Solved Black screen - Still pulling my hair out over xorg -Freebsd 11.2-stable

I'm sure things will get worked out, but it seems that NVIDIA doesn't hate FreeBSD anymore, they give you working, compilable drivers.
I've been using the NVidia FreeBSD drivers (from ports) for the past 15 or so years and I rarely had problems with it. Note however that the only "compiling" that's being done is the kernel interface. The brunt of the actual graphics driver work is done by a big binary "blob".
 
but it seems that NVIDIA doesn't hate FreeBSD anymore

They don't exactly hate FreeBSD, but 396.24 doesn't have Vulkan and, as the latest addition to the long list of annoyances, 32-bit app support. For what it's worth, I don't have any issues with Nvidia deciding not to implement certain features on second tier platforms. However, their decisions (regarding FreeBSD) are unpredictable and always come without any kind of announcement. That's infuriating.
 
I've been using the NVidia FreeBSD drivers (from ports) for the past 15 or so years and I rarely had problems with it. Note however that the only "compiling" that's being done is the kernel interface. The brunt of the actual graphics driver work is done by a big binary "blob".

I always did self builds being very particular about the hardware and always, always an ATI card. ATI supported us. I didn't do a self build this time and was stuck messing around with the Dell supplied Nvidia and Radeon from a previous PC that died and was past its prime. The Radeon I snatched from that build used to work and now doesn't, for the time being at least, and the Nvidia surprisingly does.

I've been around for quite a few years, dating back to FreeBSD 2.0 - forgive me if the time line is blurred, but that's the late 90's early 2000's after I got my last BSOD from Windas... I'm from Philly - it's Windas, not Windows :)
 
They don't exactly hate FreeBSD, but 396.24 doesn't have Vulkan and, as the latest addition to the long list of annoyances, 32-bit app support. For what it's worth, I don't have any issues with Nvidia deciding not to implement certain features on second tier platforms. However, their decisions (regarding FreeBSD) are unpredictable and always come without any kind of announcement. That's infuriating.

Not really a gamer, at least on my PCs. That said, I do want the snappiness of full acceleration, and for whatever reason I wasn't finding it with the ports supplied drivers.
I'm seeing it now!

The only real mistake I made was turning my back on FreeBSD for a year or so and I really missed out on some important changes. I'm glad I'm back!
 
I am loading the driver in loader.conf, however, I did start out loading the module manually.
When I used the radeon, starting the X server loaded the module automatically, but it doesn't seem to be the case now.

NOTE: this is for posterity.

#1) "loading the driver in loader.conf" <--- don't do this; it causes more headaches then necessary.
Instead use the
Code:
kld_list
method in rc.conf.
Something like:
Code:
kld_list="linux linux64 nvidia nvidia-modeset"
in your rc.conf

Make sure that entries for linux/nvidia/nvidia-modeset*_load="YES" do *NOT* appear in in /boot/loader.conf . It is usually a better idea to keep loader.conf a barren as possible i.e. leave that motherfu#!%$er alone!

#2) The mismatch issues you had could have been related to not properly removing previous x11/nvidia-driver spattering of installed files. Clean this up with make deinstall in x11/nvidia-driver and just to be sure & thorough do the same for x11/nvidia-settings , x11/nvidia-xconfig. You could opt to do a portsclean -CDD to flush out all old stale files; again for being thorough.
From there you should probably portsnap fetch update or svnlite up /usr/ports/ if you are so inclined. Finally do either make install clean in x11/nvidia-driver or use portmaster x11/nvidia-driver . The x11/nvidia-xconfig application is pretty damned great under nearly all circumstances... so use it.

I've had a grand total of none point none issues with the nvidia-driver in ports or the NVidia UNIX drivers directly from the binary blob mafia (at https://www.nvidia.com/object/freebsd-x64-archive.html ) with GeForce cards starting from the GT500-series all the way to the GT1030/GT1050 cards I currently use.
 
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