Support for Aquantia AQC113 and AQC113C Ethernet Controllers on FreeBSD

FreeBSD folks just lit up a thread asking for support for two popular 10‑gigabit network chips (AQC113 and AQC113C), and the comments immediately turned into a spicy mix of bargain hunting, AI hype, and old‑school elitism. The core ask is simple: these modern cards show up in FreeBSD 14.1, but there’s no driver, while Linux already supports them. Owners of mini PCs and budget NAS boxes are begging, waving around models like the ASUS XG‑C100C v2, and one optimist chirped that “this driver seems to be working well for people,” which only fueled the hype.

Then the hot takes started flying. One camp is chanting “just port it from Linux,” with an AI‑powered twist—“shouldn’t AI translate drivers by now?” Others are sticking to the purist lane: if you’re a “real” FreeBSD user, you’re on SFP+ fiber or even 25G, not bargain basement 10G copper. Cue pushback from the home‑lab crowd waving $55 Amazon listings and yelling “let me plug in a cheap card and go fast.” It’s a perfect internet storm: pragmatic tinkerers vs. performance traditionalists, and an AI wish‑casting chorus in the middle. The original poster even offered hardware/testing help—now the community’s watching to see if a dev hero swoops in or if the thread becomes another meme about drivers arriving “soon™.”