Any recommendations for a graphics card for a #FreeBSD desktop? I've been using a ~10 year old nvidia card, but the drivers haven't been updated in a while and have incomplete implementation of libEGL (see bug 263347) which makes some 3D accelerated software (like kicad) crash.
So, even though the current card still works, the closed source nature of the "driver" is making me consider replacing it with something that works and is open source.
I don't need a super fancy card, but some 2D & 3D acceleration would be nice to make X.org and generally boring programs on a 4k monitor not suck.
(The desktop itself is 10 years old Ivy Bridge, and overall I'm happy with it. The only real issue is the nvidia package - version 390 - that is broken and EOL'd. This is nvidia's fault, not FreeBSD's.)
@jeffpc does the libEGL issue affect Wayland as well as X11? I know most distros are looking to make the switch away from X11, but I'm not sure what the situation on desktop FreeBSD is right now in terms of Wayland stability, or whether it'll even solve your problem. (I only run FreeBSD on servers so desktop is a bit alien to me)
@gsuberland The way I understand the issue (and I'm not a graphics stack person at all), the binaries shipped by (and no longer maintained by) nvidia say they implement standard X version Y, but in reality they don't fully implement it. When you install the package, it (reasonably) overrides the standard mesa/whatever library. Consumers of the whole stack can query what is implemented and act accordingly. Since the nvidia blobs advertise X vY, the consumers try to use it.
@jeffpc oh, nasty. that takes me back to the old days of trying to get broadcom wifi working with ndiswrapper and fwcutter. the versioning was a total mess.
It is my understanding that EGL is not X11 specific, and so I assume Wayland would be affected as well. I haven't paid attention to the whole X11 vs. Wayland thing... aside from occasionally dreading the inevitable breakage as software switches over.
@jeffpc from what I've heard, the switch to Wayland is pretty smooth, and a lot of apps have already gotten past the initial hurdle of bypassing a lot of the X-specific hacks they had to make, but on the flipside there are some major regressions in accessibility features in Wayland that the blind and disabled communities are less than happy about.
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