It came to my attention today that there has been a new release of nVidia detonator drivers for FreeBSD. Apparently released on 1st July, the first I heard of them was when I randomly checked the nVidia website today. The new drivers support 4.8 onwards, including -RELEASE -STABLE and -CURRENT branches. The drivers support the most recent hardware including the FX based cards.
I just wish ATi would get off their collective duffs and release FreeBSD drivers š NVidia has realized that users want them, why hasn’t ATi got the clue yet?
I’ve been using these since they came out, and I have to say that they are *infinitely* better than the beta ones that were out before. I’ve had this box up and running with these new drivers for just over a week without anything nasty happening, compared to the half hour it would take the beta ones to really screw up the machine.
ATi seems to be getting the point lately.
they are looking for beta testers for linux, maybe you could contact them over BSD support
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=33703965
isn’t freebsd more of a server- than a desktop-os?!
i assume the market of people using freebsd on desktop is very small, so i’m surprised that nvidia is developing drivers for it.
could this have something to do with the sco-lawsuit, means because the bsds might not be affected by the outcome of this suit, nvdia likes to be one of the first companies in the boat, starting a stronger move of commercial companies backing (free-)bsd?
“isn’t freebsd more of a server- than a desktop-os?! ”
Although no OS is everything to everybody, most in fact do try, and FreeBSD is no different. I use it almost exclusively on my desktop machine for nearly everything I do, the only exception being for some excel functionality that just is not yet found in free alternatives and for the odd game of Arcanum.
“i assume the market of people using freebsd on desktop is very small, so i’m surprised that nvidia is developing drivers for it.”
The market for Linux is small as well, but that is not a good argument when you considder that there are ~20 million active FreeBSD machines on the Internet (and way more Linux ones). Surely 20+ million computers cannot escape the notice of big hardware makers despite the 700+ million Windows based PCs being far more abundant.
“could this have something to do with the sco-lawsuit, means because the bsds might not be affected by the outcome of this suit, nvdia likes to be one of the first companies in the boat, starting a stronger move of commercial companies backing (free-)bsd?”
Nope. It’s just interested nVidia employees helping a project that they find interesting. The study of biology tells us that diverity is a good thing, and it applies just as much to software as it does to biology. I will *never* go back to Linux or Windows full time and many others will say the opposite. Choices are a good thing when you have some 6.1 billion different Homo Sapiens kicking around on a tiny little rock, as not all of them will ever totally agree on everything.
If you like Linux and it does what you need, stick with it, and don’t worry about SCO. If you like Windows, well, I don’t understand it, but more power to you. I prefer BSD as it does what I want and what I need, and I like the history, so I stick with it. It’s just how things work.
Alexander Stohr, from ATI, has informed me that he’s actually spent some time recently porting the drivers from Linux to FreeBSD. The XFree86 parts built fine with a little tweaking (that he’s committed to the official ATI code repository).
His unresolved issues are the kernel module and the package system.
Adam
Sys Admins want to have fun too
. I’m not a sys admin, but I use Freebie as my main OS, not necessarily a ‘Desktop’ by strict sense of the word. Mostly for programming, watching movies, listening to music, E-Mail, research, trolling >:D, and tons of other stuff. Freebie is no different from GNU/Linux on the desktop since you can run just about every Linux program ( minus driver ). Hell you can run UT2k on Freebie so those NV drivers come in handy.
Freebsd is for losers. Real men use Linux, not some pansy non-free operating system.
Obviously you use Linux. Linux users cannot stand the thought of any other operating system advancing. They have spent hours learning just how to use single commands like “vi” and as such (and there are thousands of commands), they have a tremendous time investment in the Linux operating system. Can you imagine how devestating it is to them to learn that there are other operating system that are easier to use? If I was in their place, I too would resort to denial and propaganda. Hence, you see these posts every time there is a news item regarding OS/2, and simliar posts to Syllable stories. Please also read http://bsd.slashdot.org, after adjusting your viewing threshold to -1, for the best example of Linux bigotry. Linux advocates claim to be for the promotion of “free” (free as in YOU WILL USE MY LICENSE DAMNIT), but in reality they are only pro-Linux, and anti-everything else.
Freebsd is for losers. Real men use Linux, not some pansy non-free operating system.
The real men will give the mind open and respect what others choice. The real losers are pretty mind close without take a look and understand the others. Sorry, that’s fact.
explain this then.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/accuracy.html#whichos
“Obviously you use Linux”
No, obviously he is a troll. He’s just a random retard trying to raise some hell and is not representative of linux users in general. Don’t feed him please.
Any idea if NVidia or ATI, or any video vendor, will provide drivers for non-x86 based PCI systems? i.e. PPC, SPARC and
Alpha(?)?
Check the mailing lists, bsdforums.org etc, many have downgraded to the old ones, including myself
Geez, geeks are the only lot I know of where there’s a noticable minority of people who can’t tell when someone’s being sarcastic. His statement is so far out there that you can barely argue that he’s a troll! If there was a smiley at the end of his post, it’d fit right in. He’s obviously joking! I dunno what’s funnier (or dumber); his joke, or some peoples’ reactions!
The FreeBSD drivers were out long before SCO filed the lawsuit. A lot of FreeBSD users spent a lot of time trying to get the Linux XFree drivers ported, and NVIDIA saw that project and decided to do the community a favor and port it themselves. Since NVIDIA’s driver is highly platform independent (the kernel portion is totally isolated from the kernel itself) and FreeBSD is a UNIX platform, it costs them very little to keep the two ports active, and it gets them a lot of community goodwill in return.
PS> It is for behavior like this that I’m a dedicated NVIDIA user. No other company has taken the time to release Linux drivers that are fully competitive with their Windows drivers. I’m perfectly happy to trade off a few percent performance difference between ATI’s fastest and NVIDIA’s fastest if it means getting good 3D on my favorite platform.
>Freebsd is for losers. Real men use Linux, not some pansy non-free operating system.
Non Free?
When you take code from Linux you MUST realease your code.
With BSD you can take all the code you want all long as the developers get’s creditt. Now that’s what i call freedom!
The GPL license is more like a virus, but not in a mad meaning. I think GPL is to strict…
BSD get’s the most freedom, but GPL spreads the freedom.
“Freebsd is for losers. Real men use Linux, not some pansy non-free operating system.”
Hmm,to me Linux sounds like a bastion of the GNU Corporation, while the *BSDs provides true software freedom.
I notice that nVidia syupplies drivers for Linux for the nForce Athlon chipset(s).
Is any special driver support needed for freebsd for such systems? If so, does nVidia have a timeframe for such a release?