How to enable hardware acceleration in FreeBSD ?

[R6exe]

It's a roughly 2004-2005 machine with a CPU without virtualization extensions, only 1 Gb of RAM and an effectively not upgradeable video card. I don't see the point in these workarounds. No amount of effort would make the desktop experience here less horrible.

The only sensible options are:

1. treat this as a retro PC by installing old software and isolating it from the Internet; good for old games and maybe word processing or something.
2. install up-to-date Linux/*BSD there (with or without very lightweight GUI) to occasionally run a specific single non-demanding task; for a 24/7 home server buying a motherboard with an integrated Atom processor would be far better choice.

Heheh
Belive me I've a netbook with an atom and that thing runs very slow. I think even more slow than the amd 3000+.

 

[shkhln]

I don't have to believe: https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-N4200-vs-AMD-Athlon-64-3000-/m196248vsm5460. It also comes with a better GPU. Anyway, you don't need much performance for a home server, it's mostly about power consumption and noise.

 

[R6exe]

I don't have to believe: https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-N4200-vs-AMD-Athlon-64-3000-/m196248vsm5460. It also comes with a far better GPU. Anyway, you don't need much performance for a home server, it's mostly about power consumption and noise.

UserBenchmark: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ vs Intel Atom N2600

That's the atom I have on my notebook.

 

[kpedersen]

Ah forgot to add to my post. You can probably save yourself a heap of trouble and still salvage much of the machine by just ditching the nvidia card and purchasing an older radeon for ~$10. Then you can even use it as a workstation.

I have a similar spec machine and to be fair, personally I don't actually need much more power. Since the recent performance improvements that Firefox has gone through, it is even good for web browsing. It will run games up to about Quake III perfectly well.

 

[R6exe]

Ah forgot to add to my post. You can probably save yourself a heap of trouble and still salvage much of the machine by just ditching the nvidia card and purchasing an older radeon for ~$10. Then you can even use it as a workstation.

I have a similar spec machine and to be fair, personally I don't actually need much more power. Since the recent performance improvements that Firefox has gone through, it is even good for web browsing. It will run games up to about Quake III perfectly well.

NVIDIA DRIVERS FreeBSD Display Driver – x86

That driver could work ? Thanks.

 

[kpedersen]

NVIDIA DRIVERS FreeBSD Display Driver – x86

That driver could work ? Thanks.

Not with a recent operating system.
The problem is that Nvidia do not maintain their drivers to work with current operating systems. For example the latest Xorg xserver cannot communicate with a driver designed for an older ABI.

Ideally you want to get yourself some hardware where an open-source driver exists so it is part of the FreeBSD / xorg source tree and gets maintained properly.

 

[shkhln]

The problem is that Nvidia do not maintain their drivers to work with current operating systems.

This is silly. Out of the three major GPU vendors Nvidia has the longest attention span at roughly 10 years of support.

Ideally you want to get yourself some hardware where an open-source driver exists so it is part of the FreeBSD / xorg source tree and gets maintained properly.

Open source doesn't necessarily mean any commitment to maintenance.

 

[kpedersen]

This is silly. Out of the three major GPU vendors Nvidia has the longest attention span at roughly 10 years of support.

And yet hardware from other vendors doesn't have this problem even when they get to a similar age.
This shows that a companies promise to maintain the drivers is simply not good enough. Source is the only real solution here.

Open source doesn't necessarily mean any commitment to maintenance.

Nope, but it heavily implies that the community will.

 

[SirDice]

Nope, but it heavily implies that the community will.

No, you assume the community will. Old drivers for old hardware get dropped all the time. At some point the old hardware deviates too much from the newer hardware. Then the driver has to do a "split" between those two directions. And the sensible thing to do, from a maintenance perspective, is to drop the old stuff. Especially when you have to bend over sideways in order to keep that old stuff working.

 

[kpedersen]

No, you assume the community will.

Well I certainly can't assume that it won't.

Old drivers for old hardware get dropped all the time.

Yes, old as in many decades. Not something like a GeForce 5 series (a ~17 year old spring chicken!). You surely cannot deny that open-source drivers provide a far superior lifespan to binary blobs.

 

[shkhln]

Ahem, https://freebsd.markmail.org/thread...ry:+page:1+mid:enoto7ksxqne72rs+state:results.

 

[kpedersen]

Ahem, https://freebsd.markmail.org/thread...ry:+page:1+mid:enoto7ksxqne72rs+state:results.

But that last patch is looking to keep the old ati driver compiling. Yes it may not work (and from the looks of it there is no-one interested to test it) but that is a far better situation than i.e the last ATI Windows driver. What would that be for? Windows 95? The proprietary fglrx driver certainly hasn't fared any better (that thing barely worked even when it was supported)

Another example is the old xf86-video-savage driver. I certainly don't see a binary blob outliving that being maintained by S3

When it comes to lifespan and bringing life back to old tech, there really is no support other than from the community, enabled by source access.

 

[dave01]

Nvidia Legacy drivers might be what you are looking for.

You need the 173.14 driver to support an FX 5700 card on x86. Whether that will work with a current release of FreeBSD is another matter. ISTR there is a page somewhere on the NVidia site showing how to install the drivers manually.