# Plea to NVidia to add vulkan support to our graphics driver



## malavon (Nov 10, 2019)

Hi all,

I've created a post on the NVidia forum to request Vulkan support for our GPU drivers. Even for people who don't play games or anything this will become very useful in the future. OpenGL is slowly being deprecated (see my UE4 post as well) and to future-proof our favourite OS we really need Vulkan support.
I'd like to encourage you all to go over there, create an account (I know, just one more) and add something to the topic.
At the very least it might show someone that there are multiple people interested and even if there's no response from an official dev, I can refer to that post to indicate there actually is demand for it.

Thank you very much.

edit: thread was moved to the NVidia FreeBSD sub-forum, updated the link


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## tingo (Nov 10, 2019)

malavon said:


> I'd like to encourage you all to go over there, create an account (I know, just one more) and add something to the topic.


Done.


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## shkhln (Nov 10, 2019)

Is there a way to skip the real name and company registration step? I don't want to fill the form with garbage data.


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## malavon (Nov 10, 2019)

I don't know, I had to fill it in myself too. It's a bit annoying though.


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## shkhln (Nov 10, 2019)

Last time that completely pissed me off. Anyway, I left a passive-aggressive remark in your support.


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## shkhln (Nov 10, 2019)

Oh my… That Metin 2 reference is so meta.


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## steps (Nov 10, 2019)

Did my duty.


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## msplsh (Nov 11, 2019)

nVidia doesn't care two bits about non-Windows and non HPC.  There are probably more people that want to use nVidia cards in Macs and they aren't interested in fixing their driver to work with last years OS release.  Not saying it's useless to complain, but don't get your hopes up.


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## shkhln (Nov 11, 2019)

msplsh said:


> nVidia doesn't care two bits about non-Windows and non HPC. There are probably more people that want to use nVidia cards in Macs and they aren't interested in fixing their driver to work with last years OS release. Not saying it's useless to complain, but don't get your hopes up.



Mac OS X is an entirely different matter since all drivers there must go through Apple, afaik. As for the hopes, we are mostly complaining on principle, the driver is advertised as supporting Vulkan and therefore it should provide an implementation. Other than that, I sorted out my Vulkan issues more than a year ago.


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## vchan (Dec 19, 2019)

I commented on that post as well. I also added my plug for proper CUDA support as well, but that's really a different animal.


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## shkhln (Dec 19, 2019)

Indeed. Presumably Vulkan is a trivial build configuration change, while CUDA requires actual porting work.


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## aimeec1995 (Jan 9, 2020)

i do not think it is worth your time, nvidia have been total shit heads these years i imagine they will stop maintaining this driver in the next few years


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## shkhln (Jan 9, 2020)

aimeec1995 said:


> i do not think it is worth your time



Please, go away — you are ruining our fun.


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## steps (Apr 1, 2021)

Victory!
Thread support-for-vulkan-1-2-to-freebsd-nvidia-driver-added.79610


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## kpedersen (Apr 1, 2021)

The driver is 117.67 MB and in that size NVIDIA couldn't even fit in Vulkan support for my GeForce 4 ti. Madness!

This is obviously great news (since we don't have Nouveau to fall back on). Though honestly a little unexpected. It is also April 1st after all


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## msplsh (Apr 1, 2021)

Well how about that.


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## malavon (Apr 16, 2021)

Well, NVIDIA did come through and we have - although not in a production driver yet - vulkan 1.2 support. I've been testing a bit and everything seems to be working well.


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## SteamBSD (Apr 18, 2021)

I do massage:








						CUDA and /(nv_(un|)register|os_(un|)lock)_user_pages/
					

Hello, I am interested in the nvidia driver and I want to see support for this in FreeBSD




					forums.developer.nvidia.com
				








--- SteamBSD © is FREE operating system.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8wwRY8yGWiJ-bIQlK0wvUA/videos
Site (download ISO/IMG): https://lpros.blogspot.com
Github (internet installer): https://github.com/steambsd/os
Email: steambsd@gmail.com


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## malavon (Apr 7, 2022)

Ok, I know I'm resurrecting this post but I just noticed that on the (new?) driver download page for the RTX 30xx that there are only a few operating systems listed.
You know how on the old (?) driver page you had to click on the "Operating system" dropdown and then had to choose the last option "Show All Operating Systems" to see FreeBSD? I know most people probably don't end up there since they - rightfully so - install drivers via the port system but it's been like that for as long as I know.

Well, on the new driver download page there are only 6 now...I think it's safe to say that FreeBSD may have moved up in the NVIDIA world a bit:  





ps. also checked on a Windows install just in case there was some User Agent voodoo going on


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## bsduck (Apr 7, 2022)

I don't know if it has moved up but at least it hasn't moved down. Meanwhile, along with 32 bit platforms and older Windows releases, Solaris support seems to have been deprecated.


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## jbo (Apr 7, 2022)

malavon said:


> ps. also checked on a Windows install just in case there was some User Agent voodoo going on


I've checked on a Windows machine with both FireFox and Microsoft Edge and I get the same options as you showed in your screenshot.
I've also checked the non-GeForce specific download page and got the same results.

bsduck at least for Quadro they still support older versions of Windows and also Solaris. This is also true for recent Quadro card drivers.


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## SirDice (Apr 7, 2022)

Nvidia is ending GPU driver support for 32-bit operating systems
					

Going all-in with 64-bit.




					www.pcgamer.com
				




That's why the list is so short nowadays. FreeBSD didn't move up, the list has been cut shorter. 

(Older releases had both 32 bit and 64 bit FreeBSD listed, now only the 64 bit is left)


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## malavon (Apr 7, 2022)

SirDice said:


> That's why the list is so short nowadays. FreeBSD didn't move up, the list has been cut shorter.


It's more than that. Solaris has been booted out, so is MacOS. Also a few older Windows versions (even 64-bit) that are no longer widely used.
To me it's more or less saying that FreeBSD became a first-class citizen at NVIDIA. At least in my eyes this massively reduces the chance that FreeBSD support will be reduced in the near future, if anything it'll be maintained or expanded.


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## Menelkir (Apr 7, 2022)

malavon said:


> It's more than that. Solaris has been booted out, so is MacOS. Also a few older Windows versions (even 64-bit) that are no longer widely used.
> To me it's more or less saying that FreeBSD became a first-class citizen at NVIDIA. At least in my eyes this massively reduces the chance that FreeBSD support will be reduced in the near future, if anything it'll be maintained or expanded.


MacOS was booted because of a fight between nvidia and Apple (both sides was wrong), ending apple giving the finger to nvidia AND his own customers with nvidia cards (ended up with Apple dropping support for not-too-old macbooks that had an nvidia card).
About support, Kepler was already cut off at 470 series, in a similar 390 series fashion. And this includes FreeBSD.


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## Jose (Apr 7, 2022)

Menelkir said:


> MacOS was booted because of a fight between nvidia and Apple (both sides was wrong)...


Oh I disagree:


> Rather than wait for the next open-source library, Vulkan, to formalize, Apple developed its own graphics API, Metal, for use with iOS. Microsoft most certainly inspired Metal. Bringing Metal to macOS was all-but given and was ported to macOS in 2019, set to replace both OpenGL and OpenCL and skip Vulkan support.
> 
> macOS 10.14 Mojave required metal-compatible GPUs. At some point, during the macOS Mojave beta, Apple pulled Nvidia's ability to sign its code, which ended Nvidia's support for macOS in one spiteful, anti-competitive move. In order for GPUs to be Metal compatible, they needed drivers, and Nvidia wasn't able to release drivers.











						Apple vs. Nvidia. : What happened?
					

If you've been using macOS for a while, you might remember a time when Apple had both GPU options from ATI (purchased later by AMD) and Nvidia. In fact, the ...




					blog.greggant.com
				




Screw Crapple. I have already decided never to buy their products again, but if I hadn't this would be reason enough.


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## Menelkir (Apr 7, 2022)

Jose said:


> Oh I disagree:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Apple prohibited nvidia to deliver even that webdrivers, which is childish. That's why I've said both sides are wrong.


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## msplsh (Apr 7, 2022)

nVidia could have released unsigned drivers and forced Apple's hand, but they played it coy because there's more to it.

Anyway, FreeBSD isn't in the way of nVidia's strategic goals like Intel, OpenCL, Apple and macOS are so why not support them.  More CUDA devs.


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## Menelkir (Apr 7, 2022)

msplsh said:


> nVidia could have released unsigned drivers and forced Apple's hand, but they played it coy because there's more to it.


Probably a contract.


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## Jose (Apr 7, 2022)

msplsh said:


> nVidia could have released unsigned drivers and forced Apple's hand, but they played it coy because there's more to it.


Loading unsigned drivers requires disabling System Integrity Protection after Macos Mojave:








						Whitelisting an unsigned kext in macOS Catalina
					

I've recently bought an old Alesis io26 Firewire Audio interface. The last driver release was only working on mountain Lion and older. After some time I've managed to install said drivers on Catali...




					stackoverflow.com
				




Not the kind of thing you'd like to advise most Mac users to do.


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## msplsh (Apr 7, 2022)

You do if you want them to use your product and complain to Apple that it's stupid.


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## Jose (Apr 7, 2022)

msplsh said:


> You do if you want them to use your product and complain to Apple that it's stupid.


Macs are targeted at the vast majority of users who don't know what a GPU is and don't care. This precisely the kind of user that needs things like System Integrity Protection, lest the Net be even more awash in botnets.

And anyways, even if you were to manage to get all Mac users to complain somehow, I doubt Apple would care. Apple makes the vast majority of its money from selling Iphones and Iphone products. Any and all other products are of secondary importance at best.


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## msplsh (Apr 7, 2022)

Uh, if you're nVidia and selling CUDA GPUs to people on macOS who want to continue using CUDA, the users will do what they have to do to continue running CUDA, and if you're running CUDA, then they know exactly what a GPU is.  You're looking at this from a Apple viewpoint.  Apple would absolutely care if enough people who bought their most expensive Mac got really grumpy about it, enough to switch platforms.  They made a gamble that there wasn't enough of them and/or that porting away from CUDA wasn't a dealbreaker.  Maybe it worked out for them.

Anyway, nVidia and Apple seem to think balkanized GPU platforms like Metal and CUDA are good.    At least nVidia knows they don't have a captive audience and will support Vulkan.


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## jbo (Apr 7, 2022)

Could we not get sidetracked and dilute malavon 's efforts here?
Feel free to create an Off-Topic thread.


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## Jose (Apr 7, 2022)

msplsh said:


> Apple would absolutely care if enough people who bought their most expensive Mac got really grumpy about it, enough to switch platforms.


And I doubt they would notice. I guess we'll agree to disagree on this.



msplsh said:


> Anyway, nVidia and Apple seem to think balkanized GPU platforms like Metal and CUDA are good.    At least nVidia knows they don't have a captive audience and will support Vulkan.


We're in vigorous agreement here. The difference is Nvidia supports Vulkan and Apple does not as you point out. Just the fact that they're trying to lock you in to their own proprietary graphics API is enough reason to give them the finger.


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## malavon (Apr 7, 2022)

jbodenmann said:


> Could we not get sidetracked and dilute malavon 's efforts here?
> Feel free to create an Off-Topic thread.


Thanks. Don't worry, this was an old one of my topics I resurrected because it really fit. I like to think that it was our continual nagging for Vulkan that eventually got us this much coveted spot on the main page 
It doesn't really matter if it gets polluted a little.


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## grahamperrin@ (Apr 8, 2022)

malavon said:


> … Solaris has been booted out, …



Via Unix Drivers | NVIDIA:

Solaris Display Driver – x64/x86 | 510.60.02 | Solaris x86/x64 | NVIDIA (2022-03-22)


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