Stupid question about old nVidia drivers

[Black_N]

Hello!

Sorry for the stupid question but I'm really curious.
Currently, among the nVidia drivers available in pkg/ports, there is also nvidia-driver-304. It is available for both FreeBSD 13.5-RELEASE and FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE (amd64).

But, according to nVidia's statements, it only has support for:
- Added support for X.Org xserver ABI 23 (xorg-server 1.19)
- Added support for FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE.

If I'm not mistaken, the last time it worked well on the appropriate hardware was around FreeBSD 11.. (in FreeBSD 11.4 it has already stopped working)... Since then and until now, the last hope for the appropriate hardware has been xf86-video-nv.

My question:
Is there a realistic scenario for using nvidia-driver-304 in FreeBSD 13.5-RELEASE and FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE?
If not, why are resources being spent on creating pkg (I still understand the presence in ports) that cannot be used in releases newer than FreeBSD 11?

Thank you.

 

[T-Aoki]

Is there a realistic scenario for using nvidia-driver-304 in FreeBSD 13.5-RELEASE and FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE?

Yes. For GPUs that are dropped supporting by newer drivers.

But beware! As one of de-facto maintainer of nvidia driver ports, I must note that pre-470 versions of driver (say, 304, 340 and 390) and corresponding legacy x11/linux-nvidia-libs* ports dissappears once upstream (nvidia) stops providing driver tarballs. But I, not an emproyee nor founder of nvidia, cannot know when they delete those from their site.
Announcement of EoL for pre-470 versions of drivers are already done on Apr.22, 2022.

We still have legacy version of ports just because the upstream tarballs are still available and some users could still using too old GPUs that even 470 series of drivers cannot handle.

See also here about how nvidia thinks about legacy drivers and in which version the specific old GPUs are supported.

 

[SirDice]

340 version still works on a recent xserver version, the 390 version certainly does (I'm using it), the 304 version however has been broken for quite some time. It broke after a certain xserver update, and hasn't worked since. Should probably remove it, it's pretty useless nowadays.

 

[T-Aoki]

340.137, which is the version x11/nvidia-driver-304 has, is the last version of 304 series and would unlikely be updated upstream anymore.

And as I no longer have any GPU that it can drive, so what I can do is just trying build / package. It goes still fine, but cannot even test if it works or not.

Currently, all legacy branch of driver in ports tree should be the latest upstream.

There seems to be at least one user in the world who has GPU requiring 304 series on PR 244421, but adapting 304 to current xorg-server protocol would be too hard for me to do before I completely retire from $work, or even impossible if anything existing in binary-only part need to be fixed.

 

[SirDice]

There seems to be at least one user in the world who has GPU requiring 304 series on PR 244421, but adapting 304 to current xorg-server protocol would be too hard for me to do before I completely retire from $work, or even impossible if anything existing in binary-only part need to be fixed.

It's NVidia that should fix it, but they won't as it's been EoL for quite some time. That GeForce 6500 series card mentioned in the PR is now 20 years old. Nvidia stopped supporting it more than a decade ago. Someone on this forum once said, FreeBSD is not a museum and I agree with that. Old hardware drivers get deprecated all the time. You can't expect a modern OS to continue supporting ancient hardware.

 

[T-Aoki]

It's NVidia that should fix it, but they won't as it's been EoL for quite some time. That GeForce 6500 series card mentioned in the PR is now 20 years old. Nvidia stopped supporting it more than a decade ago. Someone on this forum once said, FreeBSD is not a museum and I agree with that. Old hardware drivers get deprecated all the time. You can't expect a modern OS to continue supporting ancient hardware.

Maybe the easiest way would be to resurrect old version of xorg-server locally, if

• it still builds fine,
• the computer runs it does NOT expose to Internet (completely standalone or shut out by external firewall / router) not to be threatened

are met. I believe it's unrealistic, but who nows no one tries it?
The rolled back ports directories should be copied via some kind of physical media like CD-ROM, memstick, ....

Most realistic way would be close the PR as "won't fix" and delete 304 at some point, though.

 

[Black_N]

There seems to be at least one user in the world who has GPU requiring 304 series on PR 244421, but adapting 304 to current xorg-server protocol would be too hard for me to do before I completely retire from $work, or even impossible if anything existing in binary-only part need to be fixed.

In fact, he is not alone, there were other users who were forced to switch to xf86-video-nv (as an example of Bug 267606).

I am also one of the lucky ones (owner of a portable computer Toshiba Satellite A200-1GS with an nVidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics card) and at one time nvidia-driver-304 worked well on it.
Of course, the number of users in this case does not change anything. This is a decision of nVidia.

Maybe the easiest way would be to resurrect old version of xorg-server locally, if

• it still builds fine,
• the computer runs it does NOT expose to Internet (completely standalone or shut out by external firewall / router) not to be threatened

are met. I believe it's unrealistic, but who nows no one tries it?
The rolled back ports directories should be copied via some kind of physical media like CD-ROM, memstick, ....

Most realistic way would be close the PR as "won't fix" and delete 304 at some point, though.

This is one of the solutions that actually came to mind, as did trying NetBSD. However, I am sticking with xf86-video-nv.
But to implement the solution with the old xorg-server, it is unlikely that anyone will use the nvidia-driver-304 package.
The availability of this package for FreeBSD 13.5-RELEASE and FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE raises completely unfounded expectations.

 

[T-Aoki]

Anyway, as far as I know, GPU cards usually uses a number of electrolytic capacitors, which would degradate and/or explode sooner or later in such a long term (20years) use. Yes, I know some would attempt to repair the card.