GhostBSD 19.04 Release Switches To LightDM, Based On FreeBSD 13.0-CURRENT

[aht0]

Between the System Requirements listed on Wikipedia there's a NVIDIA graphic card: why why why? On the same page they list 'openess' as a core value...

Feel free to port Nouveau to FreeBSD. And while at it, make sure 3D would work.
Until then Nvidia is offering FreeBSD binary driver, much like it does for Linux.

[Ironmask]

Between the System Requirements listed on Wikipedia there's a NVIDIA graphic card: why why why? On the same page they list 'openess' as a core value...

Feel free to donate whatever magical wand you have in your possession to the FreeBSD project so they can magically port open source drivers to it more easily. Until then, graphics drivers are massive and basically operating systems in their own right, and trying to emulate Linux's driver framework is a bit of a moving target.

[Vistaus]

The whole point of GhostBSD is to make kind of the ubuntu of BSDs... Easy to use, high quality software (some from non-freebsd repos), and a strong system base (freebsd)... If you get rid of the BSD part it would just become another ubuntu, except alot less significant.

GhostBSD the Ubuntu of BSD's? I thought that spot belonged to TrueOS?

[kpedersen]

Feel free to port Nouveau to FreeBSD. And while at it, make sure 3D would work.

What's the point? Most commercial games on Linux make a specific point of saying that "only the proprietary NVIDIA drivers are supported".
UE4 Engine fails to run with Nouveau for example. That cuts out a massive proportion of potential titles immediately.

Nouveau / NVIDIA is fine for office documents but the only correct choice for high performance software and games is to bin your NVIDIA hardware and grab an Intel or AMD.

I know at first it may seem absurd but after a while with computers you start getting the idea that "if shite hardware don't work, chuck it out and get something that does". Life is too short and the solution is too easy (and cheaper if you put value on your time).

[Baguy]

GhostBSD the Ubuntu of BSD's? I thought that spot belonged to TrueOS?

TrueOS isn't focusing on the desktop anymore. The lumina desktop branched off to Project Trident, and GhostBSD picked up the slack in terms of alternative desktops.

[aht0]

What's the point? Most commercial games on Linux make a specific point of saying that "only the proprietary NVIDIA drivers are supported.

I was responding to a whiner, implying that Nvidia binary drivers and 'openness' are at opposite ends..

[skeevy420]

I was responding to a whiner, implying that Nvidia binary drivers and 'openness' are at opposite ends..

At least Nvidia provides a BSD driver. I know that I'd like an official AMDGPU driver on BSD. And I know that driver exists because I have a PS4 and AMD touts their open source multiple OS driver -- doesn't take a rocket surgeon to make that connection .

[k1e0x]

So with the comments there are a few reasons you may want to use this.

You want to try something new or develop on FreeBSD. It's based on the development branch.
ZFS Root means boot environments to roll back updates and other features like ZFS Send/Recieve
It may very well use ZoL code (Now called ZoF https://zfsonfreebsd.github.io/ZoF/ ) my understanding of this is FreeBSD is a lot closer to Solaris than Linux is so it has to implement fewer changes and does not need all that ZoL provides. I think this is being used 12+ so yeah.
It uses OpenRC like Gentoo instead of Systemd or FreeBSD's rc. (Personally OpenRC is my favorite init)
You can use Intel or AMD drivers with it. Install the drm-current-kmod package - For best results Nvidia has closed source drivers that work well.
It has all the goodies FreeBSD has that Linux doesn't. Jails, PF, Ports, DTrace, LLVM compiled system etc.

Tho I usually run vanilla release.. I've used GhostBSD before.. it's good, and you can just pkg install gnome3 or plasma5 if you want a different desktop. It's pretty nice and I may check this out if I make changes to my workstation.

[aht0]

At least Nvidia provides a BSD driver. I know that I'd like an official AMDGPU driver on BSD. And I know that driver exists because I have a PS4 and AMD touts their open source multiple OS driver -- doesn't take a rocket surgeon to make that connection .

Not precisely the same case. First, PS4 is based off FreeBSD 9.0, then it has literally tons of modifications made to it, bunch of additional syscalls (85 custom syscalls added by Sony to be precise) for one. Even IF Sony released the driver's source, it'd be next to worthless, most likely requiring huge rewrites on current FreeBSD core code. From certain point it's easier to write from scratch than trying to port. There could also be AMD's NDA's stopping Sony.

Then, console graphics works bit differently, there's much less abstractions to it, because amount of possible hardware configurations is very finite, pretty much bare handful at best.

It means better graphics performance due to games working closer to "metal" but it does not work on PC because on PC amount of hardware configurations is near infinite. Thus complicated abstraction APIs are needed and used on PC. Like Vulkan, OpenGL, DirectX. PS4 actually has it's own abstraction API's, GNM and GNMX, which are all proprietary with their own shading languages but could you use either on some PC game? No.

Mentoning it only because im tired of this old sing-song whine "WHY SONY..PS4". Yeah, it's just that, a whine from people who havent really even used or kept their hands on pulse regarding BSDs, just darn eager to point out some missing feature thus implying their love child Linux is better..


Why don't you fuckin use already existing AMDGPU driver?
https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cg...dgpu&stype=all

[k1e0x]

At least Nvidia provides a BSD driver. I know that I'd like an official AMDGPU driver on BSD. And I know that driver exists because I have a PS4 and AMD touts their open source multiple OS driver -- doesn't take a rocket surgeon to make that connection .

The official AMDGPU kernel driver is here. https://www.freshports.org/graphics/drm-current-kmod/ (As official as linux's is anyhow)
pkg install drm-current-kmod
Then it will give instructions on what to do to load it at boot time.
Driver wise it should support everything Linux 4.16 does.

(There is a bug where the AMDGPU module fails with EFI boot, keep that in mind)