Offtopic rants (was: Why is nVidia So Problematic?)

bgavin said:
As a ‘nix noob I see a lot of chatter about endless problems with Nvidia and CUDA on all ‘nix platforms.

nVidia is not a minor nor 2nd tier player.
I’m surprised at this.
Click to expand...
I think there’s a bit of a statistical effect here. Nvidia’s market share is significantly larger than AMD’s, so even if the products were equally reliable, you would naturally expect to see more discussions, and complaints about Nvidia simply because there are more Nvidia users.

Personally, I use both Nvidia and AMD GPUs, and I’ve had good experiences with both. So I wouldn’t necessarily interpret the amount of online discussion as evidence that Nvidia hardware is less reliable.

Of course, there are real Nvidia-specific issues on some platforms, but the volume of discussion alone is probably not a very good measure of how widespread the underlying problems actually are.
 
Argentum said:
Nvidia’s market share is significantly larger than AMD’s, so even if the products were equally reliable, you would naturally expect to see more discussions, and complaints about Nvidia simply because there are more Nvidia users.
Click to expand...
That certainly plays a role too. If you look at the Steam hardware surveys Nvidia has had a fairly consistent 75-80% market share for years, if not decades.
 
Yes but , during this summer the difficulties to get Nvidia GPU to run with Freebsd 15.1 release has been entirely caused by lack of maintenance of the repositories for FreeBSD 15.1 ports-kmod repo. Making it impossible to install or upgrade to 15.1 with corresponding GPU kmods.
This cant be blamed on Nvidia at all.

Everything works if the Drivers and Kmods are installed from an updated PORTS distribution.
 
drsnx60 said:
Yes but , during this summer the difficulties to get Nvidia GPU to run with Freebsd 15.1 release has been entirely caused by lack of maintenance of the repositories for FreeBSD 15.1 ports-kmod repo. Making it impossible to install or upgrade to 15.1 with corresponding GPU kmods.
This cant be blamed on Nvidia at all.
Click to expand...
Not with x11/nvidia-driver (or any of the legacy versions). It's the Nvidia DRM driver, because it depends on the DRM kmod, which in turn depends on the LinuxKPI framework of the kernel. LinuxKPI is a very fast moving target. If the developers hadn't updated it in 15 you would have to wait for 16 to be released before you could use the DRM 6.12 driver. And people would have complained about that.

So in order to alleviate some of this issue, the kmods repositories where put in place. This upgrade 15.0 -> 15.1 is actually the first time it was needed, and some teething problems surfaced that will need to be ironed out.
 
bgavin said:
Good grief.
The above is the tinkering I want to avoid.
Click to expand...
Switch to AMD (not the newest stuff, but a step or two back for GPUs), then all you need is the FreeBSD Handbook to get it going. Well, this is coming from an AMD fanboi who's been on AMD hardware about forever, and knows how to get it going and working problem-free. :P
 
Not interested at all in AMD.
Been there, got badly burned and never going back.

I am SO not interested in learning how to hack or tweak to get it going and being problem free.

If the desktop OS cannot do a straight forward install of Nvidia without tinkering then screw that OS. nVidia is a major player and I demand it install and run without hacking.
 
bgavin said:
Not interested at all in AMD.
Been there, got badly burned and never going back.

I am SO not interested in learning how to hack or tweak to get it going and being problem free.

If the desktop OS cannot do a straight forward install of Nvidia without tinkering then screw that OS. nVidia is a major player and I demand it install and run without hacking.
Click to expand...
then maybe you would be better served on windows? do you have a specific need for freebsd?
 
bgavin said:
nVidia is a major player and I demand it install and run without hacking.
Click to expand...
nVidia creates the drivers, not FreeBSD. But nVidia does supply drivers for FreeBSD. If they do not work, or require hacking, then that's not FreeBSD's fault.
But if you enter the world of professional operating systems, you have to realize things won't always be easy; especially when you want bleeding edge things and tweaking may be necessary. Instability can make a pass at the consumer market, and Linux is known for its instability, but in the BSD/Unix/professional world we are less tolerant of instability.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
nVidia creates the drivers, not FreeBSD. But nVidia does supply drivers for FreeBSD.
Click to expand...
My understanding is that the FreeBSD ports are merely wrappers around nVidia supplied blobs, so nVidia blob supports some number of nVidia hardware and expects some standard interfaces on the OS side.

What happens with AMD and Intel? Are they similar with 3rd party blobs, expected OS interfaces?

Anyway, circling back to the OP, I have never found NVidia to be more problematic than any other third party kmod.
The infrastructure of providing a binary package I think is isolated from "problematic". As pointed out, 15.0 to 15.1 with ports-kmod repo is "the first" so one should not expect "corner cases we didn't test" to work without changes.
 
I use FBSD for my NAS.

I was perfectly happy with Windows 1.0 all the way thru Win7 then it became highly invasive with spying and nannies and bloat, so I left.
I keep Win10 for the critical work that does not run on any ‘Nix platform.
Apparently, this is CUDA.

So far I’m perfectly happy with MX Linux XFCE with a non-nvidia GPU.
I have not tried it with my 4060ti yet.

I have great respect for FBSD (as a server) but it appears to have growing pains with CUDA and Wayland.

I don’t care one way or the other about Wayland.
I just want the video to do my work without having to hack and tweak.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
BSD/Unix/professional world we are less tolerant of instability.
Click to expand...
Less tolerant - that basically means that we're gonna make noise and talk about the technical issues with anyone who would listen, in hopes that there's a solution out there.

But an argument can be made that we're actually more tolerant of the software instability, in the sense that with Open Source, we as users, are expected to basically make do with what we can get out there, even if it requires tinkering, tweaking, troubleshooting, researching, following directions precisely, and spending time on it. And why do we put up with THAT? Because we're not willing to put up with the alternatives that we see as available.

For OP's entertainment / information about Wayland: Wayland is getting mature and better behaved:
astyle said:
Well, it was a long road, but it looks like we're finally here:🎉😤
View attachment 27108

A bit of commentary:

Yes, SDDM works.

Yes, the power management that I was complaining about earlier - it seems to have been fixed. The freaking machine can even sleep and wake up properly! And when the screen gets turned off after a timeout (15 minutes by default), I'm not experiencing issues, I can wiggle the mouse, and screen will come back on! 😁 Even after I go to sleep.

Screenshot taken with Spectacle. It also documents a weird startup bug for Spectacle. Thing is, I compiled multimedia/ffmpeg with net/samba416 enabled. That happens to be an old Samba port, so some of its libs were moved to a `private` folder... and somehow, that's what messes up the startup procedure for Spectacle. The solution to that is documented in the screenshot of this post.

I compiled my way up from scratch, using a Ryzen 5 1400 (that took me 2.5 days), trying to use LLVM 22 as much as possible. Some of the unmaintained dependency ports would not compile with LLVM 22, and I had to fall back to the default LLVM 19-based CC compiler that FreeBSD ships with. Ports snapshot used is from August 23, 2026.

I personally don't see further issues with Plasma Wayland on FreeBSD. Once again, I'm on all-AMD hardware, and it's a good thing I kept making noise in this thread about paper cuts!

I guess my last papercut complaint is still about Konqueror - It still crashes when I try to open up its settings to configure anything - the only safe way to configure Konqueror is to make sure it's in Fine Manager mode first.
Click to expand...
 
bgavin said:
I have great respect for FBSD (as a server) but it appears to have growing pains with CUDA and Wayland.
Click to expand...
Again, CUDA support depends on nVidia supplying it. FreeBSD can't do anything about that. You should get on nVidia's forum and complain about that.
From what I read, Wayland works on FreeBSD--at least to some extent--but remember that Wayland is a Linux thing created for Linux originally. Even they have issues with it.
 
drhowarddrfine, Wayland is fine on FreeBSD. There's several NapoleonWils0n posts and youtube videos about it. I do know that at one point, it wasn't working well with Nvidia, but after some update or another it was fine. It's been fine on AMD as well. The sway window manager, an iw3 replacement, didn't work well with Nvidia last I heard, but that was awhile ago.
 
scottro said:
The sway window manager, an iw3 replacement, didn't work well with Nvidia last I heard, but that was awhile ago.
Click to expand...
Not sure as what I'm currently using for testing Wayland (startup OK or not, though) is Wayfire, but it could be because EGL supports by NVIDIA were EGLStream based (using graphics/egl-wayland), which is NOT mainly supported by Wayland compositors.

If this is the case, 560 series and later drivers additionally support DMA-buf based (using graphics/egl-wayland2) and X11/XCB based (using graphics/egl-x11) EGL, keeping graphics/egl-wayland supports for fallbacks.
 
Ok, I'm writing this from a sway window manager on an Nvidia machine. It works but there is a message. "Proprietary GPU drivers are not supported by sway. Do not report issues". For tiled window managers, I've always preferred more dwm style, so not a big deal for me. Though for wayland, there's dwl which doesn't work well, last I tried, with Japanese. However, mango is fine with Japanese, and I can mess with its config file so that's it's a lot more minimalistic. On the other hand, I don't really use Wayland, just trying it out from time to time. So...sort of a non-issue for me.
 
bgavin said:
I was perfectly happy with Windows 1.0 all the way thru Win7
Click to expand...
Being perfectly happy with Win95/98?
That's just sick.

Seriously,
I don't see the point anymore.

For you FreeBSD is for NAS and other severs, only, and else just way too much tinkering. OK.
You already made up your mind to use some turn-key Linux. OK.
And also about other things, like never using AMD ever again. OK.
I had the same with NVIDIA for over twenty years, now because finally I got my fingers burned with AMD I'm now running a NVIDIA card again and am happy with it. But OK.
There is no way in convincing you, at least encourage you to simply just check out a non experimental version but a boring rock solid pure handbook release version of FreeBSD, since it seems typing a single pkg install ... each for every package you wanna have (which can easily be fully automated with a most primitive script, when you have a list of your packages you're already using, e.g. by doing pkg prime-list > mypackages) seems already way too much tinkering for you, while I wonder how much less effort a package installation can take. OK.
While also to me installing packages under Linux - first learn if it's rpm, yum, APT, DNF or whatever. Then first need to add the package to your repolist. Then finally install the package. All with long, cryptical commands containing several options and this sudo - password, sudo - password, sudo - password... - I seen Linux distros using a manager to install packages, that manages a manager which manages the package manager, and still several sudo...lines; and finally you always need to cross fingers if the junk actually runs, and not getting zillions of complains about wrong versions and missing dependencies, and then all those need to be installed first, again with the add to repo sudo, sudo, sudo junk, causing even more version and dependency issues... - THAT'S tinkering to me. But OK, I also wasn't perfectly happy with any Windows at all, and taste and experiences are very individual.

Bottom line, long story short, several threads over many months summarized:
You already know exactly, what you want: Some turn-key Linux, or some lincense free Windows not spying on you at best, while the latter one you cannot have. OK.
No, really: It's OK. That's absolutely and fully completely all right with me and for sure also the majority here.
Everybody shall pick and use what feels best. Especially since there are more than enough choices: From hardcore nerd pure tinker Linux, to total fool-proof completely fully automated installing turn-key distros coming as from most basic to completely bloated.
You also know exactly what you don't want: It's no tinkering (who wants?) It's not FreeBSD nor GhostBSD, nor not even learning the slightest bit about the system, even if I'm convinced from all open source OS FreeBSD offers the least almost no tinkering at all, and it's way less learning as it seems when one gives it a serious shot, stick to the Handbook, and not fatfingering. But this all already seems to be too much for you. OK.
IMO you could already have a rock solid GUI desktop machine without tinkering for quite a while within all the time I watch you on this forums - with FreeBSD, like myself and many others, if you simply tried what you've been told here. But it seems you don't give it a shot, it's all repelled, only.
Ok.
But:
So, then what we need to discuss here anyway?
Especially when every advice to try something, all recommendations or attempts to convince you otherwise are all just repelled, only, and always answered with all your testimonies about how great the Linux version(s) are you're knowing, and how happy you're with them?
Just stick to them. It's OK.
But where is the point in having all those discussions here in all those threads, in all those months, about all the problems you have with FreeBSD, neither willing to see most here don't have even remotely your issues with FreeBSD, nor willing to accept any attempts to help you, but only repell everything, and only telling us again and again about all the great experiences you have with certain Linux?

Dude,
this is not the place to tell FreeBSD sucks and Linux is so great, only.
This is the place to help people on FreeBSD.
But one cannot help nobody if none help is accepted at all but everything is repelled, only.
This simply does not work, because it cannot.
And IMO it's pointless.

Peace out.
 
bgavin said:
Not interested at all in AMD.
Been there, got badly burned and never going back.

I am SO not interested in learning how to hack or tweak to get it going and being problem free.

If the desktop OS cannot do a straight forward install of Nvidia without tinkering then screw that OS. nVidia is a major player and I demand it install and run without hacking.
Click to expand...
That's Windows forever. I use windows 11 since it is compatible to all GPU. Also, because to install FreeBSD in the PC involves hacking.
 
My goodness (Maturin) but you are a condescending ass. Leave the personal insults to yourself as they have no place here. I do not appreciate them.

You are the fanboy not me.
I have never disparaged FBSD at any time. Nor am I a rabid fanboy of Linux uber alles.

I’ve been tinkering in this business 53 years now and simply want to do work without constant tinkering. I’m tired of having to tweak things to make them work.

Early Windows (pre Win98SE) did indeed suck. So did Slackware which left a very bad taste in my mouth, same as AMD did.

Windows peaked with Win7 then degenerated into the invasive mess it is today, which is why I left after Win10.

If my work could run on Win7 I would happily stay there, but it won’t. Some vendor apps refuse to launch except on Win11 (bribed?) so I have to move on.

I have to keep a dual boot Win10 SSD for my paid apps that will never run on a ‘nix platform. If they would run on Win7 I would do so, but they are tied into the Win10 ecosystem so I am stuck. I assume some net-framework API in Win10 and higher.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top