[sidkshatriya]

> There is one advantage of Linux over FreeBSD, which is not widely known. Linux has a huge database of known bugs in various peripheral devices, including Ethernet NICs, and when one of those is recognized it applies workarounds for the bugs.

Almost universal hardware support and workarounds for quirks is precisely the reason why everyone uses Linux even if they might want to use FreeBSD or something else. In other words, this advantage is known and is the reason why Linux is dominant in the server space today.

[adrian_b]

It is widely known that Linux has "better" hardware support for many peripheral devices, but few know what "better" means, i.e. that a lot of devices that you can buy have various bugs and in most cases their vendors do not document the bugs in any way, because they provide Windows drivers that contain workarounds for the bugs, and they do not care about other operating systems.

The users of other operating systems must discover the bugs and how to handle them by reverse engineering, and here Linux has the advantage of a much greater user base than any alternative, so in most cases the bugs will be identified by some Linux user, and then either the user or the maintainers of the corresponding Linux subsystem will implement a workaround for the bug.

[bombcar]

If such a workaround exists, an enterprising *BSD user can look at the code and determine what it is and apply a similar workaround in their BSD.

[sidkshatriya]

Usually workarounds/quirks need the highest level understanding of the device driver and the device. There are few people in the world with such mastery and fewer people capable of translating this to another operating system. In concept this is simple but in most cases it is difficult.