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It seems like the best way to get WiFi working in FreeBSD is to run Linux in bhyve and tunnel your connections through there.

FreeBSD 15 has done a lot for WiFi apparently.

I'm not sure how good it is as I don't use wifi but it's supposed to be much better.


That kind of seems crazy to me, considering OpenBSD has worked perfectly fine with every wifi capable device I've tested it on. Granted, most of them were older machines.

Is this just an artifact of FreeBSD primarily focusing on server hardware rather than consumer/end-user stuff?


Basically no one supports Broadcom SoftMAC WiFi cards very well, but OpenBSD just doesn't. I have a 2015 MacBook Air with a BCM4350 where the recommended fix is to go buy a FullMAC card from a similar vintage MacBook Pro and just cope with the fact that the card barely fits in the case and can't be secured properly.

It seems the best way to get WiFi working is to run Linux and FreeBSD in a VM..

But then you’re stuck running Linux as your primary OS, which is a huge drawback.

FWIW, I’ve done both, FreeBSD with a virtualised OpenBSD for WiFi, and currently I run Arch so I can do gaming, with FreeBSD virtualised for development. I’m kind of looking to go back to my previous setup.


the fact that this is a widely accepted/encouraged practice is genuinely unhinged

Why? Nothing wrong with running your network interface in a VM. There are reasons for doing so even if drivers aren't an issue. Qubes OS does this, for instance, for security reasons.

Windows also does. Almost everything is a VM in windows these days.

It's just how things work these days. If you'd say "I run my VPN client in a docker container" it would raise a lot less eyebrows. Yet it's not very different, really.

Though conceptually I'd frown at having to run Linux. I'd prefer upgrading the hardware to a supported chip.


Windows isn't running entire fucking separate kernel to run wifi driver, the fuck you're talking about

Definitely not independent kernels but my guess is he's referring to Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) - it gets turned on by default if your Win10/11 system has virtualization enabled.

  One such example security solution is memory integrity, which protects and hardens Windows by running kernel mode code integrity within the isolated virtual environment of VBS. Kernel mode code integrity is the Windows process that checks all kernel mode drivers and binaries before they're started, and prevents unsigned or untrusted drivers or system files from being loaded into system memory.
I suppose this applies to Wi-Fi drivers?

Link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...


no matter how it's implemented, it must not be a user-requiring (or even user-facing) task

Why not? FreeBSD has never been intended as a batteries included, everything "just works" out of the box OS. It's meant to have a bare minimum install and let the user choose how things are set up. You can disagree with that philosophy, but that's not an indictment of FreeBSD. Just go use something that aligns better with your preferences.

Not really weird when some firmware are close to being full blown OS. An alpine VM can be run with 64 MB which is lower than a lot of software.

I've used cellular modems which run Linux or ThreadX internally.

Weren't there iPhones that had wifi chips that ran Linux?

I've been using an immutable Linux for the last year or so, and it's gone quite well, but not without pain points.

There's a lot of stuff that I do which does not have a flatpak or package baked in. To get around this, I've been using distrobox to run these things in Ubuntu containers. So I will do "distrobox enter sdr" to have a terminal open up in that environment. You can export applications so that they show up in the applications list. It really takes some experience to shift your mindset, but it was worth it for me.


I agree that development sometimes takes extra steps, but honestly setting up dev environments almost always takes too many steps anyway lol. Overall it's worth it for the stability.

I have food periodically delivered from Chewy, and I keep the box. Each month, the old box is recycled and the new box is put to use: https://i.imgur.com/lFgp63O.jpeg

There is definitely an attraction aspect related the "freshness" of the box, as there are squabbles over which cat gets to use the new box. These squabbles wane over time, until the new box arrives.


Are they using some olfactory "palatant" on the boxes?

No. The simple explanation is “cat”.

Exactly this. Cats just like fresh things that don't currently smell like cat. That can be a new sheet of paper on the table, a new cardboard box, freshly folded laundry, etc.

Same habit here!


gzip also contains a significant amount of compatibility code for different platforms.


Sometimes you see credits and say "Oh, wow, I didn't know that they were involved with that!?"

For John Bradley, it is xv and xcalc.

For Hisham Muhammad it is htop and LuaRocks.

And for Jason Donenfeld it is wireguard and cgit.

Perhaps some of you have other examples.


> Perhaps some of you have other examples.

The entirety of the works of Fabrice Bellard. QEMU and FFmpeg are the most well-known ones, but there's also a full blown x86 emulator fully and exclusively written in native JavaScript, a greenfield image compression format, a JS engine and probably a dozen other things I only randomly stumble upon and think "oh, wtf, another Fabrice Bellard thing?".


On several occasions, I’ve seen some outlandish claim or another on a new piece of software I’ve never heard of, started to roll my eyes, saw that Bellard had written it, and turned back to see what genius thing he’d come up with.

“New Halting Problem solver,” ok, sure buddy, “by Fabrice Bellard”, ok, so tell me how this works…


I can't even imagine being able to think like he can.


Matthias Wandel - I'd used jhead for years, and I've watched "that experimental woodworking guy on youtube" for years - it was a bit of a mental "record scratch" when I realized they were actually the same guy.


Oh xcalc. My favorite xcalc hack is that every single button is an x11 window and you can reparent other windows into them.

    xwininfo -tree
    xdotool windowreparent 0x1e0000b 0x2c0001d
great fun at parties


I've been running tinydns for decades now. I don't even think about it anymore.


We did as well for about 20 years. It is a very solid program and does everything it promises. Unfortunately it lacks modern features, and development is sparse to say the least, so we ended up moving to Knot. I'd still recommend tinydns for really simple deployments, though.


> but pave it + put Devuan or similar on it.

The distribution which left the root account without a password if you selected "Use sudo as default and disable root account"?


I've been satisfied with Android Automotive on my Equinox EV. I did see that there are USB dongles which can allegedly add Android Auto to the car.


My blazer doesn't have android auto either... where are these usb things, I might be interested. I really want my phone to respond to 'ok google' not the car saying 'this needs a subscription'


Annoyingly "Android Auto" and "Android Automotive" are completely different things.

Android Auto is where you can connect your phone to the car and your phone projects onto the car's display with apps and navigation.

Android Automotive is when the car itself is running Android Automotive for its infotainment OS, meaning it has access to a limited Android App Store to install apps natively into the car's infotainment system and you can sign in with your Google account.

Some cars with Android Automotive also support CarPlay and Android Auto on top of it, but GM has decided to disable those features, meaning you have to use the built-in Android Automotive system to manage your media streaming apps and pay GM for the data access plan.


These cars are sold with data plans which last quite a few years. What model year is your Blazer? I think that my Equinox has app access for 3 years and maps / google assistant for 8 years. I've tested tethering with my phone and it works with that, so I have a path forward once the built-in subscription lapses.

This is the one that I saw: https://evplay.io/shop/ev-play-lite-gm

It's kind of expensive, and there's a non-zero chance that GM does something to block it.


2024. I refused their privacy policy, so that might be why I'm getting nothing. I don't drive much so I'm worth more to GM than they are to me.

If GM tries to block it there are a number of ways a lawyer can fight back and likely win. The Magnuson Moss warranty act was historically written about car radios for starters. There are other consumer protection laws as well. You need a good lawyer, but I suspect they will take the case for the expected gains in the return lawsuit. If I were them I'd get a lawyer to write this up in a "white paper" - It would be a few thousand, but it is also something GM will likely see if they think about doing anything.


Must have a faster CPU than my Polestar, where Android Automotive runs like a first-gen Android tablet, it's awful


It's actually quite fluid and mostly lag-free.

I've dealt with a lot of cheap android devices over the years, and GM did a good job with this one. It kind of sucks knowing that they could flip a switch and turn on AA/CarPlay, though.


Maybe the CPU is regular speed but it seems slow compared to how fast your Polestar is :)

Those are sweet


Yes, yet somehow with over a year of ownership I have not had one stoplight race. I don't even need to go over the speed limit... I can do 0-50km/hr faster than a Corvette and that's sufficient demonstration for me... but without the ability to rev an engine nobody feels threatened enough to engage.

Either that or everyone's just too engrossed in their phone to consider their ego at the stoplight anymore. I should have just bought a minivan, cars are over


Golden age of drag racing was when cars were simple and teenagers rebuilt their own engines, blueprinted everything, added some custom mods, and then raced each other.

Nowadays with automatic transmissions and EVs, you just buy something and step on a pedal, that's not much of a sport.


It's based on the Blazer, and is larger than an Equinox EV.


Equinox EV is also doing well.


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