Nvidia MX440 Go Support in FreeBSD post 14th Dec '14...

JamesElstone

JamesElstone

Hi All,

I have a laptop which has an NVidia MX440 Go chipset and was happily using x11-servers/xorg-server V1.12 with the x11/nvidia-driver-96 binary blob driver without issue for a while now in a security sandbox.

I decided to perform a clean install to FreeBSD 10.1 and got round to standing up X-server and hit a big snag after performing the initial portsnap:

With the V1.14 upgrade to x11-servers/xorg-server in mid-December the x11/nvidia-driver-96 port has been marked as forbidden and ignored, as the required ABI version is not supported by the NVidia binary blob and XAA has been removed in V1.14.

With the standard generic drivers I can only get a resolution 800x600, when the laptop has a native resolution of 1920x1200 (WUXGA). The laptop GPU is not upgradable.

Only the 96.x NVidia binary blob purports to support the 440MX chipset as reported here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_32667.html

I am beginning to think that FreeBSD has closed off graphics support for a number of older machines, mine included, with the expectation that I replace it with the latest calibre of machine...

I must admit I like a GUI on a laptop and is my preferred method of working, but seems that if I want to have FreeBSD on this laptop then I can no longer run X at a sensible resolution. On the face of the information I have read this has left me with a nasty taste in my month over this chosen migration path...

P.S. The FreeBSD handbook doesn't mention a word of this and still states that the v96 NVidia driver is a valid option, see: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/compiz-fusion/nvidia-setup.html

Any ideas?

James.
 
JamesElstone said:
I am beginning to think that FreeBSD has closed off graphics support for a number of older machines, mine included, with the expectation that I replace it with the latest calibre of machine...
Click to expand...
It's NVidia that dropped support.

Support for X.Org xserver version 1.12 was added to the 96.43.* legacy driver series with version 96.43.23. No further releases from the 96.43.* series are planned.
Click to expand...
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142
 
Writing when cross is never a good idea. The point made by Sir Dice is correct, and my comments about FreeBSD were unfair - apologies for any offence caused.

Shepper makes an interesting point.

Kind regards to all,
James.
 
So is there a message about NVidia in /usr/ports/UPDATING? As I understand it, which may be wrong, if one runs, say portmaster or pkg to upgrade their nvidia driver, they will have a non-working X. I know this is the case on Linux, and running portmaster on my current nvidia driver indicated that it would update it to a later (probably not working) version. (My NVidia cards are, according to NVidia's site, supported by the 340 driver rather than the new one.)

As this machine is my workstation at work, it's not the one to use for experimenting. So can anyone confirm or correct that if one does an upgrade of x11/nvidia-driver and has an older NVidia card that X will no longer work? In such a case should one simply remove it and replace it with x11/nvidia-driver-340?
 
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