There appears to be a lack of resources for information about how
well a particular motherboard or NIC works with Linux SMP or Linux in
general. The various FAQ's are usually either out-of-date or
insufficiently informative, so often one still needs to turn to an
associate or a mailing list to get the latest info. "So, do the 3c905's
they sell nowadays work on Linux?" The other problem is that for a lot of
the higher-end hardware there are long-running debates (Adaptec/Buslogic,
tulip/eepro, motherboards, etc.), so often the resulting thread is a
confusing sampling of the extremes. Of course, one could search the
mailing list archives, but just like dejanews.com, it can be difficult to
find information on a particular component. And the S/N of the result set
is often low.
The traditional solution is to keep up-to-the-week FAQ's, but
that's very tough given the number of PC components out there. So here's
the idea: a database of products which lets users add reports of their
experiences with a given product. A report can either be a workaround
explaining how to get something working or a rating of the product by
several parameters (stability, ease-of-configuration, performance, etc.).
The database then averages all the reports to calculate a quick "snapshot"
rating for a product.
The database is now up at <http://lhd.datapower.com>. Various
improvements are on-going, but it is perfectly usable. Of course, it
needs a lot more data and suggestions on how to make it more useful.
In summary, the goal is to be able to 1. search for "Racal
Interlan" and immediately learn that it's an Am79c97 10BaseT adapter which
is supported, uses the pcnet32.c driver and rated 3.5/5.0 by 60 other
users or 2. search for "NIC", "SMP" and rating > 3.0 to get the list of
NIC's to consider buying for the new server.
Try it out and please send feedback to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Eugene Kuznetsov
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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