Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Thu 21st Dec 2006 08:29 UTC, submitted by Valour
BSD and Linux programmers have had a lot of success in creating drivers for new computer hardware in a timely manner, but much of their effort has been without the support of major hardware manufacturers. Intel, Marvell, Texas Instruments and Broadcom, though separate and competing entities, seem by one consent to prevent non-Microsoft operating systems from working properly with some of their most widely-used network chips.
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Member since:
2006-10-08
"I still recall Realtek being the most responsive to alternative operating systems that I've seen."
NICs produced by Realtek usually have high interrupt rates ("interrupt storm"), but they work good in almost every hardware configuration with almost every OS (as far as I've tested *BSD, Linux and BeOS and I think it was Solaris/x86). And they are cheap, so probably this is the reason why you find RTL chips for the built-in NICs on so many x86 mainboards. Of course, you cannot compare their performance to 3Com cards.
Okay, RTL8029 and RTL8139 are not wireless... :-)