of course not a bad thing at all.
But I say:
Check the market carefully first to ensure you'll really get enough customers
and do a proper project plan
before any serious effort or even money is spent on it.

and as others already mentioned, maybe the (less) effort spent otherwise could lead to the same (quicker, or even any) solution.

peace out.


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## SirDice (Dec 6, 2022)

Just for giggles I checked Mouser, they don't have a single RISC-V CPU or MCU in their assortment. As far as I know only SiFive has a RISC-V CPU that could be used in a generic computer. All other RISC-V CPUs are mostly very limited microcontroller type CPUs (would lack the required features needed to be able to run a full OS on it).


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## covacat (Dec 6, 2022)

at >= 4GB  and decent I/O performance x86 based boards are cheaper and better supported
while having about the same power requirements


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## freezr (Dec 6, 2022)

I see very few enthusiasm... Even though this is an hypothetical thought and everything can be made and requested, still for free...


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## SirDice (Dec 6, 2022)

covacat said:


> at >= 4GB and decent I/O performance x86 based boards are cheaper and better supported
> while having about the same power requirements


Sure. But I do like the open nature of RISC-V. And if I could find and buy an actual proper CPU I'm willing to invest some time in trying to figure out what would be needed in order to build a computer around it. Then also open source that design.


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## freezr (Dec 6, 2022)

SirDice said:


> Sure. But I do like the open nature of RISC-V. And if I could find and buy an actual proper CPU I'm willing to invest some time in trying to figure out what would be needed in order to build a computer around it. Then also open source that design.



Eventually Risc-V will take over because open-source is more prolific than closed source development...


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## SirDice (Dec 6, 2022)

freezr said:


> Risc-V will take over because open-source is more prolific than closed source development...


Note that only the specifications are open and free to use. The actual implemented CPU isn't.


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## jbo (Dec 6, 2022)

freezr said:


> I see very few enthusiasm...


In general, from a very high-level point of view, the BSD communities tend to be less "enthusiastic" compared to what one might know from similar Linux communities. This however does not mean that we wouldn't want this or wouldn't support it. But personally I prefer people to be realistic and then get a proper product out of this rather than being hyped, showing overly enthusiastic signs, somebody then commits to the idea and in the end it turns out that nobody really cared as much as initially demonstrated 

I have to go with SirDice on this one: RISC-V is something I'd be willing to privately invest time & money in. But I'm not going to jump in the air and clap my hands just to make someone feel like there is interest 
The hurdles are also non-trivial - which is again not to say that we (as a community) are opposed to any efforts into this direction.

In any case, any of your efforts will be greatly appreciated. No matter how far you get


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## Phishfry (Dec 6, 2022)

Crowdfunding hardware is the worst.
They never deliver on time and there is no one to blame problems on.
Documentation and Support is usually not offered.

What happens in 2 years when RISCv666 hits? Do it all again?


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## freezr (Dec 6, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> Crowdfunding hardware is the worst.
> They never deliver on time and there is no one to blame problems on.
> Documentation and Support is usually not offered.
> 
> What happens in 2 years when RISCv666 hits? Do it all again?



Making a hardware and manage a crowdfund campaign requires knowledge and expertise, I don't expect the first attempt is going to be perfect and accurate 100%, but I guess people behind FreeBSD are able to bring up a decent product, that maybe could encourage a second campaign. Anyway, anything of what I said would ever happen, so we continue to follow as usual: ugly hardware and awful *BSD support...


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## Phishfry (Dec 6, 2022)

Its not much different on Linux with the exception of Armbian.


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## Phishfry (Dec 6, 2022)

I think the Arm maker board market is very fractured.
Some want purely embedded boards like BeagleBoneGreen some want a desktop with HDMI.

They try and jam all these features into a 100x75mm footprint for the least amount of money.


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## freezr (Dec 6, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> Its not much different on Linux with the exception of Armbian.


The point is that most of those hardware manufacturers/assemblers at least provide official Linux, and often also Android, support even though most of the time Armbian is just better.


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## freezr (Dec 6, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> I think the Arm maker board market is very fractured.
> Some want purely embedded boards like BeagleBoneGreen some want a desktop with HDMI.
> 
> They try and jam all these features into a 100x75mm footprint for the least amount of money.


This is why I said that it would be cool a board (but risc-v) designed by FreeBSD to FreeBSD...


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## SirDice (Dec 6, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> Some want purely embedded boards like BeagleBoneGreen some want a desktop with HDMI.


Lots of different SBCs and the other end of spectrum, really expensive Ampere boards. But there's very little in between.


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## Phishfry (Dec 6, 2022)

Yes very expensive ThunderX boards too.

How do you make a 100x75mm board that pleases everybody.

Some want 4 LANS, Some want 4 SATA and some want 100 GPIO pins.

Ask GonzoPancho at Netgate how well Arm has worked out for them....


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## jbo (Dec 6, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> Ask GonzoPancho at Netgate how well Arm has worked out for them....


I'd be interested in knowing more on this - would you happen to have a link or similar you can share?


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## Phishfry (Dec 6, 2022)

I use the word 'Arm board' liberally here. I literally mean any arch but amd64.

From my take the HiFive boards look just like Arm boards. u-boot is in ports for FU540 and FU740.


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## Phishfry (Dec 6, 2022)

I think you could call their first two ARM attempts total flops.








						Netgate SG-1000 (FreeBSD based pfSense on ARM) First Look
					

Sipping power and at a price under$150, the Netgate SG-1000 running FreeBSD based pfSense on ARM looks like a winner in our initial impression




					www.servethehome.com
				



Not enough ass for a firewall. Excellent hardware for embedded.

The EspressoBin was a POS with high failure rates..








						Netgate SG-1100 Launched Higher-Speed Arm pfSense Firewall
					

The Netgate SG-1100 is being launched as a low-cost, Arm firewall with 3-5x more packet filtering performance for pfSense than previous generations




					www.servethehome.com


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## Profighost (Dec 6, 2022)

freezr said:


> most of those hardware manufacturers/assemblers at least provide official Linux


Of course.
Guess why.

I'm with you as you already pointed out, the ones from the FreeBSD community want such a board would support it.
But as jbo pointed out, being realistic doesn't mean bringing things down,
same as pure enthusiastic hyped hopes alone will not result in a success either.

One needs to be reasonable.
And the crucial core point here is simply numbers.

How large do you think the Linux community is tinkering with such boards? 
5M? 10M? Even more? (I don't know - I'm just blindely guessing.)
And how large you estimate the numbers of FreeBSD users would tinker with such?
5k?... I don't know. Could be completely wrong.
But this is something you might get knowing pretty sure before you spent any real effort in it.
And unless you're really sure you will sell at least a 1/4M (need 1/2M buying undertakes at least) you don't need to start a real project on this.

What you may could do is to develop a board yourself - just for your own purposes, at first.
It'll cost you maybe 300...500 $ - and _many_ hours of work.
But at least then you've already done development, tested and proved it.
And from that you'll have a complete other start. 
Don't need no crowfunding anymore - keep the profit for yourself.
Even may sale small lot charges.



SirDice said:


> I checked Mouser, they don't have a single RISC-V CPU or MCU in their assortment


Maybe not on stock.
We still suffer from "chips-shortage". 
Last time I checked (couple of weeks ago) also Raspberries still are not really full available again yet. 
Those have no high priority.
x64 CPUs first, then GPU,...also automobile market had a large lack of electronics...


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## SirDice (Dec 6, 2022)

Profighost said:


> Maybe not on stock.


Plenty of things that aren't in stock. There's just nothing, not even out-of-stock components. Mouser website shows everything, even the stuff they don't sell anymore. And you can keep track of how many they have in backorder and when their new stock is expected too.


Profighost said:


> We still suffer from "chips-shortage".


Yes, I'm pretty sure these new fangled RISC-V CPUs are somewhere at the bottom of the stack. It's probably also the reason why you can't even buy any of the few RISC-V development boards that do already exist.


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## Profighost (Dec 6, 2022)

SirDice said:


> Mouser website shows everything, even the stuff they don't sell anymore.


Yes, that's normal.... Interesting - I wasn't on any large distributer's page (DigiKey would be another one) for a while.
I have no explanation - maybe they just removed them from their catalogue, because it's embarassing having empty stocks while rising enquiries?
...I don't know, cause at normal terms they have _any _IC at least within their catalogue....


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## SirDice (Dec 6, 2022)

riscv - FreeBSD Wiki
		


Both the HiFive Unleashed and HiFive Unmatched are sold out everywhere. And SiFive isn't planning on making a new batch of Unmatched boards. They're busy developing new boards and CPUs but no word when one could expect to see any.









						SiFive
					

SiFive is the first fabless semiconductor company to build customized silicon based on the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture.



					www.sifive.com


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## covacat (Dec 6, 2022)

lol it sold for $700 and has 1/2 cpu performance of a $80 pi4/400
"Powered by the SiFive Freedom U740, a high-performance multi-core, 64-bit dual-issue, superscalar RISC-V processor."
that means it will beat your washing machine in selected benchmarks


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## msplsh (Dec 6, 2022)

Yeesh, didn't know the perf per dollar was that bad.  Ok, done with this pie in the sky thread.


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## ralphbsz (Dec 6, 2022)

freezr said:


> This is why I said that it would be cool a board (but risc-v) designed by FreeBSD to FreeBSD...


Can you explain how a board (or CPU chip) designed to run FreeBSD would be different from a board/chip designed to run Linux, at the same workload? When I say "same workload", I mean compare laptop to laptop, embedded to embedded, desktop to desktop, server to server.

There is considerable effort in various parts of the computer industry to get RISC-V servers to work, trying to compete with Arm, Intel/AMD, and Power. I know of efforts to build large servers using these chips. I think in the area available to amateurs, there is very little other than one line of chips made by a subsidiary of Alibaba.

And that word "Alibaba" is key to this discussion. Right now, RISC-V is mostly a question of geopolitics, not one of computer architecture. With the various embargos, China is looking at a future where they have no supply of processors. One possible end-run would be to design and fab their own chips. But CPU design is notoriously hard, and requires decades of experience and thousands of person-years of design time for high end chips. So why not start with an open source (license-free) instruction set? It was tried with Arm, but that maneuver seems to not have worked (look at who owns Arm now, it is Softbank). Building CPUs using RISC-V might be another attempt, but the issue here is: while the instruction set is open, there are no open implementations of interesting performance.


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## Phishfry (Dec 6, 2022)

I wanted to say not all Arm firewalls are bad.
The newer Netgate offering seems to be a success.








						Netgate 2100 BASE pfSense+ Security Gateway
					

The Netgate 2100 security gateway appliance with pfSense Plus software delivers unbeatable performance and flexibility in its class. It is ideal for home, remote worker, and small business deployments




					shop.netgate.com
				




Turris Omnia is pretty nice hardware too. I want one.

FreeBSD Foundation strives in managing frameworks for the software cause.
Manufacturing hardware is nowhere in that sphere.

EspressoBin is a perfect example of a terrible Arm experience.
Crowdfunded too.








						Track Marvell ESPRESSOBin Board's Kickstarter campaign on BackerTracker
					

by Globalscale Technologies Inc   ESPRESSOBin is a high performance 64 bit dual core low power consuming networking computing platform based on the ARMv8 architecture




					www.backerkit.com
				




I don't see RISC-V being some miracle platform. ralphbsz  made some excellent points there.


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## freezr (Dec 7, 2022)

ralphbsz said:


> Can you explain how a board (or CPU chip) designed to run FreeBSD would be different from a board/chip designed to run Linux, at the same workload? [...]



Basically because Linux and FreeBSD do the same workload differently you may consider a design that fits better the latter rather than the former. For instance ZFS on Linux doesn't shine brighter as on FreeBSD and you may design a board with may allocate four NVMEs... 

By the way for next time I'll refrain to write such topic...


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## SirDice (Dec 7, 2022)

freezr said:


> For instance ZFS on Linux doesn't shine brighter as on FreeBSD


This has nothing to do with the design of the hardware.


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## Profighost (Dec 7, 2022)

freezr said:


> By the way for next time I'll refrain to write such topic..


Nah, I wouldn't say that.
Just because it took another turn as you expected doesn't mean the idea was bad.


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## Beastie7 (Dec 7, 2022)

Let's assume the hardware already exists.. who's going to write drivers for these boards?

A mere pipedream.


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## shkhln (Dec 7, 2022)

covacat said:


> lol it sold for $700 and has 1/2 cpu performance of a $80 pi4/400


Afaik, part of Raspberry Pi's magic lies in their relationship with Broadcom. That's not something that other people can easily reproduce.



freezr said:


> Eventually Risc-V will take over because open-source is more prolific than closed source development...


The instruction set is almost irrelevant in the modern world. The things that actually matter: performance, price, availability. All these three points favor large corporations due to astronomical development and manufacturing costs. No one else can compete.


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## tingo (Dec 9, 2022)

One difference between ARM IP (ISA and building blocks) and RISC-V is the license cost. For that reason alone, RISC-V will win out. Eventually.


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## kpedersen (Dec 9, 2022)

The way I see it is the general pattern for crowdfunding is, *if* it is successful, the pledgers get hold of the product as part of a first limited batch (yay!) But...

then for a second batch, there is rarely enough interest to fund it; half of us nerds are happy with one toy to play with and those looking for an evaluation board in preparation for large orders are not in the crowd funding market (too unreliable). So effectively the second batch never comes.

So now since few people have the device, there is no real community built. No real development continues. And it ends up as yet another bit of hardware in the bottom of our drawers.

Raspberry Pi's success is rare (and as shkhln mentioned, ties with Broadcom helped). However even that is starting to dwindle; partly because of parts shortage but also they are becoming too high spec and now having to compete with second hand amd64 laptops in terms of price and performance.


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## Beastie7 (Dec 10, 2022)

Forget about crowdsourcing any hardware endeavors, Linux is still the go-to for open source driver development for most hardware. Until this changes, ideas like this will most likely never come to fruition. The fact that we have to provide a system call table and KPI for user space applications and hardware drivers says a lot here. The Foundation could do more work with seeking collaboration with various IHVs, and maintaining it.

How could they fix this? Simply ship a desktop version of -RELEASE. I know, it's idealistically stupid, but Canonical/Red Hat was successful with it.


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## kpedersen (Dec 10, 2022)

Beastie7 said:


> Simply ship a desktop version of -RELEASE. I know, it's idealistically stupid, but Canonical/Red Hat was successful with it.


-RELEASE is already a desktop version. I am just guessing that our ideas of a desktop differ.


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## Beastie7 (Dec 14, 2022)

All nerd bias aside. I think we all know what a conventional desktop experience is. Developers like it, mere mortals like it. Driver development is easier with one.


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