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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."
According to the page, this release should be considered as initial beta
Isn't that usually called 'alpha'?
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
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.
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
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?
You were saying?
Dinivin
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
.: Max Romantschuk
Finally I can stop dual-booting to Linux just so I can play games...
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
As if your shell wasn't already 100X better than my dos console, you just have to go and make it paint faster.
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.
It is official; 3D Gamers.com now confirms: NVIDIA is dying.
/. 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...
One more crippling bombshell hit the happily fragging NVIDIA community when
Geez, trolling is a lot harder than I thought...
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.
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.
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?
...the question is, will my games run faster on FreeBSD?
I dunno but SSH runs great on my headless nForce firewall.
w00t!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
just letting people know we've mirrored the freebsd drivers in australia at
d /
http://planetmirror.com/pub/nvidia/drivers/freebs
cheers,
-jason
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"'
--
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There's no "instead of" here, they have both.
OS X's userspace is from FreeBSD but the kernel is Mach, not FreeBSD.
Now I can get working on my dream Apache module called mod_3daccel
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
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?
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
I am running with the nVidia drivers now on my Ti4200. Things I have noticed:
/dev/nvidia*. It helps xlock run.
1) You need a chmod 0666 on
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.
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.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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?
For great justice.
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.
I'd like to see this (at least) for NetBSD too, and maybe not only for PCs.
=> Open-Source these drivers, please!
- Hubert
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)