NVIDIA FreeBSD Kernel Feature Requests, interesting info for dfly?

[Dimitri Kovalov]

--- W B Hacker <wbh at xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 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

You have it backwards. The reason BSD is all 'black boxes'
is that it is not competitive or good in the video area.
Apple can make it work because they sell the whole box and
can control the hardware. But the open-source OSes don't
have the resources to support video. It would be a good
thing to have a model where vendors could easily take their
windows drivers and make them work with BSD as a module.
You know that vendors will make drivers for windows, so
making it easy for them to port to your OS is good for
everytone.

Its time for open sourcers to realize they can't do
everything themselves. I don't care if a driver is binary
if it works. I want to have options.

Dimitri

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