FreeBSD Is Pursuing A Compatibility Layer To Make It Easier To Run Linux DRM Drivers

[Luke_Wolf]

They also support old (VLIW-based) radeons. But I would agree it is a shame their wiki e.g. suggests to use BLOBs for nvidias. So much for opensource, dammit.

Be fair, in most places Linux users would give the same advice. The problem is nouveau really isn't in a position yet where it's reasonable or even better to run the open source as opposed to the proprietary drivers, unlike Radeon, and because we're dealing with Open Source as opposed to Free Software they're going to be pragmatic and recognize that.

[SystemCrasher]

Be fair, in most places Linux users would give the same advice.

I'm fair: I dislike proprietary drivers EVERYWHERE, be it Linux or whatever. I'm not a big fan of proprietary drivers in open systems, because it kills the whole point. If there is significant chunk of important system-level code which is proprietary, it means system is no longer open. If someone is really ok with it, er, there is Windows already, no?

The problem is nouveau really isn't in a position yet where it's reasonable or even better to run the open source as opposed to the proprietary drivers,

Still, it much better option than VESA and could provide reasonable performance for e.g. desktop effects, video playback and somesuch. Though I would agree it still got way to go with reclocking. Then there is AMDGPU and so on. If we take a look around, these days Linux got plenty of DRM/KMS drivers. In fact everything else isn't welcome and there're good reasons why it happens like this.

unlike Radeon, and because we're dealing with Open Source as opposed to Free Software they're going to be pragmatic and recognize that.

Uhm, yeah, that's how we get idea on how open source and free software are different. Free software wouldn't pwn me most of time, trying to turn into proprietary. But it not to be taken as something granted for opensource, where it really, really depends. Somehow I like how Linux kernel devs handling blob drivers. That's what I call pragmatic. Relying on blob drivers? I call it short-sighted. Getting short-term gain while jeopardizing long-term goals is hardly "pragmatic".

[Luke_Wolf]

I'm fair: I dislike proprietary drivers EVERYWHERE, be it Linux or whatever. I'm not a big fan of proprietary drivers in open systems, because it kills the whole point. If there is significant chunk of important system-level code which is proprietary, it means system is no longer open. If someone is really ok with it, er, there is Windows already, no?

Well, that's fine, and I don't like proprietary drivers either, they're always shitty and have a bad habit of breaking things. However... there's a bunch of Linux and BSD users out there who are okay with proprietary drivers, and make the active choice to run Nvidia cards instead of Intel or AMD (in FreeBSD's case they really need to update the Radeon driver and pull in AMDGPU so that the cards can have proper power management), with their usual reasoning being that it "provides the fastest opengl stack". Personally I make the active choice to stick to AMD and use the OSS drivers.

Still, it much better option than VESA and could provide reasonable performance for e.g. desktop effects, video playback and somesuch. Though I would agree it still got way to go with reclocking. Then there is AMDGPU and so on. If we take a look around, these days Linux got plenty of DRM/KMS drivers. In fact everything else isn't welcome and there're good reasons why it happens like this.

Unfortunately with FreeBSD at this point it's either nv, vesa, or the proprietary driver. Nouveau porting is currently a work in progress as far as I can tell from the wiki. Even if they had Nouveau though, the limitations it creates aren't acceptable to most users, meanwhile the Nvidia proprietary driver "works", where the definition of "works" only cares about the speed of the openGL implementation and doesn't care about things like suspend/resume, massive tearing, kernel panics, or other issues (did I mention that all proprietary drivers are shitty and have a habit of breaking things?). Sadly that's how a lot of said aforementioned Nvidia purchasers consider "works", along with on windows side card killing drivers, which they apparently had another one pop up again recently.

Uhm, yeah, that's how we get idea on how open source and free software are different. Free software wouldn't pwn me most of time, trying to turn into proprietary. But it not to be taken as something granted for opensource, where it really, really depends. Somehow I like how Linux kernel devs handling blobs. That's what I call pragmatic. Relying on blob drivers? I call it short-sighted. Getting short-term gain while jeopardizing long-term goals is hardly "pragmatic".

Well the real pragmatic answer is to not buy Nvidia hardware, but the Nvidia purchasing segment is large enough they can't just be told to fuck off. So the pragmatic answer is for them to bend over and use the Nvidia proprietary driver (like they were intending to anyway) until such a time when Nouveau becomes an "acceptable" driver for use, where acceptable is defined as it being stable and having actual working power management, which isn't really going to happen until Nvidia changes their mind and decides they're going to support Nouveau.

[drSeehas]

The porting of Linux KMS/DRM drivers to Linux ...

??? porting from Linux to Linux?

[pal666]

Be fair, in most places Linux users would give the same advice. The problem is nouveau really isn't in a position yet where it's reasonable or even better to run the open source as opposed to the proprietary drivers

nouveau is used as official driver for nv hardware by fedora, so it is pretty reasonable. for gaming it is usable only on some cards, but for drawing gnome desktop it is better than blob. but who uses freebsd for games anyway?

we're dealing with Open Source as opposed to Free Software

i don't see how nvidia windows blob is open source

[aht0]

They also support old (VLIW-based) radeons. But I would agree it is a shame their wiki e.g. suggests to use BLOBs for nvidias. So much for opensource, dammit.

If you would look into FreeBSD's Nvidia "blob"-driver, you would see it's really modified-for-FreeBSD Linux driver working over Linux ABI. It's not like there is alternative to it in Linux either, as long as you need to use 3D. Nouveau is fine for 2D. You use what you have.

Same issue with plenty of hardware. You could hide whole dedicated embedded operating system into EEPROMs of some of the Intels WLAN cards. Compare those against EEPROM sizes of Atheros cards for example. Same appears to be case for Intel Linux wlan drivers, checked a few - binary blob, Readme and License.

nouveau is used as official driver for nv hardware by fedora, so it is pretty reasonable. for gaming it is usable only on some cards, but for drawing gnome desktop it is better than blob. but who uses freebsd for games anyway?

Also OpenSUSE is using Nouveau by default. One I always have to switch for binary driver since Nouveau's dysfunctionality running on GTX 660 Ti.

[starshipeleven]

Same issue with plenty of hardware. You could hide whole dedicated embedded operating system into EEPROMs of some of the Intels WLAN cards. Compare those against EEPROM sizes of Atheros cards for example. Same appears to be case for Intel Linux wlan drivers, checked a few - binary blob, Readme and License.

Intel has been traditionally crap at wifi openness.

Thankfully atheros cards are pretty damn good under linux. I've seen all cards I own go from "meh range" to "better than windows range", within a couple years or so of purchase.

Also quite a few ralink/mediatek ones are coming out of the woodwork.

Broadcoms keep being a Win-only POS for me.

[septianix]

If you would look into FreeBSD's Nvidia "blob"-driver, you would see it's really modified-for-FreeBSD Linux driver working over Linux ABI. (...)

Nope, the FreeBSD's Nvidia driver is native.

From http://us.download.nvidia.com/freebs...hapter-04.html

I have read that the NVIDIA FreeBSD Driver is not a native driver, but sits on top of the Linux ABI compatibility layer. Is this true?

No, the NVIDIA FreeBSD Driver Set is a native driver. It does provide Linux OpenGL libraries in addition to the native, FreeBSD libraries to enable users to run Linux OpenGL applications.

[Luke_Wolf]

nouveau is used as official driver for nv hardware by fedora, so it is pretty reasonable.

Fedora is not a standard to go by here, they would use it regardless of it's state because they have an explicit ban on proprietary software in their repos and they would otherwise be using nv which is worse. Further as we can see by this next quote:

Also OpenSUSE is using Nouveau by default. One I always have to switch for binary driver since Nouveau's dysfunctionality running on GTX 660 Ti.

it is not currently in a reasonable state.

There is a reason why the general sentiment is in favour of the OSS drivers on the AMD side and the proprietary driver on the Nvidia side, and it isn't because the proprietary driver is at all wonderful (despite claims to the contrary, it's quite crap at anything that isn't openGL performance, as you mention GNOME works better under Nouveau, ontop of it's laundry list of other issues)

for gaming it is usable only on some cards, but for drawing gnome desktop it is better than blob. but who uses freebsd for games anyway?

You realize that the same exact thing could be said about Linux right? it has a 0.90% share which means that it is irrelevant to the PC Gaming market. Now if we look at the actual facts of the situation the reality is that a fair number of FreeBSD users must game as they have 1248 Games in the Ports tree as seen here:
https://www.freebsd.org/ports/games.html https://www.freebsd.org/ports/categories-grouped.html

Which is the second largest port group in their section devoted to "End Users". Debian for comparison seems to have 1153 packages associated with their games category, see: https://packages.debian.org/stable/games We can draw from this that there must be more people maintaining (and thus playing) games in the FreeBSD repos than in the Debian repos, and given that Debian has among the largest repos in Linux sphere, that's very telling.

Now yes, it's true that FreeBSD doesn't have Steam in the sense of Steam for Linux, but Steam can be run through wine.

i don't see how nvidia windows blob is open source

You misread, I was saying that FreeBSD is aligned with the OSS camp so they're going to suggest the pragmatic choice of using the Nvidia binary driver, and even after they do port nouveau they are likely going to continue to suggest the binary driver until such a time as Nouveau really is a reasonable choice for most cards, instead of working well for only a cherry picked few.

[pal666]

Fedora is not a standard to go by here

1) it is
2) nevertheless if they do it, it is reasonable

You realize that the same exact thing could be said about Linux right? it has a 0.90% share which means that it is irrelevant to the PC Gaming market.

linux has low share only on desktop. in general it dominates with more than 50% share

We can draw from this that there must be more people maintaining (and thus playing) games in the FreeBSD repos than in the Debian repos

you have several non-sequiturs here. first, amount of maintainers isn't proportional to number of packages. there are more people developing single linux kernel than whole freebsd. second, number of people playing is not proportional to number of either maintainers or packages

I was saying that FreeBSD is aligned with the OSS camp so they're going to suggest the pragmatic choice of using the Nvidia binary driver

there is nothing ossy in choosing binary driver