NVIDIA FreeBSD Kernel Feature Requests, interesting info for dfly?

[W B Hacker]

Gergo Szakal wrote:

Bill Hacker wrote:

Personally, I think the 'bigger picture' is not just NVidia
intransigence, but that the majority 'market' is indifferent to brand or
even *presence* of video.
Leaving Apple out of the equation, the vast majority of all *BSD-flavor
boxes are servers or similar network / industrial 'black boxes', usually
housed out of sight in a separate room, if not on a separate *continent*
from the sysadmin, hence run physically 'headless'.
If X-Free/X-Org is not in the default build (and I hope it never is),
then why should *any* VGA maker worry about the *BSD 'market' beyond
80-column monochrome text capability?


There is DesktopBSD, PC-BSD which are desktop-oriented systems. With
DragonFly, one can make a cool desktop install CD with little effort.
Maybe desktop users will require this, especially if XGL will be (or is)
available for BSD systems.
These, and others, do *exist*, but are hardly a bump on 
anybody's radar.

Such 'desktop' *n*x as exists is pretty effectively divided 
between Linux in F/OSS and OS X, Solaris, AIX, Iris, HP-UX, etc. 
in vendor-paid-for drivers. Volume or market-share are no big 
deal if/as/when a major corporation s funding the driver code 
under an NDA.

But without the adoption of Linux by a number of major server 
vendors, even that one would not have enough 'market' share for 
a major VGA vendor to worry about.

After all - advanced VGA units generally work OK in VESA and and 
flat-memory modes, so are usually fine for 2D text & browser 
display as well as 80-column text with generic or legacy 
drivers. It's the acceleration, 3D, textures, and other 'pretty 
things' that aren't supported.

Whatever else a *BSD is, is certainly doesn't have much presence 
in the graphics design, Hollywood special effects, home 
entertainment or gamers arena.

Bill