Ya the SoC market has really taken off and almost killed the old market of customized logic via things like fpga’s and other discretes as now there all just put on the wafer with the main cores. Fab levels just keep getting smaller and denser and to a large part allow design houses like Amlogic to really pump out chips cheaper then someone l ike Intel or Amd… the big guys costs are more because they are more of a front to back maker when it comes to cpu’s so the cost is more… whereas with someone like Amlogic they simply design the SoC using various blocks of ip cores and licences and send the design out to a fab shop for fabrication to the design they make, so the costs of running a foundary are avoided allowing them to fload the market much cheaper.
CraigHB… Hey just outta curiosity what version of FreeBSD are you running on your Intel/Amd platform?
I got a couple of extra workstation boxes kicking around and am gonna stick FreeBSD on one and then look at the Arm port of it as well… i see the A9 is supported already minus a few things and am going to start there and see what happens… I now have a working 5.3 kernel that works with most of the Aml and Rockchip boards i am playing with and would like to see how much work it is to move that into a FreeBSD distro. my kernels still proprietary, but pulled from the current upstream.
1st i would like to get a pc or 2 up and running on FreeBSD and was thinking about version 12 as a starting point for the stable version… is that what your playing with?
Right now I’m running FreeBSD 11.2, but that’s on an old box I have sitting around. I’m actually looking at building a new box with fresh hardware and moving to the latest release which is 12.0. For a new installation you’d want to use the version 12 branch. The version 11 branch is winding down now with its last point release.
I’m leaning toward using an AMD APU and depending on support I may even have a go with the development branch which is at version 13. Generally I don’t get into development branches since I’m more of a user than a tester, but I seem to be doing that a lot lately wanting to use the latest hardware.
You may be a bit disappointed with FreeBSD’s ARM support, from what I’ve read it’s not as good. Like I said, FreeBSD is kind of AMD/Intel centric. Though I’ve not tried it myself. You’ll have to just try it and see how things go. Otherwise FreeBSD supports a good range of PC hardware.
Whatever the case, I’m sure you’ll find yourself saying, “wow FreeBSD does such and such a lot better than Linux.” I’m not a coder, but I’ve read lots of comments about how much better FreeBSD is in terms of that low level coding structure. Even as a user it’s pretty apparent how much better the filesystem structure and organization is with FreeBSD.
I was thinking about using 12 on a old intel workstation i got laying around and then start playing the sources but more specifically looking at the Arm stuff and i see what your saying about limited support t this point but its not a issue that would make me pass at this point in time, need to look deeper… im just kinda killing time here at work looking at different things but i am home from thru on and plan on putting some serious time in to looking deeper… my N2 stuff will be here thursday and i think i will start there initially.
the other thing i need to check into is the licensing stuff, i don’t think there would be any issues but with it actually being not really linux its licence i know is somewhat different just not sure how much yet.
your probably right as i really do prefer the older distro’s as i cut my teeth on always having to build from sources and find the newer Debian-Ubuntu frustrating at times, tho the package management is nice i must admit.
That’s another thing that’s a lot better with FreeBSD, the license. That GNU license is actually kind of restrictive. There’s also that ridiculous CoC Torvalds implemented which is pretty much like the last nail in the coffin for me. Not that it has any impact on me personally, it’s just a matter of principle.
The FreeBSD license is basically, “do whatever the hell you want.” The only stipulation is the FreeBSD Foundation has be given credit somewhere, like one comment at the top of the source code is all it takes, doesn’t even have to be visible to the user. Even so it’s not something anyone enforces, you won’t get a cease and desist letter if you fail to provide proper credit.
I just got home but was reading before i left work and can’t believe i forgot about FreeBsd…
getting old kinda sux… my heads so full of other crap all the time that something needs to be fall out before i can stick something new in… lol…
man for the last year or so we’ve been sitting on a gpu fix for the S912s and even the older S812’s but because of the GNU licence we never put anything out into the public because it would have meant the sources would need to made available, and in light of all the work and not willing to give Amlogic anything for free have sat on things… I totally forgot about the Berkley stuff thinking it was pretty much dead but under its licence it would mean i could distribute without disclosing the sources we fixed.
not sure where you physically are but i owe you a pint for waking my ass up…
Yeah that GNU thing with the requirement for source to go back upstream is a big problem for a lot of developers. I’ve read many complaints about it.
Hopefully developers will embrace the freedom part of FreeBSD and bring an influx. FreeBSD is only held back by participation. That’s what Linux has over it. Don’t understand why, the FreeBSD project is really a great organization. They’re simply devoid of all the chaos present in Linux and GNU development.
If I was a better coder I would love to get involved, but I never get much past the assembly I use to program µcontrollers. C gives me a headache, just can’t seem to wrap my head around it. I’m odd that way, most people don’t like assembly and feel more comfortable with C. I think it’s just too cryptic for me. Weird, I never had trouble with other higher level languages like Pascal, Basic, or Fortran (if you remember that one).
I don’t think Stallman had any idea of the shit storm he started with GNU… lol… but your right.
Last night while snooping around i seen a number of gui’s for FreeBsd… things like ghostbsd and lumina… you have any experience with any of the gui’s?
Hell i remember CPM… lol… but as a hardware guy i understand your point on Assembly over any of the higher languages… Assembly lets you pretty much work at the bit level and no matter how fast or suffisticated chips get there all still basically a simple switch and understanding that crossover barrier between translating voltage to code is something that i find a aweful lot of extemely good high level programmers just don’t get… thats the problem with the education system as i see it in regards to this stuff… Schools teach what they think will get their graduates actual good paying jobs so most of this old world stuff is glossed over as most of the jobs are up at application level requiring the higher languages.
we more like black hats tho as we understand the bottom level so even when your outside of your normal box you still have the ability to reason out and work backways going down from the higher languages… it might be slow as maybe like me your not comfortable but at least in todays world theres tons of documentation on the higher level so given time you can work backwards…
i get what your saying but i can say from experience don’t ever let that hold ya back as i truly believe people can pretty much do what they want if they believe in themselves and don’t get caught in the trap of being forced to think inside the box all the time…