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While I have used FreeBSD before on my desktops (starting with version 8.1) and love the design of the system along with the UNIX feel, I do not really see how it can become popular with the WiFi stack in shambles (my current Intel Wireless device gets half of the speed it does on other OS) and other quirks. I feel that a lot more of the donations should go to working on FreeBSD device support if we ever to dream of it going popular.

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Despite their proclaimed support of open source, Intel wifi can be a mess on Linux too. Most distributions work well, but Gentoo for one loads the incorrect firmware blob and I am forced to try to create a custom installer image in a VM after emerging the linux-firmware package.

The iwlwifi driver just landed in FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE, and I have yet to have any luck with it there, either. Neither Gentoo nor FreeBSD seems to want to load the correct cc-a0-66.ucode blob for my AX200 chip. I think the downstream developers can only bear so much blame; Intel could surely do a better job helping to clear up edge cases like this.

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