too many video drivers

mdh mdh_lists at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 31 16:19:44 PDT 2009


--- On Tue, 3/31/09, Adam Vandemore <amvandemore at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Adam Vandemore <amvandemore at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: too many video drivers
> To: "FreeBSD" <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
> Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 3:39 PM
> Tsu-Fan Cheng wrote:
> > Hi,
> >    I am rebuilding ports and realize that i have too
> many input/video
> > drivers for x-win installed. i know i need nv driver
> since my graphic
> > card is from nvidia, and i want to deinstall all
> others. but i am not
> > sure if its safe to do so, e.g. i am confused by
> "xf86-video-chips"
> > since i don't know what kind of "chip"
> that stands for. can someone
> > tell me which are basics and which are safe to remove?
> thanks!!
> > 
> > TFC
>
> Depending on what versions of things you use the
> nvidia-driver port and
> /usr/ports/x11-drivers/xf86-video-nouveau may be
> replacements for the nv driver.  Honestly I'm not really
> sure what the xf86-video-chips
> port does, but I don't think it's related to nvidia
> and is perhaps for older video chipsets.

x11/nvidia-driver is the driver released by nvidia.  It doesn't work on architectures other than i386 and has some other limitations (breaks certain components of KDE4, for one other thing - see the 'black windows bug'.)  It does support 3d acceleration using the nvidia GPU, though.  

The x11-drivers/xf86-video-nv port is the open source Xorg driver for nvidia chipsets.  It doesn't support 3d acceleration using the GPU.  

Neither is a perfect solution, and the disparity has been an issue for years now...

- mdh



      


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