Official FreeBSD nVidia Drivers

Hugh writes "The FreeBSD NVIDIA Driver Initiative has announced that nVidia itself will be releasing a FreeBSD driver for its line of cards. This is excellent news for people who prefer to Quake on the best OS available."

Comments

Flamebait?

[waytoomuchcoffee]

This is excellent news for people who prefer to Quake on the best OS available

Wouldn't this normally rate a Flamebait on a regular commment? ;-)

Re:Flamebait?

[Mad Marlin]

This is excellent news for people who prefer to Quake on the best OS available

Wouldn't this normally rate a Flamebait on a regular commment? ;-)

It's not flamebait to speak the truth :)

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is excellent news for people who prefer to Quake on the best OS available.

But ... it already runs in Mac OS X?

Re:Huh?

[foniksonik]

I would conjecture that OS X is the main reason why FreeBSD is getting a port out of nowhere, seeing as how the two are cousins.

Re:Huh?

[ealar dlanvuli]

Actually FreeBSD is better than linux if you ever try it as a home unix user.

OTOH I would guess what you say is true also.

Too much support for my tastes..

[zulux]

Good greif, FreeBSD is going mainstram. Yuk!

How can I be condecending and arrogent when everybody else is using the same operating system as I am? How can I put on airs of self-ritous opression when people are actually supporting my OS?

Oh well, off to OpenBSD, or if that too poplar, I'll have to ger an Amiga. Sigh.

Re:Too much support for my tastes..

[coene]

Run OpenBSD, maybe ittl push for these type of things to come our way.

Best OS?

[Your_Mom]

This is excellent news for people who prefer to Quake on the best OS available.

Eh? What does this have anything to do with CP/M?

Re:Best OS?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

This gave me a chuckle, sucks about the Offtopic mod. hows that quote go.....

The difference between +1 Funny and -1 Troll is if the moderator gets the joke.

The best?

[Ogerman]

people who prefer to [run] Quake on the best OS available.

*BSD isn't the best OS available. Neither is Linux. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. Neither OS is inherently more secure. Neither OS has an absolute performance advantage over the other. Silly trolls. (:

Re:The best?

[Shanep]

ummm.. I've patched openssh on all my freebsd boxes more times than I've had to patch apache, sendmail and bind put together. Don't belive Theo's "auditing" propaganda.

OpenBSD is currently moving in directions to make even possibly future remotely exploitable services limited in the havoc they may wreak.

If the FreeBSD team have put together a more secure "FreeSSH", please point me to it.

Re:The best?

[coene]

OpenSSH is native only on OpenBSD. If its on another OS, its a port.

Re:Cool!

[questionlp]

Yes it can... The game will run using the Linux Compatibility Layer. For more information, check out this page. Looking at the end of the page, you will find the following paragraph:

The Linux version will run under FreeBSD but both the Linux and FreeBSD versions require hardware graphics acceleration. The only supported graphics acceleration is 3dfx though others may work.

Also check out the different Q3 ports available within the FreeBSD ports collection under the games/ section. Wanna check? Go to freshports.org/games or go to their search page and search for "q3".

What about XFree86 4?

[adolf]

I thought that included with recent versions of XFree86 was a magic platform-independant driver model, with the idea that the same binary drivers would work on multiple operating systems as long as they shared a common type of CPU (x86).

Is this no longer the case?

Re:What about XFree86 4?

[(startx)]

this basic idea is true the for xfree86 driver itself. The problem is the kernel interface portion of the driver that needs to re-writen for every os.

Re:What about XFree86 4?

[Ded Bob]

No luck. I am running XFree86-Server-4.2.1 with a Ti4200 and have the random dots on the screen. Either a 4.2.2 comes out to fix it, or we will have to wait for 4.3. This is just a guess based on browsing through XFree86's CVS. On the bright side, 4.2.1 (with some patches provided automically within the port) does recognize the card.

I am glad I saw your post. It shows I am not the only one with the problem. Nothing like building a new machine and having to wonder if the problem is software or hardware. If hardware, where to begin. :)

Re:What about XFree86 4?

[Eil]

There is an open-source cross-platform XFree86 driver for nVidia cards and it works quite well.

However, it is only 2D. The driver that nVidia is releasing is 2D and 3D. The 3D stuff requires a kernel module in order to have direct access to the video hardware, which is why it isn't a simple port from Linux to BSD.

I don't think this move by nVidia has anything to do with OSX, as some posters postulate. After all, it may still be BSD, but it's a completely different architecture. (And there also are not any OSX drivers on nVidia's site.) Rather, it seems to me like someone at nVidia is looking to experiment a bit and/or has some free time to help out the BSD community.

glxinfo

[Screaming Lunatic]

Can someone who has installed the drivers please spit out a glxinfo? (I am assuming there is a glxinfo for BSD. I am far from a BSD expert.) I want to know how difficult it would be for my game to support FreeBSD. The problems I've been having is that GL_ARB_vertex_program is not supported on Linux yet with the 3123 drivers that were just released.

And guess who in driver department is asleep at the wheel again coughATIcough.

Re:glxinfo

[foonf]

I don't think this has actually been released yet so I doubt anyone is using it yet (outside of maybe someone at nVidia). Since both FreeBSD and Linux use XFree86 4 as the main X11 server these days, the driver is probably going to be functionally identical to the linux one, however, so I would doubt that it will support any additional features.

Maybe you should look into some of the commercial X11 servers for x86 *nix?

Re:What's the Point?

[diamondc]

Because some people like to multitask.. run a stable web, mail, database, etc server AND play some games and only have one computer. Most modern *BSD distributions are easy to use and load sound modules, video drivers isnt as hard as you think...

Re:What's the Point?

[evilviper]

Hmm, I refuse to use Windows because:

I don't feel like getting a toop-of-the-line computer every 6 months

I don't like using a platform where problems cannot be fixed short of a re-install

I refuse to pay huge ammounts of money for the OS.

I will not defragment! Nor will I spend tons of money just for a reasonably decent defragmenting program.

I don't like rebooting

I will not spend a week just to disable running services, and configure the basics.

I could go on, but I'm tired of this. And no, this isn't off topic. "This is excellent news for people who prefer to Quake on the best OS available." is in the main story.

Re:What's the Point?

[evilviper]

It isn't like FreeBSD has some super-duper-mega code to make your computer run games faster.

You're right... it's not that FreeBSD is able to accelerate a program... it's that Windows drags it down! My first experience with Windows 2000 was on my 300MHz system. While NT 4.0 could play MP3s using up about 5% of the CPU, Windows 2000 took 60% and better just for a damn MP3. Windows XP did the same thing, just worse.

perhaps I've been lucky, but I've never had to reinstall Windows 2000 or XP

Well, as another /.er pointed out, you should noy have to work your ass off just to keep your system functioning. I was using NT4.0 on my home system when it was new. I used it all the way up to SP6a (that's many years there). Although it's not as unstable or susceptible to crappy programs as 95/98/Me, it's got some horrible quirks to it. I've reinstalled it dozens of times on my home system alone. In a heavy work environment, with over 100 Windows 2000 machines, I've seen more action than you can imagine. I know the layout of the registry by heart... I know why Windows machines crash, and can recover machines that most of the so-called experts can't do anything with.

Here's my experience with Windows NT/2000/XP. With Unix, you setup a system, and unless someone intentionally changes something, your system will work perfectly until the end of time. With Windows, you can install it on two identical system, with the same settings both times, one might work without a hitch, and the other will be so slow it's unusable. One might accept new hardware, the other might give you a blue-screen with that exact same card. What's worse is having to change the service settings manually. I've had systems that were on static IP address, changed it to DHCP, but it couldn't get an IP address. I had to manually change the DHCP service to automatically start up, despite the fact that the interface was set to DHCP already.
You could be forgiven for accepting those annoyances, but that's not the worst of it.

The worst thing about Windows is that inexplicable crap that happens between reboots. All the system up and working for weeks, and one system will just suddenly not be able to start a service. You try to start it maually and it just refuses to do so. I've even tried importing the registry settings and applicable files from a working system as a last, failed, resort. So you have no choice but to reinstall.

Same goes for the BSOD. One day, for absolutely no reason, the system will start giving you a blue screen. No ammount of chkdsk, fixboot, or fixmbr will get it working. Booting from an NT boot floppy doesn't help either. The filesystem typically remains readable, and restoring the systemfiles almost never fixes it (you've got to wonder how a system file would get corrupted when Admin never logs in), and it will not boot up despite everything being in perfect order.

My whole point? Don't even try to debate how stable NT/2000/XP is. I've gone through administering NT boxes first hand. This is only a fraction of what I've gone through. Short of good old-fashioned torture or threat of death, I wouldn't even consider maintaining more than a handful of Windows machines... and even then I wouldn't let them get anywhere near important data.

This was only really needed with FAT(32). Windows NT4/2K/XP have all used NTFS

Nooo... You don't say? Well I guess an idiot like myself, who wrote an FAQ on Windows NT could learn a lesson or two from you. On the other hand... If you aren't defragmenting your NTFS partitions, you're going to get a surprise sooner rather than later. As for the defragmentor, it wasn't bundled with NT 3.5/4.0 in the first place, and it really isn't all that great to begin with. If you'd ever used a decent defragmenter (of if you've defragmented at all) you'd probably know that.

I've had my Windows XP desktop at work running for the past month without downtime.

I knew someone who said their Windows 95 machine had been up and running for months at a time. The same is true here. If your doing lightweight work, it'll stay up. As soon as you start doing serious work on it (as I had attempted to do for years with NT4 & 2000) it'll slow to such a craw that a reboot will start looking mighty good. After a few days of heavy work, it will lockup.

In a default Windows XP Pro installation, there should be no services you need to manage.

And yes, Windows NT/2000/XP has tons of services starting by default that should be disabled. Although I agree, there "should be no services you need to manage". But, alas, there are dozens.

People who hate Windows just because it's a Microsoft product.

I'll agree there. There are often mindless attacks on Windows just for the hell of it. However, you obviously aren't one to decide, since you certainly don't know Windows very well at all.

Re:What's the Point?

[Shanep]

Amen brother!

Windows drags it down!

it's got some horrible quirks to it

With Unix, you setup a system, and unless someone intentionally changes something, your system will work perfectly until the end of time.

With Windows, you can install it on two identical system, with the same settings both times, one might work without a hitch, and the other will be so slow it's unusable. One might accept new hardware, the other might give you a blue-screen with that exact same card.

you have no choice but to reinstall

*** you've got to wonder how a system file would get corrupted when Admin never logs in ***

Windows NT/2000/XP has tons of services starting by default that should be disabled

with over 100 Windows 2000 machines, I've seen more action than you can imagine. I know the layout of the registry by heart... I know why Windows machines crash, and can recover machines that most of the so-called experts can't do anything with.

I've been around too. I've been taking care of NT since 3.51 for major .gov depts. Some entities having machines numbered in the thousands for single sites and server rooms filled with machines (from Dell's to big iron) and networking gear that are well into 8 figures. I can absolutely back up your experiences.

Windows is for all intents and purposes, is an enigma to those that need to keep it working.

Unix of all flavours on the other hand, just keep going and going.

Look at OSX. An infant on the Apple desktop, it has made incredible strides in a few years. Apple has been able to leverage the best parts of Unix into a super stable, super usable system that seems to have solved problems that Windows would appear will always have, whilst allowing a temporary bridge over from Apple legacy.

Microsoft tried, basing NT on VMS, but it looks like they'll never allow a good balance between usability and features.

Re:What's the Point?

[evilviper]

Heh... Just one small step above the "I'm rubber, you're glue" argument huh?

Fine by me.

Re:Dedicated Game Servers

[Lazaru5]

All the Linux dedicated servers run fine on BSD. On FreeBSD: /usr/ports/games/halflifeserver /usr/ports/games/hl-server* (includes CS, DOD, etc) /usr/ports/games/q3server /usr/ports/games/q3server-* (includes RA, etc) /usr/ports/games/utserver /usr/ports/games/bnetd (Disabled, but you can find the source on your own and remove the IGNORE macro from the Makefil) /usr/ports/games/mythserver

And if there's not a Port (remember, Ports aren't necessarily "ports", but are just a way to easily install an application, be it from source - with or without patches - or binary) you can likely still install it following whatever directions are included.

Re:What about OpenBSD?

[Joakim A]

U can use the VESA driver to run OBSD on a Geforce2Go. Works nice even if you don't get all the fancy stuff. Probably will take a while to port to OBSD, if ever, since FBSD has a different licensing scheme.

Re:Since no one has said it yet

[Ded Bob]

The Weather Channel is sponsoring ATI 8500 drivers for XFree86. While looking through code in FreeBSD, I noticed they also sponsored some code changes there.

Re:Since no one has said it yet

[drdink]

I know this is a troll, but I'll waste my time replying anyway.

Just because a driver doesn't fall under the BSD license does not mean it can't be part of FreeBSD. In fact, it doesn't even have to be part of the kernel. FreeBSD's kernel, like Linux, supports modules. The driver could be distributed separately as a module.

In fact, many parts of the FreeBSD system are composed of GPL'd software. For example, FreeBSD uses the gcc compiler, link, and so forth. RELENG_4 is also using GNU grep, groff, tar, gzip, awk, bc, cpio, diff, egrep, sort, and most likely more.

You'll find that FreeBSD users tend to be less picky about the license to something and won't complain too much when there isn't a BSD licensed version of something available. Although the BSD license is a nicety, it isn't necessarily a critical requirement. Compared to Debian GNU/Linux, we are extremely lax about licenses.

I hope this clears up some misconceptions about The FreeBSD Project and its users. I recognize the fact that I have stereotyped the FreeBSD community in this comment just as much as others have, but my goal was to turn the stereotypes in a positive direction hoping to guide this thread back on track.

Now, I wonder ...

[RinkSpringer]

...whether the driver will be open-sourced or not... since AFAIK the Linux driver is not GPL-ed or even BSD-ed, I bet this driver will be closed-source too...

Re:What's the Point?

[evilviper]

you've obviously not played with anything since Windows 98/ME.

Umm, hmmm, is that obvious? Well, if you've know of anything else that is 'obvious', I'll be sure to take the opposite stance on it. You have a knack for being completely wrong.

XP runs considerably faster than 2k

Wow, I don't know what to say, except I have no idea how you could figure that. Get a few identical systems, install 98, NT4, 2000 & XP... Then time how long it takes for the start menu to apear after you click the "Start" button... Time how long it takes to open the "Open With" dialog, after you try to open an unknown filetype. And, of course, see what percent of the CPU power is used for playing an MP3, etc.

It comes with a defrag tool that works just fine and handles this on its own without you noticing.

More complete and utter bullshit. It may be an improvement for you, over the defrag tool that came with 9x, but it is actually very lowsy.

I've never really had a problem that I've had to solve with a reinstall

You really need to read up on other replies in this thread... If you had, you would have looked quite a bit less clueless.

I do realize that those with the loudest mouths behind Linux don't necessarilly represent the whole, but they sure make the group look like a bunch of raging lunatics.

I think I've made it exceedingly clear several times, that I dislike Linux a great deal. Of course, it's a huge step up from Windows (but that's all it has really accomplished).

I find it interesting that you call others "closed minded morons", yet you have obviously not used Windows on a large scale, or for serious work... and yet you are yelling about how wrong I am. Well thank you! I'll be sure to take everything you say into consideration *cough*, *cough*, *moron*, *cough*.

Re:What's the Point?

[big_groo]

Point is this:

You've been trolled.