intro

[Pete Wright]

On 10/10/2017 13:29, Tom Rushworth wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> A few quick words to say where I'm coming from:
>
> I'm a long time C programmer, mostly userland, but I have done some 
> kernel work.  I was doing Linux USB drivers in the early 2000's, and I 
> tinkered with the NetBSD serial driver way back when serial ports were 
> actually useful.  I wrote my first serious C program in the late 1970s.
>
> I'm a FreeBSD desktop user, driven out of MacOS by the marketroids, 
> and driven out of Linux by systemd :).
>
> I recently purchased a new desktop machine that turns out to have an 
> Intel Iris Pro P6300 (Broadwell GT3e) graphics system.  It came with 
> Linux Mint 18.1 Cinnamon, which manages the screen very nicely, so the 
> Linux driver is good enough.  I ran into issues with ssh within hours 
> of starting up, and I'm just not interested in digging through yet 
> another (foolish) system administration issue involving systemd to 
> sort it out.
>
> I tried FreeBSD 11.1, but the i915 driver there isn't quite up to the 
> job.  I've looked at the various FreeBSD i915 websites and 
> discussions, but can't easily sort out where the current focus is.
>
> What I'd like from the list is advice on where to start :).  I'm 
> willing to test pre-built stuff, or build it myself, or even work on 
> the code, but everything I looked at seemed to have ground to a halt 
> about a year ago.
>
> So, where to begin?

I'd suggest taking a look at TrueOS to see if the updated i915 support 
in there offers you a better X experience.

https://www.trueos.org/

TrueOS is FreeBSD with some nice prebuilt additions for desktops and 
laptops.  They even have a live image that should allow you to verify X 
is working as expected before you install it.

If you are wanting to run vanilla FreeBSD and don't mind periodic 
instability you can also run 12-CURRENT and install the "drm-next-kmod" 
pkg.  Although depending on how much time you want to put into hacking 
on things TrueOS may be an easier entry point for you.

HTH!
-pete

-- 
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
@nomadlogicLA