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FreeBSD, Ubuntu Offer Same NVIDIA OpenGL Support As Windows
An anonymous reader writes "There's some good news if you use NVIDIA graphics on (Ubuntu) Linux or FreeBSD with their binary graphics driver: the OpenGL performance is comparable to Windows 8. Unfortunately, that's not the same for Intel graphics and AMD doesn't even offer a Catalyst driver for FreeBSD. FreeBSD offers a binary Linux compatibility layer to run games at the same (or better) performance as Linux, but unfortunately it's capped to running Linux x86 binaries and NVIDIA is the only GPU vendor with proper BSD graphics driver support."
AMD is missing out on that HUGE FreeBSD gaming market.
"...performance is comparable to Windows 8."
Oooh, this is going to get ugly, quick.
This article seems to be talking about newer hardware and the NVIDIA binary blob driver. If you're stuck with Nouveau and an older NVIDIA card, your performance is going to be much worse than Windoze. I recently de-Windozed a P4 box running a GeForce440MX. Perfectly acceptable performance under XP became molasses-slow under Xubuntu 13 - we're talking seconds per screen refresh, and lots of visual artifacting. Newer distys and the legacy binary blob drivers that support GeForce 4 don't play nice with each other either. I ended up yanking the card and putting in a Radeon 9800SE (with 1/4 the video RAM) and even with the open-source radeon driver, performance was astronomically better - the machine was actually *useable*.
Unfortunately, that's not the same for Intel graphics and AMD doesn't even offer a Catalyst driver for FreeBSD.
I'm still trying to get the Tseng Labs ET4000 video chip in my IBM PS/2 ValuePoint to display more than 256colors. Apparently the chip itself is capable but there was a hardware bug in IBM's implementation (the chip is soldered to the motherboard, by the way) and it simply won't display 16 or 24bit color depths in Windows 3.1 without artifacting all-to-hell. I've tried calling IBM every year or so (since 1994) to see if they've released a patched BIOS for the problem yet but still no luck (however, now that Lenovo's in charge, things might finally shape up over there; my fingers're crossed...).
FreeBSD offers a binary Linux compatibility layer to run games at the same (or better) performance as Linux
Or worse. It might be worse, too.
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That is totaly false, there are a huge amount of High Level Graphics Cards on Linux Servers, only they do not do graphics but number crunching...
It would be quite hard for Nvidia to support the Tesla on Linux for scientic computing, and not support the Titan on Linux...
And I suspect that there are enough bsd based number crunchers to explain the support of bsd by Nvidia for ahemm graphics
Linux is a nonstarter in the mid to high leveled graphics card markets.
Are you talking about consumer or professional grade cards there? People do engineering CAD work and simulation in Linux. Steam is out for Linux now, and more games will presumably be on the way. Linux users are more likely to be power users who actually care about getting decent hardware.
which is totally what she said
This seems appropriate if you imagine that the yellow-haired person is OpenGL and the PHB is Windows.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Only because on Windows there's actually a second 3d API. OpenGL on Windows still works better than OpenGL on linux across the board.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I could think of a couple of reasons.
a} A sane audio subsystem.
b} Generally a lot less crap running in the background, at least by default.
c} The BSDs are developed by adults, in general terms.
Before you respond to that last point critically, understand that I actually do know what I'm talking about. I've used Linux for ten years, and compiled both the Linux kernel and the GNU userland from source numerous times; and as a result, I am prepared to say with the authority that that gives me, that Linux is a steaming pile in technical terms, in comparison with FreeBSD.
I'm not sure if I believe this. I thought OpenGL has to pass through layers-upon-layers of APIs (just like sound) to do anything. All of that overhead can't possibly translate well to the average Joe. Plus, as we all know, Linux hardware compatibility is usually Plug 'n' Pray (i.e. plug it in, pray it works OOB).