Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:51:29 -0700 From: Pete Wright <pete@nomadlogic.org> To: tbr@acm.org, freebsd-x11@freebsd.org Subject: Re: intro Message-ID: <696fb5ea-e1bf-d7c2-004a-eb4eb2af43d7@nomadlogic.org> In-Reply-To: <f0fb13d6-1d4e-2de8-f3cb-c6976f57fc9f@gmail.com> References: <f0fb13d6-1d4e-2de8-f3cb-c6976f57fc9f@gmail.com>
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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@nomadlogic.org @nomadlogicLA
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