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▲ FreeBSD Device Drivers Book(github.com)
93 points by myth_drannon 12 hours ago | 18 comments
▲saidnooneever 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

theres some questionable quality content in the book, but lets be fair 4.5k pages is hard to manage.

if people dont get too 'anti' about it, it might grown into a good book at some point over editions.

It would certainly be useful to have such a book be complete and maintained (tons of work ofc).

personally id prefer a book that requires abit more prework, like learning C etc. and Unix, so it can be more compact specific to device drivers. 4k+ pages is a lot to chew through and more a thing for reference manuals like intel/amd/acpi manuals etc. (lot of tables and diagrams etc.)

▲shevy-java 25 minutes ago | parent [-]

Books are great. Even if they are not perfect.

I used to point at LFS/BLFS in the past (Linux from scratch), since the idea is great. Unfortunately they are now systemd-only, which kind of defeats some of the points, IMO. But documentation is useful, so FreeBSD improving here is good. Perhaps one day it can compete against Linux again. :D

▲kernalix7 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My exposure to FreeBSD has been mostly through routers and firewalls, plus reading about jails and finding the concept genuinely impressive. Always wanted to dig deeper but the existing material assumes you already know the things I was hoping to learn. A book that explicitly starts before that wall sounds like exactly what's been missing. Going to give it a real shot.

▲futune 41 minutes ago | parent [-]

For me, boot environments are the killer feature. I think it's the only mainstream OS to really support the concept. Void linux (which is great) and (probably?) the Illumos distributions are the other open source choices, but those are much more niche. Or you could bolt it on to another linux distro using ZBM, but then you're on your own.

Every update I clone the current boot environment, execute it as a jail, run upgrades in there, and then once upgrades finish I set it to "boot just once", all using the built in bectl. At no point during an upgrade is the running OS in an inconsistent state. Powerloss during upgrade? no problem, since it wasn't activated yet your server comes up with the previous version. And you can either junk the partial upgraded env and start over, or jail it again and continue.

I only wish laptop support was a bit better. But since my laptop is more of a pet, at least it can have Void.

▲inatreecrown2 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is a huge book! I would like to know if a LLM was involved in the writing process or if this is the product of a human.

▲esseph 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"The English version is the original and authoritative version of the book. The Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish editions were translated using AI and have not yet undergone a full human technical review. They are published to make the material accessible to more readers, but they may contain translation mistakes, awkward wording, or technical inaccuracies introduced during translation.

If something in a translated edition seems unclear, inconsistent, or technically questionable, please refer to the English version as the source of truth. Help with reviewing and improving the translations is very welcome (see Contributing below)."

---

This doesn't directly answer your question though.

▲inatreecrown2 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes I saw that too.

▲rvz 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even if it was, the author is not a random person and is part of the FreeBSD team and I'd rather trust them to write the book than someone else outside of the organization.

So I would expect that they would thoroughly check the book for inaccuracies, errors and issues before releasing it after proof-reading, otherwise it would say a lot about how they use LLMs and not checking over it would hurt their own reputation.

▲LeCompteSftware 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I guarantee they didn't read a single word of this book. Look at the introduction to C and tell me that

a) it's a good introduction to C

b) a human read any of it

https://github.com/ebrandi/FDD-book/blob/main/content/chapte...

This book is a dishonest AI scam.

▲cinntaile 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It's a free book, he's not selling you anything.

▲LeCompteSftware 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Being LLM slop in particular, this book cost way more of my time than it should have. It really does look superficially competent, until you realize that competence is paragraph-to-paragraph, not section-to-section.

The scam is not stating up front "this was written by an LLM and I haven't read it." The dishonesty is claiming this book will teach you such-and-such when the author actually has no idea. It really is a scam. Even if he's not making anything directly, he's already earned 150 stars in the GitHub pseudoeconomy, plus good word-of-mouth from people who are lazy and thoughtless like he is, people who assumed that 4,500 pages about FreeBSD from a lead FreeBSD maintainer must be worth something and didn't bother to check if it was written by an LLM... even though it's 2026.

This book has negative value. It is actively destructive to FreeBSD, even if in the short term it boosts the author's public profile.

▲AbbeFaria 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There is nothing wrong with using an LLM so long as a human takes ownership for the artefact (be that books, code etc).

I would rather the author automate the mundane and focus on conveying their ideas clearly.

As an aside, is there a Linux version for this ?

▲LeCompteSftware 5 hours ago | parent [-]

There is something wrong with it because LLMs are really not capable of writing a useful book, and this book is 100% LLM slop.

Look at this totally useless """introduction""" to C: https://github.com/ebrandi/FDD-book/blob/main/content/chapte...

First of all this is an entire book, it's 76,000 words. But look at the first nontrivial example of C after "hello world," under "Bonus learning point about C return values"

  exec_map_first_page(struct image_params *imgp)
 {
        vm_object_t object;
        vm_page_t m;
        int error;

        if (imgp->firstpage != NULL)
                exec_unmap_first_page(imgp);
                
        object = imgp->vp->v_object;
        if (object == NULL)
                return (EACCES);
 #if VM_NRESERVLEVEL > 0
        if ((object->flags & OBJ_COLORED) == 0) {
                VM_OBJECT_WLOCK(object);
                vm_object_color(object, 0);
                VM_OBJECT_WUNLOCK(object);
        }
 #endif
        error = vm_page_grab_valid_unlocked(&m, object, 0,
            VM_ALLOC_COUNT(VM_INITIAL_PAGEIN) |
            VM_ALLOC_NORMAL | VM_ALLOC_NOBUSY | VM_ALLOC_WIRED);

        if (error != VM_PAGER_OK)
                return (EIO);
        imgp->firstpage = sf_buf_alloc(m, 0);
        imgp->image_header = (char *)sf_buf_kva(imgp->firstpage);

        return (0);
 }
This teaches nobody anything. I am sorry but this project is completely useless and there's no way Brandi read a single word of it. This entire book is a dishonest AI scam. I hate LLMs. It is hard to think of another computer technology that has done so much damage for so little good.

Edit: I mean look at the intro to for loops. This is supposed to be for total beginners. Example 1:

  for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
     printf("%d\n", i);
   }
>> Start at i = 0

>> Repeat while i < 10

>> Increment i each time by 1 (i++)

Example 2:

  for (i = 0; n > 0 && i < IFLIB_MAX_RX_REFRESH; n--, i++) {
     struct netmap_slot *slot = &ring->slot[nm_i];
     uint64_t paddr;
     void *addr = PNMB(na, slot, &paddr);
     /\* ... work per buffer ... \*/
     nm_i = nm_next(nm_i, lim);
     nic_i = nm_next(nic_i, lim);
   }
>> What this loop does

>> * The driver is refilling receive buffers so the NIC can keep receiving packets.

>> * It processes buffers in batches: up to IFLIB_MAX_RX_REFRESH each time.

>> * i counts how many buffers we've handled in this batch. n is the total remaining buffers to refill; it decrements every iteration.

>> * For each buffer, the code grabs its slot, figures out the physical address, readies it for DMA, then advances the ring indices (nm_i, nic_i).

>> * The loop stops when either the batch is full (i hits the max) or there's nothing left to do (n == 0). The batch is then "published" to the NIC by the code right after the loop.

>> In essence, a for loop is the go-to choice when you have a clear limit on how many times something should run. It packages initialisation, condition checking, and iteration updates into a single, compact header, making the flow easy to follow.

Total garbage. This has literally zero educational value. I assume Brandi is just trying to make a quick buck, he truly has not even glanced at the output. He should be ashamed of himself.

▲saidnooneever 2 hours ago | parent [-]

its FREE. no ads nothing. you are realy anti LLM and thats fine but dont let yourself be total blinded.

you yourself chose to spend time on something to your own frustration even though at that point you already knew it wasnt for you. frustrating yourself further trying to find examples to help frustrate others too.

look at how you are behaving and then realise you are saying someone else should be ashamed of themselves.

If you disagree with the book a simple excerpt and note would suffice. if it's 'super clearly bad' it does not need to contain a load of emotions to transmit that message.

▲SilentM68 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Never seen a book written that incorporates the programming language as part of the learning material.

Awesome work!

I await the Linux version :)

▲yjftsjthsd-h 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Wow, that's amazing:

> Do I need to know C before starting?

> No. Chapters 4 and 5 teach C from the ground up, focusing on the parts of the language that matter for kernel work (pointers, structures, memory layout, the preprocessor, and calling conventions). If you already know C well, sidebars in those chapters tell you what to skim and what to read carefully.

> Do I need to know UNIX or FreeBSD?

> No. Chapter 2 walks you through installing FreeBSD in a VM or on bare metal, and Chapter 3 introduces the UNIX command line, filesystem, processes, permissions, and editors. By the end of Part 1 you will have a working lab and the vocabulary to use it.

If you're trying to get more contributors to your project, that seems like an excellent way to do it:) You have any interest in working on the project? Great, here's everything to get you there!

▲cinntaile 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It doesn't seem like a good book. I would skip it.

▲pjmlp 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Quite common back when books were the main learning source.