alt Hacker NewsJust curious, most people that use FreeBSD are either experts or hardcode enthusiasts. It used to include FreeNAS/TrueNAS users, but they migrated to Linux as the product moved to Linux. That means the users of FreeBSD are not the ones I would expect to purchase and use these controllers, but other options like 10 Gbps with SFP+ (AOC or Fiber Optic) or even 25Gbps and higher. Is there a significant demand for this driver? A 10 Gbps SFP+ card is cheaper and more flexible, I have a few in several computers and even a few laying around as spares, they are also more compatible with all sorts of OS-es and usually more capable.
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Quite a lot of popular, widely deployed firewalls are based upon FreeBSD.
And for them it's a problem that miniPCs well suited for firewall use have been been coming out (for a while now) using this chipset. Which FreeBSD didn't support.
So for those projects, this may provide an avenue of hope or future potential. ;)
I use cards like those described by you (with DAC cables) for connections between FreeBSD servers (actually between servers, regardless if they run FreeBSD or Linux).
However, I also need to connect some desktop/laptop PCs to a FreeBSD server, either for management or for transferring backups, where a cheaper Aquantia NIC is perfectly adequate, especially when the PC has only a 2.5 Gb/s or 5 Gb/s Ethernet interface.
In the past, I had to buy an Intel server NIC for one of my FreeBSD servers, despite the fact that I had a spare Aquantia NIC that would have worked fine, due to this driver problem.
I was not happy about it, so I am glad to hear now that a working driver is available.