Re: Call for Foundation-supported Project Ideas

Port nouveau to FreeBSD.

Reason:
There are ongoing changes in the xorg API which break older
proprietary Nvidia cards' legacy drivers.
In addition, Nvidia plans to drop/discontinue support for their 390
driver in 2022.
Nvidia already stopped support releases for their 340 and older
drivers so that a lot of Nvidia graphics cards can no longer be used
on FreeBSD already or will be unusable very soon.

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3142/~/support-timeframes-for-unix-legacy-gpu-releases

On 11/24/21, Stefan Blachmann <sblachmann@gmail.com> wrote:
> Proposal:
> Clean up the xorg graphics card/driver list and remove these ones that
> do no longer work.
>
> Explanation:
>
> On 11/24/21, Jason Bacon <bacon4000@gmail.com> wrote:
>> One hurdle I've not yet been able to conquer is automatic GPU
>> configuration.  The best I've been able to do so far is an interactive
>> script that requires some rather technical decisions from the users:
>>
>> It would be really nice is we could replace this with a simple, maybe
>> even automated tool to configure a working Xorg setup on most common
>> hardware.  Wouldn't matter to me if it falls back on scfb or vesa in
>> many cases, as long as it's easy to use and produces a working desktop.
>>
>> Bonus points for not requiring a reboot to properly activate the DRM
>> module.
>>
>> I wouldn't obsess about making it work on *all* hardware off-the-bat.  I
>> think it would be more fruitful to first develop a system that works
>> *really* well on the most common hardware.  Then we have a product that
>> people will want, which will help recruit the people we'll need to work
>> on expanding hardware support.
>
> I have done this already.
> My script does autodetect and autoconfigure *all* graphics cards/chips
> for which are drivers available in FreeBSD.
> It also works with multiple graphics cards, autodetecting whether they
> can work together or not (when drivers cannot coexist).
> The script is not yet ready for release, as autoconfiguring multi-head
> configurations (eg multi-monitor configurations either with multiple
> GPU outputs and/or multiple graphics cards) is still WIP.
> (If you are interested in this topic anyway, please either mail me
> directly or open a separate discussion thread.)
>
> However, the problem is that some drivers can no longer work because
> libxaa.so (and maybe other xorg libs, too) has been removed upstream
> 10 years ago already.
> See this for more info:
> https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=257417
>
> This is the background of my proposal:
> - Test all graphics drivers on real hardware whether they are still
> functional in currently-supported FreeBSD releases
> - Remove all those drivers that can no longer work because xorg
> upstream dropped support.
> - Feed back to xorg upstrean so they can obsolete/remove these now
> useless drivers.
>
> I'd certainly be more motivated to do this if it is being sponsored,
> as I have already collected most (except for a few very rare and
> expensive AGP graphics cards) of the hardware in question.
> Because, 1. it needs some money to obtain these lacking (past
> high-end, mainly workstation usage) cards, and 2. it takes some time
> to walk through them and test every and each of these.
>