Accelerated nVidia Drivers for FreeBSD

zero0w writes "nVidia has released the official OpenGL accelerated driver set for FreeBSD 4.7 STABLE. Check out the nVidia Driver page for more detail. According to the page, this release should be considered as initial beta. So don't count on it to build a day-to-day production system, yet."

Comments

initial beta?

[sczimme]

According to the page, this release should be considered as initial beta

Isn't that usually called 'alpha'?

Re:initial beta?

[Anonymous Coward]

No an alpha stage is when the internal company does the testing. Beta is generally given out to trusted 3rd parties and rarely the public. An alpha release will be so full of bugs that the program isnt usable. a beta release on the other hand should contain very few bugs and they shouldnt be related the actual use of the program. In the case of drivers this means it should work but playing an accellerated game or something that uses a feature like vertex shaders etc might not work as expected but 2d graphics and the default feature set should be pretty stable.

Re:initial beta?

[jmenezes]

Unless your Microsoft, in which case beta is where everything gets pressed on the CDs and a several hundred dollar price tag gets put on it, right?

Re:initial beta?

[benwb]

No, no, no, that's alpha. When a product hits beta Microsoft stops supporting it.

Re:initial beta?

[EvilAlien]

Just a hint for the future, you miss out on those highly covetted "Troll" and "Flamebait" moderations if you actually spell Microsoft correctly. If you want to be really elite and properly anti-Microsoft, you should incorporate a $, or use "shaft" or "sloth" instead of -soft.

Without those <sarcasm>insightful plays on the word 'Microsoft'</sarcasm> one typically only manages to produce an asinine off-topic comment.

Just some hints for the future, your mileage may vary, all standard disclaimers apply.

Thank you for not choosing Microsoft... meanwhile, back on topic:

This is great news for the FreeBSD community. One of the complaints against the OS and long sought-after milestones has been graphics drivers for desktop applications, design work, and even gaming. FreeBSD, like most other OSes, isn't just for servers, and this helps make it better for the desktop.

nVidia always impresses me with their efforts to support operating systems other than the 500 lb Redmond gorilla that dominates the desktop market. Linux and FreeBSD support is a great PR move for nVidia, and is one of the reasons I will ALWAYS choose nVidia over ATi, Matrox, etc.

FreeBSD != Linux

[OrangeSpyderMan]

The nvidia page is fairly annoying on this point - the direct link to the drivers is under a subtitle "For Linux Users", and on the installation instructions we can read, "Please note that the NVIDIA driver set requires XFree version 4.2 or greater. If this is not available on your linux distribution,"

A shame to muddy a laudible effort such as BSD drivers with a couple of dumb (lazy?) errors. I can appreciate that much of the info may be common to both, but to explicitly ignore the fundamental differences is a bit of a shame.

Re:FreeBSD != Linux

[aeakett]

Believe it or not, not all /.ers are linux bigots. Or even free software bigots. Nvidia is a big company that should have it's sh*t together enough no to make mistakes like this. They should probably realize that the may have a hard enough time selling their (I assume) binary only drivers to the FreeBSD crowd, without alienating them with this slip-up.

That said, free software proponents shouldn't pan Nvidia for distributing binary only drivers. They are in a competative field, and need to protect their IP (oh, I can see the flames coming now). The fact that they are supporting a free operating system at all (especially one with a relativly small installation base), is cause for celebration.

Re:FreeBSD != Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're confusing the BSD crowd with the GPL crowd. There are many fine examples of BSD code in commercial and free binary distributions. You don't hear the BSD crowd whining about Irix.

And while we may wonder where Microsoft stuck the UC Berkeley copyright notice in Windows, we're more likely to be aware that the internet works correctly because MS did use the BSD code base to start.

Re:FreeBSD != Linux

[be-fan]

Look, FreeBSD support isn't a huge deal at NVIDIA. It's a few coders in their driver development group that are doing this with company approval. No doubt, these pages didn't go through the official "gods of marketing" over at NVIDIA. As such, give it a little time. What most likely happened was that they were pressed for time in releasing these drivers, and so they just made some hastly pages to put it up. What matters is the actual code, and once that's working nicely, I'm sure the page will get polished.

Re:FreeBSD != Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

and then give the community the shaft.

Here's the thing --

And I wish GPL folks would get it through their heads.

When BSD style code is released out into the community, it is done so for the good of all. Good for EVERYONE. EVEN MICROSOFT. That means, when truely free source is given out. NOTHING is wanted in return. Sometimes a little credit where it's due, sometimes not even that. It's about making computers better, making software better, and in our own little way, trying to make the world better. It's not much, but it's what some of us can offer.

I'm not against someone making a profit, I'm not against someone coding for a living. I'm also not against the GPL and the idea that if you release code, you would like it to stay opened to the public for everyoen to always see the code.

But some of us don't even want THAT much. We're truely, selflessly, completely, and totally fine with giving something away and wanting NOTHING in return. Some people even do nice things and don't even take credit for having done them!

I know it's impossible for most of you to understand, but BSD is about a certain level of Freedom that is almost "too free" for the somewhat self righteous GPL crowd to understand.

Re:FreeBSD != Linux

[evilviper]

Look, FreeBSD support isn't a huge deal at NVIDIA. It's a few coders in their driver development group that are doing this with company approval.

Good point. Use Nvidia and you've got to wait for a lone geek in their team to write decent drivers. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll stick with ATI, where the Open Source drivers work just fine on any platform.

Re:FreeBSD != Linux

[be-fan]

Um, the guy on their team doesn't write the drivers. First, the driver core is fully portable, so maintaining more than one platform is very easy. Second, the Linux port has commercial importance, because SGI uses NVIDIA GPUs in their Linux-based machines. It's only the FreeBSD port that seems to be a community job. As for ATI, I couldn't care less about ATI. NVIDIA has a track record (back from the Riva128 days) of being community-friendly. They also have a track record of having very good drivers, and improving the drivers even for existing hardware, not just their latest stuff. ATI has a history of crappy drivers, and their open source OpenGL ones barely work at all. NVIDIA's Linux drivers in comparison, are just as fast and stable (for most people, anyway) as their Windows drivers.

Re:FreeBSD != Linux

[evilviper]

ATI has a history of crappy drivers

For one thing, that IS history. ATI cards have been well supported for at least the past couple years. Also, I would much rather see crappy Open Source drivers than even hi-quality binary-only drivers. Whens it's open it can be improved, modified, extended, ported, by anyone that wants to do so. Binary-only releases, and you just have to try and convince the company to work on something few people are interested in.

Re:FreeBSD != Linux

[evilviper]

BTW your argument about `convicing' somebody is the same whether it's open source software or not. In theory it's great that you can patch the source but in practice very few people have the time, skill and resources to do that for *every* application and framework that they use.

No, not really. For those that aren't programmers, you can always comission a programmer. when it's closed, if THEY don't want to do it, it will never get done. Besides, it's not like you have to always do everything yourself. Very often, there was already someone else out there like you who built-in the feature you need.

Re:FreeBSD != Linux

[brunes69]

Simple equation. UT2k3 needs S3C texture compression support. S3 texture compression is patented and closed source, so no open source drivers can enable it even if they know how, unless S3 changes their mind on this (unlikely). NVidia's Linux drivers provide S3C. That's why no NVidia == no Ut2K 3 in Linux. And if you think that UT2k3 is the only game thatis going to be using S3, you are living in a dream world.

Re:FreeBSD != Linux

[evilviper]

S3 texture compression is patented and closed source, so no open source drivers can enable it even if they know how

Correction... No GPL'd driver can enable it even if they know how. There's no reason a BSD driver couldn't be released, and simply leave it up to the user to handle the patent/license issues if required in their locale.

But that doesn't really matter much to me. I am quite willing to reject any programs that use patented technologies, or otherwise does not operate on a decent OS.

Great! But...

[CheeseCow]

...the question is, will my games run faster on FreeBSD?

--
Regards,
CheeseCow

Re:Great! But...

[swordboy]

...the question is, will my games run faster on FreeBSD?

I dunno but SSH runs great on my headless nForce firewall.

w00t!

Re:Great! But...

[phoenix_rizzen]

There is no "emulation" in FreeBSD. FreeBSD supports Linux binaries. It is compatibility, not emulation. When an ELF binary is executed the loader looks to see what kind it is. If it's FreeBSD, then it load the FreeBSD kernel table (or ABI or whatever that thing is called). If it's a Linux binary, then it loads the Linux ABI. All that changes is the name of the system calls.

Re:Great! But...

[Vinum]

It is a little more complex than that if you consider that linux binaries and freebsd (and every other freaking unix in the world) use a different method to access system calls. :)

Unix machines (like FreeBSD) push parameters to the system call to the stack then call int 80h. That is sometimes called the C convention. Linux on the other hands follows the Microsoft (or called Pascal sometimes) convention of putting parameters into registers then call int 80h.

It isn't a huge deal, since you should in theory always preserve registers before a system call anyway... but freebsd perserves all registers besides EAX anyway... so whatever. In theory the Unix convention is supposed to be faster but I haven't personally benchmarked it ever...

The kernel table isn't such a big deal, it is porting the actual systems calls from the libc where most of the work gets done. (Few applications actually call the kernel, they do it through the libs)

Can I take one 2 Go?

[jpmahala]

From their site:

NOTE: GeForce2 Go and GeForce4 Go mobile processors are not supported in this driver. Please contact the notebook's manufacturer for graphics drivers for your notebook PC.

Sucks for my Dell Inspiron 8100. Anyone know if there is any way to set up drivers for the GeForce2Go?

Re:Can I take one 2 Go?

[tgreiner]

These drivers work perfectly with GeForce2 Go cards. I'm writing this on a Dell Inspiron 8200 with GeForce2 Go.

From 'glxinfo':

OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce2 MX/AGP/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 1.3.1 NVIDIA 32.03

and:

$ uname -a
FreeBSD tybalt 4.7-STABLE FreeBSD 4.7-STABLE #39: Fri Nov 8 14:42:57 CET 2002 thorsten@tybalt:/usr/src/sys/compile/TYBALT i386

Re:Can I take one 2 Go?

[13Echo]

It may work, but some drivers have specific tweaks for specific LCD displays on certain notebooks. They don't suggest that you use generic drivers for them, even though they will probably work.

well it is about time!

[JDizzy]

We BSD folk have been waitting for this, because we like to play Quake too! The bad part is where are the drivers? Nvidia's web page only show's the Finux variety. Hopefully the website will update soon. There is no mention of this on the FreeBSD -stable mail-list from any Nvidia folks, so I'm a bit skeptable. The only mention on the FreeBSD list thus far is also pointing to the same website, with not metion of FreeBSD driveres.

Re:well it is about time!

[dinivin]

You were saying?

Dinivin

Re:well it is about time!

[dinivin]

Are you freakin' blind? Above the three steps, along the right hand side, are links to linux drivers, linux ia64 drivers, and freebsd drivers.

Dinivin

Re:well it is about time!

[Zapdos]

Wow I Just downloaded a Hoax named NVIDIA_FreeBSD-1.0-3203.tar.gz
md5sum b982db9e898a0f3a46c2bf9d15c320d2
and I am in the process of installing it.

Re:well it is about time!

[biohazard99]

It would appear to be a caching issue on their end or with our akami box (if NVIDIA is part of their setup), I'm not getting it either.

Re:well it is about time!

[JDizzy]

yeah, I know its not on my end. I blasted my local cache, and I have control of the corprate proxy on the perimeter. So I duno, and I got a screen shot now to prove the non-belivers. The direct links work though.

Re:well it is about time!

[dinivin]

A screen shot of the links.

Dinivin

Re:well it is about time!

[biohazard99]

I had our cache guy reboot the akamai and it loaded fine, at least it is doing better than last year when we would lose MTV and monster at random times.

Does BSD for games make sense?

[Max Romantschuk]

I'm the kind of person who likes to run Windows for games and multimedia, and Linux for server stuff.

It has been under my impression that BSD development is even more focused on server side and ultra stable solutions.

Of course drivers make sense to use X on BSD, but what about games? Does it pay off to keep BSD for games, or is it simpler to use Linux/Windows for gaming? Just wondering, I guess :)

Re:Does BSD for games make sense?

[Ded Bob]

It has been under my impression that BSD development is even more focused on server side and ultra stable solutions.

I do not know about you, but I like game play to be ultra stable. :)

Seriously, I bought a Ti4200 which I run under Win2k and FreeBSD. I am excited about having better 3D performance under FreeBSD for trying out games (through Linux ABI support or not) and speeding up xlockmore 3D, which should impress some people I know.

First, I will be trying out the Atlantis screen saver mode as my root window. :)

Re:Does BSD for games make sense?

[Hard_Code]

Actually, I imagine companies may be a lot more inclined to develop proprietary drivers for systems under the BSD license because it is more lax with regards to "tainting" of derived works. But hey, if FreeBSD becomes a gaming platform, I'm all for that!

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally I can stop dual-booting to Linux just so I can play games...

Re:So what?

[dinivin]

I don't mean to troll, but are there any _existing_ applications / games that would benefit from this?

Sure... Every 3D linux game: Rune, heretic2, q3a, ut, ut2003, descent, hg2, sof, terminus, parsec... Should I continue?

Dinivin

Sure, rub it in

[dubbayu_d_40]

As if your shell wasn't already 100X better than my dos console, you just have to go and make it paint faster.

Re:Source code... nVidia...

[Luke-Jr]

Well, their Linux kernel driver comes with source code (not distributable, but you can read it...) From what I hear, the only reason the GLX doesn't have sources available is because nVidia doesn't own some of the code it uses.

Re:Source code... nVidia...

[dinivin]

The kernel driver "source code" is simply a few lines of code wrapped around another binary module.

Dinivin

Re:Source code... nVidia...

[Darren Winsper]

Not exactly. Their kernel module contains a very large binary and some code to act as an interface between the kernel and the big binary file. This allows them to keep the source closed while allowing people to compile it for newer kernels as they come out.

FACT: NVIDIA is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official; 3D Gamers.com now confirms: NVIDIA is dying.

One more crippling bombshell hit the happily fragging NVIDIA community when /. confirmed that NVIDIA drivers are coming to FreeBSD. Coming close on the heels of the recent Doom3 beta, which plainly shows that we'll need the GeForce5s of the future to run it, uh, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. NVIDIA is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by...er... putting a graphics card in every Apple, every X-Box...

Geez, trolling is a lot harder than I thought...

Will it work with FreeBSD 5.0 and later?

[Leimy]

I haven't been running FreeBSD now for almost a month because my job is linux related and the more familiar I am with it the better I do.

I wasn't planning to use FreeBSD again until 5.0 got released which I *think* is slated for the end of the month still [whether it makes it or not is a different situation].

Anyway I hope this driver continues to work on later FreeBSDs as it was a major bummer to not have it the last 2 years I ran this OS.

Re:Will it work with FreeBSD 5.0 and later?

[dinivin]

Rumor has it that it works with -CURRENT after you disable a check in nv-freebsd.h.

Dinivin

Re:Will it work with FreeBSD 5.0 and later?

[be-fan]

Well, the NVIDIA drivers are generally quite friendly to hacking. The main issue is in the portability layer, where sometimes interfaces will get changed in development versions. But some tweeking is all that it needs. For example, I'm using the nvidia drivers under 2.5.44 right now. In fact, my distro (Gentoo) patches the drivers for development kernels automagically...

BSD driver Source code... nVidia...

[G�tz]

The source code in the BSD driver archive looks different. It doesn't link to a static library for a kernel module. Is this only because the architecture of BSD is different, or is the driver part for BSD more open than the Linux driver?

Why have Nvidia done this?

[jregel]

Although it's nice to think that Nvidia are porting their drivers to FreeBSD because they are keen on supporting open solutions, the number of users is [relatively] tiny, and I don't find it particularly convincing.

What is more interesting is the possibility that Nvidia are contracted to develop drivers for a company that is developing a product that will run a BSD variant. What better way for Nvidia to test their new drivers than allow a public beta.

Pure speculation though, we'll have to wait to see whether anything comes of this.

Re:Why have Nvidia done this?

[jo42]

> the number of users is [relatively] tiny

Everyone who uses Yahoo! uses FreeBSD...

Re:Why have Nvidia done this?

[brunes69]

The simple reason is why not? The FreeBSD and Linux drivers use the same closed source binary driver module, the only difference is in the Kernel hooks (very minor). Truth is there has been a partialy working independant NVidia FreeBSD implimentation for some time now. Most likely NVidia just used that and refined it a bit. Now that they have the kernel hook code working for both Linux and FreeBSD, maintaining them will be relatively simple.

Re:Why have Nvidia done this?

[glenstar]

Don't forget also that FreeBSD is the darling OSS OS (god, that looks retarded) of the commercial vendors... for many reasons, but the licensing being the top. Even Microsoft has released a reference implementation of (parts of) the .NET framework on FreeBSD. Plus, BSDers don't seem nearly as rabid about licensing issues and the like... much unlike our Linux brethren.

Re:Why have Nvidia done this?

[jregel]

Everyone who uses Yahoo! uses FreeBSD... ...but won't make use of any 3D graphics!

I was referring to desktop use - not servers.

Re:Why have Nvidia done this?

[be-fan]

The reason seems to be the FreeBSD-NVIDIA project. They did some driver porting, and were really hitting the wall, so their contacts at NVIDIA decided to just do a release. It's not that hard at all to port the NVIDIA driver to another OS. The X11 part is OS independent (like all X11 graphics drivers) and the kernel part is wrapped in a small portability layer. Most likely, they're just doing it because the effort in porting is small compared to the good faith it gets in the community, and the fact that it allows vendors using a BSD to also consider NVIDIA products.

Re:Why have Nvidia done this?

[quantum bit]

Although it's nice to think that Nvidia are porting their drivers to FreeBSD because they are keen on supporting open solutions, the number of users is [relatively] tiny, and I don't find it particularly convincing.

Based on the number of complaints that end up on the freebsd-stable mailing list on the (rare) occasion that something in the tree is broken, I would have to disagree.

Re:Why have Nvidia done this?

[cobar]

Yahoo uses FreeBSD on all their unix desktops (to minimize the number of different types of systems they maintain). I have no idea how many of their people are using FreeBSD over Windows, but it was enough to make a port of Yahoo Messenger to FreeBSD worthwhile.

Re:Why

[daoine_sidhe]

I have been a linux user for 3 years, and I decided to try FreeBSD 4.7. I found it much quicker and more stable; kernel compilation was ridiculously easy and fast, and accelerated opengl was one of my only issues with it. That has been taken care of now, so I can honestly say that my impression of FreeBSD is a _very_ good one. I don't hate linux; I still run Gentoo. I'm just tired of bloated, unstable distributions, and the only ones that have approached the performance and stability I've seen in FreeBSD are Gentoo and Debian. Now, I'm sure there are probably others; I just haven't had the pleasure of using them as of yet. So, in conclusion, as a FreeBSD user I do not hate linux, but as a linux user I'm beginning to become frustrated with the state of distributions. Does that answer the question?

Re:Source code... nVidia...

[eyez]

Well, their Linux kernel driver comes with source code (not distributable, but you can read it...) From what I hear, the only reason the GLX doesn't have sources available is because nVidia doesn't own some of the code it uses.

This is not true- What they do have is a pre-compiled binary image and a bunch of source code that hooks it into the linux kernel once the extra source is compiled, it links it into the binary code. The nVidia drivers are far from open-source. (I'm not complaining, mind you. I use the nVidia kernel modules with my machines and get fantastic performance)

drivers mirrored in australia

[jason andrade]

just letting people know we've mirrored the freebsd drivers in australia at

http://planetmirror.com/pub/nvidia/drivers/freebsd /

cheers,

-jason

Re:drivers mirrored in australia

[jquirke]

Hmm are you the admin of Mirror.AARNET by any chance?

Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

the readme says:

if your XF86Config has a "Device" section with a 'Driver "nv"' line, you will need to update it to 'Driver "nv"'

this should say:

if your XF86Config has a "Device" section with a 'Driver "nv"' line, you will need to update it to 'Driver "nvidia"'

--
Dreamweaver Templates
Dreamweaver Templates
--

A production system?

[Tet]

So don't count on it to build a day-to-day production system, yet.

Huh? Who on earth has a day to day production system that isn't headless? And one that requires accelerated OpenGL? I guess you could say that if you're talking about workstations for 3D modelling, perhaps. But who uses FreeBSD for that? The applications just aren't there. Don't get me wrong, the drivers are a step in the right direction, and without them, the applications will never follow. But the warning about not using it for production use is a little premature methinks...

Re:A production system?

[cjpez]

Perhaps SGI workstations running FSN? :) FSV for other unixes...

Production system?

[Noryungi]

... Hello?

What is the point of putting a high-end graphical card into a FreeBSD server, for instance?

As far as I am concerned, for whatever i386+ FreeBSD server I have, I would only use the lowest of the low-end graphical card, something just good enough to install FreeBSD in VGA text mode, and not some fancy-schmancy NVidia with unstable alpha binary-only drivers!

Once installed, there is no need for graphics anyway, and OpenSSH is your friend!

On the other hand, I could use such a card on a graphical workstation (no, this is not a production system, AFAIK) if I was to use, say, Blender or the Gimp on a FreeBSD desktop machine.

Even then, I'd rather have something well-supported by XFree86...

Re:Production System?

[nsayer]

You should not run _any_ production system with the NVidia drivers,they are the cause of the most system crashes. Not even for the tried and tested GNU/Linux platform :(

I have found this to be true even on windows! I have a Dell C810 at the office that got upgraded to XP (I had to run XP as I had to develop an NDIS protocol module that would run on XP. Long story). I have no end of graphics trouble with it. I wind up with some sort of corruption that causes either a BSOD, a hang or an unrecoverable video corruption 2-3 times per day. It's not hardware. We've swapped that out a couple times, and others reported the same problems. Dell just shrugs and points out (truthfully) that win2k (the OS that was shipped with the machine) works just fine and that they don't support user installed software upgrades.

I heard a rumor once that some large double-digit percentage (I believe the figure I heard was 20%) of the XP BSOD "talkback" reports that Redmond has received so far have been traced to nVidia drivers. If true, I would not be surprised at all.

Don't count on it for a production system?

[zaqattack911]

So don't count on it to build a day-to-day production system, yet.

ermm, I don't know about you .. but I'm not playing Quake3 on my unix/bsd production systems :)

Re:FreeBSD drivers instead of for Linux?

[Nothinman]

There's no "instead of" here, they have both.

OS X's userspace is from FreeBSD but the kernel is Mach, not FreeBSD.

Good Deal

[SomeOtherGuy]

Now I can get working on my dream Apache module called mod_3daccel

Linux drivers...

[dubious9]

While I'm glad that Nvidia is broadening their base, I can't wonder if more people wouldn't benefit from new drivers for the new releases from Red Hat and Mandrake.

I know the rpms don't work for either (8.2 under Mandrake 9.0 and 7.3 under RedHat 8.0) so as far as I can tell, you need to compile the source to get the driver working.

This however requires configured kernel source and if you don't have that for your current kernel i.e. you never installed the src rpm, you'll have to install, configure, compile the kernel, then compile the NVidia drivers then edit the XF86Config file to change the driver string!

Come on Nvidia, can't we have an automated driver? Please? Pretty please?

Re:Linux drivers...

[dubious9]

I never downloaded the SRPMS disk for my system and thus had to download the individual package. The package I downloaded (kernel-2.4.19.16mdk-1-1mdk.src.rpm) didn't have support for the xfs file system (AFAIK), thus I had to download xfs and patch the kernel, and rebuild.

And as far as I could tell, (and maybe i'm missing something here) to compile the drivers you need to do a make xconfig on the kernel source. This is not a simple task for newbies.

Also, it is not simple to figure out that you need the kernel source to build them. When you try to do this you have to scroll up and read alot a error messages before you can tell you need the kernel source.

My point is anytime that you require the user to have configured kernel source available you are asking for trouble.

Re:Linux drivers...

[dvNull]

Okay .. i dont know what HOWTO you have been reading but for redhat and Mandrake all you have to do is:

rpm -ivh NVIDIA*.src.rpm
and then
rpmbuild -bb /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/NVIDIA*.spec
and edit the XF86Config file

Or you can build directly from the tarball.

AT no time do you have to build a custom kernel to install nvidia drivers.

You had to compile a custom kernel to get xfs support and not for nvidia drivers.

dvNuLL

Re:Linux drivers...

[dan the person]

Come on Nvidia, can't we have an automated driver? Please? Pretty please?

Aside from providing a different download for every distribution on the planet, and for every kernel update for every distribution, which would be a complete nightmare, i think they have made it about as automatic as they can.

Just run "rpm --rebuild nvidia-kernel-xxx.rpm"

As for needing the kernel source, either you are running a custom kernel in which case you already have the source tree from which you built said kernel, or you are running a stock kernel in which case just install the kernel-source-xxx.rpm.
Note it is kernel-source-xxx-i386.rpm, not kernel-xxx-src.rpm that you want to install, to get a prepatched preconfigured source tree in /usr/src

There's absolutly no need to configure and compile a kernel before building the nvidia kernel module.

Re:Linux drivers...

[Arandir]

While I'm glad that Nvidia is broadening their base, I can't wonder if more people wouldn't benefit from new drivers for the new releases from Red Hat and Mandrake.

While I'm glad that Nvidia is broadening their base by providing Linux drivers, I can't wonder if more people wouldn't benefit from new drivers for Windows XP.

I mean, if you're going to make business decisions for them based solely on the number of users...

Re:Linux drivers...

[dubious9]

+1 Informatve.

Why are there two source packages? What is the difference? Anyway, I'm off to see if this works, and if it does, you've saved me a hell of a lot of reconfiguring.

Re:Linux drivers...

[dan the person]

the kernel.src.rpm is the stock kernel.org kernel with the 200+ patches a modern distributor applies to the kernel before deciding it is ready for general use.

When you install a kernel.src.rpm you get the stock kernel and all the patches under /usr/src/RPM. Usefull if you want to play with one of the patches. Not sure what the output of a build is.

The kernel-source.i386.rpm i assume is provided as a convenience. It's got the prepatched kernel source and the actuall .config used the build the kernel.

Re:So what?

[jandrese]

Well, I've been playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein on my G200, and I bet I will see a marked improvement in the image quality when I upgrade to the GF4 Ti series card now. I'm planning to run out today and pick up a Geforce (just like I said I would in the petition. :)

Porting 3D apps to FreeBSD

[zero0w]

If the FreeBSD driver proves to be stable and reliable, does it make sense for Aliaswavefront and Softimage to port their 3D packages to FreeBSD? After all FreeBSD is a very stable OS suitable for such task.

Re:woohoo

[jandrese]

Wow, you must have one impressive machine to have compilied Mozilla, and all of it's dependancies, in 15 minutes. Noramlly when I install a FreeBSD machine, I configure the X from the installer, then set a few port compiles in motion (the ones that have lots of dependancies mostly) and go to bed. When I wake up my system is freshly compiled and ready to go.

Unless I'm in a hurry, then I just use the packages.

Dancing on the head of a pin?

[Anonymous Coward]

So before NVidia got involved, there was one member of the FreeBSD community. Since I'm a member of the FreeBSD community, but not a developer, then there were no developers. So the code must have come from devine compilation.

Therefore FreeBSD is sponsored by ${DIETY}!

And given the way storage medium densities are increasing . . ..

I like it

[Ded Bob]

I am running with the nVidia drivers now on my Ti4200. Things I have noticed:

1) You need a chmod 0666 on /dev/nvidia*. It helps xlock run.
2) Atlantis mode (xlock) is my desktop background. Hi shark. Please do not eat my menu.
3) The artifacts left behind by the XFree86 nv driver are no longer there. I believe that XFree86 v4.3 is supposed to fix this.

Now, I need to go find some games. Time to try out UT.

Re:I like it

[rplacd]

You can avoid the chmod 666 if you run xdm. Simply edit /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/GiveConsole and add

chown $USER /dev/nvidia*

Make a similar change to TakeConsole (the examples in the file'll help).

I realize this isn't necessary for most people (most people don't have other users logging in), but it's still good practice.

How Beta is Beta? Or, how Alpha is this Beta?

[EvilAlien]

Hah, yes, yes I did. Thanks for noticing.

I suppose the question coming out of this release is just how do the stability and/or quality of these drivers compare to Linux and Microsoft drivers? I hate to even bring it down to this, but has anyone done benchmarks comparing the three? I realize that a game is likely to be the most common test and FreeBSD tests would have to run through Linux emulation, but is an interesting exercise just the same.

pkg_add -r XFree86-4

[DrSkwid]

what should really focus your mind is how easy the ports system makes life.

Want a FAMP webserver :
#pkg_add -r apache13
#pkg_add -r mod_php4
#pkg_add -r mysql323-server

License agreement

[Markus Landgren]

They also forgot to port the license agreement to FreeBSD.

2.1.1 Rights. Customer may install and use one copy of the SOFTWARE on a single computer, and except for making one back-up copy of the Software, may not otherwise copy the SOFTWARE. This LICENSE of SOFTWARE may not be shared or used concurrently on different computers.

2.1.2 Linux Exception. Notwithstanding the foregoing terms of Section 2.1.1, SOFTWARE designed exclusively for use on the Linux operating system may be copied and redistributed, provided that the binary files thereof are not modified in any way (except for unzipping of compressed files).

...and no sign of FreeBSD.

Production System?

[den_erpel]

So don't count on it to build a day-to-day production system

I am using GNU/Linux for quite some years now and have moved to the NVidia drivers fairly early.

You should not run _any_ production system with the NVidia drivers,they are the cause of the most system crashes. Not even for the tried and tested GNU/Linux platform :(

Come to think of it, why would you want 3D support on a production system :) Would you trust anyone running Q3 on your file server ;) Just leave off X alltogether ;)

Re:NVIDIA Quadro4 Professional Graphics Selected

[dohcvtec]

Here's a related nVidia story about a commercial studio using Linux and nVidia
Related? How so? The article you quote concerns the use of the Quadro4 card with Linux. The Slashdot story concerns drivers for Nvidia cards for FreeBSD. Do you realize that FreeBSD and Linux are two very different operating systems? This is a FreeBSD story, with a nice vote of support from a large graphics manufacturer, so your Linux plug really comes off as trollish. Let FreeBSD enjoy the spotlight when it gets it.

Re:FreeBSD drivers instead of for Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read through the readme file I believe you would find the motivation for this development.

"
(app-d) APPENDIX D: CREDITS

The port of the NVIDIA driver to FreeBSD is due in no small part to
the many contributions of Christian Zander
and Matthew M. Dodd ."

There was a grassroots effort to make the drivers without the help of nVidia and they decided to step up to the plate and help.

Way to support the community nVidia! I'll be buying your next gen card. Sorry ATI.

Re:Petition

[DrunkenPenguin]

Yes, the petition seemed to work and that's really great! But it's not over yet.. We - I'm talking about Linux & *BSD users & Mac users - should join our forces and start yet another petition, but this time WE WANT SOURCE CODE OF THE DRIVERS! Everyone would benefit!

Re:ATI...

[dinivin]

ATI has released binary drivers for the Radeon 8500. Supposedly more developed drivers (with support for the newer cards), are also on their way.

Dinivin

Re:Why

[MsGeek]

I'm going to have to bite the bullet and write a "me too" post here. I recently was exposed to the joy that is FreeBSD on the desktop. It is certainly more work to set up than your average friendly Linux distro, but once you do, IT ZOOMS. KDE 3 under FreeBSD 4.7 Stable is hella fast on my PIII 733MHz...it absolutely roars compared to KDE 3 under Red Hat 7.3. And this was before anyone could get to tuning things specifically for PIII.

The beauty of the FreeBSD codebase is how tight and fast it is. You can run it on a 486 and it doesn't struggle half as much as Linux on such a platform. You can run it on up-to-date hardware too, and it just feels like the difference between an SUV and a sportscar.

I have been involved in an effort to create a distro specifically for older computers. That's what the link to the Kawaii Project is all about. Originally the idea was Kawaii Linux, but the versatility and power of FreeBSD has opened my eyes to a potential alternative code base that could not only create a decent Open operating system for rescued old computers, but also an Open desktop operating system which could run the gamut from i486 to the fastest P4/Athlon machines.

Certainly Apple has proved that a desktop OS with a BSD under the hood is not only doable, but a great choice. Why should x86 users miss out on the fun? It's a great operating system which only needs some prettying up and simplification to be a contender on the desktop. The Kawaii Project hasn't officially decided on FreeBSD as the codebase for the project, but let's just say it's a very strong possibility that will be the way we'll go.

It's very early on yet, but here's the link: http://www.kawaiiproject.org/. BSD-heads who want in on a desktop project are encouraged to contribute ideas.

Not only games!

[WanderingGhost]

You may want accelerated video drivers for things other than games, like:

• Visualization of scientific data (protein molecules, for example);
• Rendering of images for films;
• Or maybe just making your ordinary applications faster (see, for example, gliv for an image viewer which uses OpenGL).

These guys are most likely to blame...

[Zoarre]

it is likely that this group was instrumental in obtaining official support for nvidia cards in freebsd. the page isn't updated often but there is a petition and some history of the effort.

i never considered petitions to corporations to be effective. i'm happy to be wrong.

what about other BSDs?

[Hythlodaeus]

I don't know anything about any differences in how the BSDs handle drivers, so I'll ask, how much work would it take to make these nVidia drivers run under NetBSD or OpenBSD?

Error loading Glxinit

[lyapunov]

I am getting signal 11 (seg fault) if I tried to load the glx. The error in signal 11 caught while trying to load GlxInit. Anybody know what is going on? If I comment out glx in the modules sections the rest loads fine, and it does appear to work quicker. Mind that I have done only basic testing, e.g. scrolling through large images with gqview, but they do appear to be loading quicker.

Re:Error loading Glxinit

[dinivin]

Make sure you're running the latest version of XFree86 from the Ports tree.

Dinivin

Common guys

[linux_warp]

For years we have been bitching about not having nvidia drivers for freebsd, and now that they have made substantial progress and released a alpha/beta all we can do is bitch that they are unfinished? Lets give them a hand, they are making progress and obviously care about their customers.

Re:Common guys

[DeathPenguin]

Damn right. Even if the drivers are closed source, they sure beat the hell out of nothing. nVidia's doing the right thing by supporting our OS's rather than selling us short. The Radeon 9700 Pro is an impressive piece of hardware, but anybody who buys one with the intent on running accelerated apps in Linux or BSD is an idiot for not taking into consideration ATi's drivers (Or lack there of). Those who buy nVidia cards can enjoy identical performance under Windows and Linux, which is more than many other pieces of hardware can offer (Especially graphics cards).

Give me a kernel tainted with non-GPL code over a Windows kernel any day.

NetBSD

[hubertf]

I'd like to see this (at least) for NetBSD too, and maybe not only for PCs.

=> Open-Source these drivers, please!

- Hubert

Re:NetBSD

[be-fan]

The kernel portability layer is already open. The FreeBSD-nvidia project even got some initial results porting the Linux version. However, there are some issues in the binary part that held up the port. Given that they've most likely cleaned up the issues in the binary part for the FreeBSD port (why bother maintaining two different nearly identical binary modules?) a port to NetBSD should be fairly easy.

Who's still making Quadro boards?

[Animats]

I didn't know that anyone was still making "Quadro" boards since ELSA went bankrupt. Where did they get boards?

The current generation of "gamer" (GeForce) and "professional" (Quadro) graphics processors are effectively identical. The drivers for the gamer boards have traditionally been cripped, with a few features like line antialiasing turned off. There have been articles on how to convert your GeForce 2 to a Quadro 2 (typically a jumper). The differences for GeForce 3 are minor. I'm not sure there are feature differences for the GeForce 4 (ignoring the GeForce MX, which is a GeForce 2 architecture).

All this product differentiation was the big reason for secrecy about the drivers. It's not clear that it's still necessary.

Okay, great - now what about Linux PPC support

[obi]

Alot of the newer Macs are or have been sold with Geforce cards too. It sure would be nice to be able to use the 3D acceleration in Linux.

Or have I missed something? I can't find any mention of such a thing anywhere.

Considering they have a port of their drivers to MacOS X on PPC, and to Linux on x86 you'd think it'd be pretty trivial for them to make some for Linux on PPC.

Great...just when...

[AcquaCow]

I thought I might actually be productive and get some work done today, nVidia has to go and do this to me!

...must resist the temptat...WAIT! You mean I can have GL accelerated sprongies now!!! OMG! *click*

-- AcquaCow

Re:Petition

[be-fan]

Except NVIDIA. ATI is quickly catching up on the hardware front. But their drivers suck, which is why NVIDIA still rules. Why should they give up a lead like that? Remember, an OpenGL driver is an entire OpenGL implementation (everything from glVertex3f() down to register banging). That's a huge amount of code to open up, not to mention that some of its probably licensed.

Re:ATI...

[meshko]

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. I've dealt with a number of ATI drivers on windows and I do not think that ATI is able to produce drivers for their cards better than a random guy you pick up on the street. If knowing specifications did not help them produce a single stable driver on windows, why would it help them on Linux?

Re:This is exciting!

[Enahs]

Speaking from the perspective of someone who uses BOTH Gentoo Linux and FreeBSD, I've got to say that I appreciate your debunking this. The real problem is that people hop onto FreeBSD thinking it's just like Linux, except it's not. Performance is, IMHO, about the same in both.

I prefer portage to ports simply because everything seems to go a bit smoother. Using portupgrade can be painful at times; of course, once in a while, using emerge can be painful as well. But I've never had to repair the Gentoo database yet.

I keep Gentoo around because I find it to be easier to work with. I don't have to mess with hdparm, either, because I use the correct HD controller drivers. ;-D Gentoo is a bit more primitive than FreeBSD, really; at least, the way I have it set up, it is. Autodetection didn't work for me because I bootstrapped the darn thing via Debian rather than install from CD. But hell, it worksforme.

One of the things I really appreciate about FreeBSD is, yes, the ability to run Linux binaries. It's even possible (via sysctl) to set the default ELF brand to Linux.

This announcement won't push me back toward FreeBSD, as I don't have an nVidia card, but it's nice to see a vendor paying attention to FreeBSD users.

It works!

[Icy]

ICY> glxgears
7377 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1475.400 FPS
7359 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1471.800 FPS
7342 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1468.400 FPS
7316 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1463.200 FPS

ICY> uname -a
FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT #3: Wed Nov 6 09:29:55 EST 2002 root@:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/ICY i386

libc required a little editing (that damn __sF), but it works.

Re:Why

[MsGeek]

Oddly enough this is precisely the tack that the main developer on this project is suggesting. Stay tuned.

For most ports, a precompiled package also exists,

[DrSkwid]

http://www.uk.freebsd.org/ports/

one and the same

Re:Source code... nVidia...

[Wolfier]

There's a way to find out...strace

Re:Yay!

[nsayer]

The only reason I the only reason use Linux over FreeBSD WAS ;) hardware accelerated graphics.

I've always done really well (on FreeBSD) with Matrox. They're not the fastest, but they're the best supported, so far as I can tell. On Windows I've had a history of issues with Matrox, but on *nix, they can't be touched for stability.

I'm sure someone will report that they get better than 27 fps @32 bpp 800x600 in bzflag, but this machine only has an old G450.