4 ms·

Please use the funds to implement support for the last two generations of Intel integrated graphics chipsets. Currently, FreeBSD supports neither Broadwell or

Please use the funds to implement support for the last two generations of Intel integrated graphics chipsets. Currently, FreeBSD supports neither Broadwell or Skylake and they're probably the most common chipsets used in laptops. source https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics I would be running FreeBSD on my Dells right now if I could.

loeg 10y ago
Matt Macy and company have basically added enough Linux API support to FreeBSD to run minimally ported Linux i915 drivers on FreeBSD. That work is here: https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics/commits/drm-next-4.7 https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics/comm... It more or less works on new Intel hardware today (same hardware as Linux 4.7, but more bugs). What's left for out of the box support, you ask? * Committing the needed "linuxkpi" additions. This is complicated by the fact that some of Macy's work just imported GPL2 code rather than recreating it BSD-licensed. Hans Petter Selasky has been doing a lot of work lately to fix this gap. * Fixing remaining bugs/incompatibilities in the linuxkpi that result in artifacts and crashes. And the further concern is, how do we keep from falling so far behind again? Matt's vision has two pieces: * We bring down our driver diff to almost nothing and expand the linuxkpi as needed by newer versions of the graphics drivers. This would make bringing in newer versions of the i915/radeon/amdgpu drivers less painful. * We move the graphics drivers and linuxkpi (or portions of it) to the ports tree. FreeBSD's release cycle is far too slow to wait for a release to support new graphics hardware. On the other hand, stable branches get new ports on a regular basis.
- yjftsjthsd-h 10y ago
  Does putting graphics drivers in the ports tree also help the licensing situation, by keeping GPL out of the core system?
  - kryptiskt 10y ago
    That's not a problem, Intel releases the driver source under a BSD license.
  - loeg 10y ago
    The i915 drivers are dual-licensed BSD/GPL and the amdgpu drivers are MIT-licensed, so this isn't a concern for x86 systems. The main area of concern for GPL in the driver space is that some of the ARM GPU drivers are GPL licensed. From my perspective, it doesn't matter too much whether a GPL2 kernel module is in base or ports. I'm not a license purist.
dwringer 10y ago
I know it's not an Intel problem but CUDA support from nvidia would also be nice :P

loeg 10y ago

Matt Macy and company have basically added enough Linux API support to FreeBSD to run minimally ported Linux i915 drivers on FreeBSD. That work is here: https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics/commits/drm-next-4.7 https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics/comm... It more or less works on new Intel hardware today (same hardware as Linux 4.7, but more bugs). What's left for out of the box support, you ask? * Committing the needed "linuxkpi" additions. This is complicated by the fact that some of Macy's work just imported GPL2 code rather than recreating it BSD-licensed. Hans Petter Selasky has been doing a lot of work lately to fix this gap. * Fixing remaining bugs/incompatibilities in the linuxkpi that result in artifacts and crashes. And the further concern is, how do we keep from falling so far behind again? Matt's vision has two pieces: * We bring down our driver diff to almost nothing and expand the linuxkpi as needed by newer versions of the graphics drivers. This would make bringing in newer versions of the i915/radeon/amdgpu drivers less painful. * We move the graphics drivers and linuxkpi (or portions of it) to the ports tree. FreeBSD's release cycle is far too slow to wait for a release to support new graphics hardware. On the other hand, stable branches get new ports on a regular basis.

yjftsjthsd-h 10y ago
Does putting graphics drivers in the ports tree also help the licensing situation, by keeping GPL out of the core system?
- kryptiskt 10y ago
  That's not a problem, Intel releases the driver source under a BSD license.
- loeg 10y ago
  The i915 drivers are dual-licensed BSD/GPL and the amdgpu drivers are MIT-licensed, so this isn't a concern for x86 systems. The main area of concern for GPL in the driver space is that some of the ARM GPU drivers are GPL licensed. From my perspective, it doesn't matter too much whether a GPL2 kernel module is in base or ports. I'm not a license purist.

dwringer 10y ago

I know it's not an Intel problem but CUDA support from nvidia would also be nice :P