# More graphics



## bcomputerguy (Jan 27, 2017)

Howdy

I recently purchased a raspberry pi 3 model b

I loaded up FreeBSD on it built with crochet and it's great as a sorta server thing. Running top and seeing only like 10 items was pretty amazing.

I couldn't get xorg up and running though and that's sort of a problem, it seems to go back to the whole graphics stack being a mess on FreeBSD. After playing around with FreeBSD on the PI i loaded up rasbian, it's pretty neat lil thing, decent for what it does but I am sure that with FreeBSD and better graphics drivers FreeBSD would be a no brainer go to choice for more than just servers.

The more I look around it seems there's a lot of issues why graphics was left to wither away on FreeBSD and I can understand why some people would have the idea that FreeBSD is dropping desktop support.

I am kinda much raking here to see if there are others who have started or are interested in getting modern graphics up and running on FreeBSD linuxkpi guys need not apply unless your interested in doing the hard work to get proper kernel support for graphics and not trying to tern BSD into linux.

With modern graphics imagine if you could have hardware like the Surface Studio but running on top of a stable OS like FreeBSD.


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## Sevendogs (Jan 27, 2017)

Ok, I'll bite: Didn't know the graphics stack was a mess in FreeBSD. I am running full Nvidia 3d acceleration, beautiful fonts, works perfectly for me. Keep in mind this OS was originally designed as a server but it can obviously function very well as a desktop: I, and others, have been doing this for quite some time. In my use case, as long as everything works I'm happy.


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## SirDice (Jan 27, 2017)

Also note that graphics on the Pi is done in a completely different way compared to a regular x86 desktop. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCore


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## drhowarddrfine (Jan 27, 2017)

bcomputerguy said:


> The more I look around it seems there's a lot of issues why graphics was left to wither away on FreeBSD


FreeBSD doesn't develop graphics drivers or graphics software. What software are you wanting to run that can't run on FreeBSD? Here's nVidia's FreeBSD driver list for amd64.



> and I can understand why some people would have the idea that FreeBSD is dropping desktop support.


That's the first time I have ever heard anyone say that.



Sevendogs said:


> Keep in mind this OS was originally designed as a server


This OS is a ATT UNIX derivative, not originally designed as a server.


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## Sevendogs (Jan 27, 2017)

My apologies, I mistakenly assumed Unix was originally intended to be for servers. I need to read up on my Unix history


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## ASX (Jan 27, 2017)

Sevendogs said:


> My apologies, I mistakenly assumed Unix was originally intended to be for servers. I need to read up on my Unix history



This is a good source: https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html


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## bcomputerguy (Jan 27, 2017)

drhowarddrfine said:


> FreeBSD doesn't develop graphics drivers or graphics software. What software are you wanting to run that can't run on FreeBSD? Here's nVidia's FreeBSD driver list for amd64.
> 
> 
> That's the first time I have ever heard anyone say that.
> ...



Those drivers if I'm not mistaken are just wrappers around the linux stuff which itself is wrappers around the Windows stuff.

The hot new thing in unix graphics world is the kernel mode setting and atomic updates. It's in the linux kernel under the driver/gpu/drm 

pretty interesting stuff. I am looking at it to get it ported over to FreeBSD. It's not trivial since a lot of the work is being done on Linux and so the code is tied closely to linux ways of doing things.



SirDice said:


> Also note that graphics on the Pi is done in a completely different way compared to a regular x86 desktop.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCore



Thanks for that info, i'll definitely look into that as well but modern desktop graphics is definitely my first priority right now.

The PI is a cool device, it would be great to have it fully supported on BSD; the PI 3, PI 2 seems well supported as it stands now.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jan 28, 2017)

bcomputerguy said:


> Those drivers if I'm not mistaken are just wrappers around the linux stuff which itself is wrappers around the Windows stuff.


So no different than Linux and the same driver as Windows. FreeBSD has a support page on nVidia along with a HOWTO and support pages. Still doesn't sound like a "whithering away".


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## kpedersen (Jan 28, 2017)

ASX said:


> This is a good source: https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/hist.html


An interesting read. The last paragraph is a tad worrying...

"In ten years, I hope we can look back with the same mixed impression of progress combined with continuity."

Basically in my mind development environments have stagnated or regressed and user interfaces have become so bad that they really might as well never have had existed in the first place. I am back to the command line for 99% of things now anyway. And now we have a scary onslaught of locked down app stores or adver-platforms... Was the sweet-spot perhaps the late 90s?


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## Sevendogs (Jan 29, 2017)

Plenty of good ui's out there, it really a matter of taste and useability. Some commercial ui's are terrible, some open-source ones brilliant  and of course the inverse is true as well. Some things from the '90s were awesome (IMHO Gnome 2) but again it's a matter of taste.


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## bcomputerguy (Jan 29, 2017)

kpedersen said:


> An interesting read. The last paragraph is a tad worrying...
> 
> "In ten years, I hope we can look back with the same mixed impression of progress combined with continuity."
> 
> Basically in my mind development environments have stagnated or regressed and user interfaces have become so bad that they really might as well never have had existed in the first place. I am back to the command line for 99% of things now anyway. And now we have a scary onslaught of locked down app stores or adver-platforms... Was the sweet-spot perhaps the late 90s?



This is the thing that I see happening, not only that but everyone instead of calling out the B.S. on all fronts are like, well my walled garden is rosey enough. If we continue to say it's good enough, then we will eventually paint ourselves into a corner that will be extremely painful to get out of. Best to avoid the pain then by exerting a little more effort now.


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