Are there NVidia driver for OpenBSD 3.8 ?

[Anabar]

Hi

The problem is to use two monitors at the same time under OpenBSD 3.8.
For example, there are TvinView mode (http://download.nvidia.com/freebsd/1...ppendix-i.html ) and "Multiple X Screens on One Card" ( http://download.nvidia.com/freebsd/1...ppendix-p.html )

Card ---- GeForce MX 5500

Will NVidia (or anybody else) support OpenBSD?


Thanks

[sequethin]

until nvidia completely opens and releases specs for it's hardware, openbsd will not have "full" support for it's cards. You can count on openbsd to never use proprietary drivers. ever.

[zander]

I'm afraid there are no plans to support OpenBSD at this point.

[Anabar]

Oh...
This situation is not good.

I hope there will supporting of NVidia twinview cards into open-source nv drivers, which are included within X-server.

Thanks

[mnd999]

until nvidia completely opens and releases specs for it's hardware, openbsd will not have "full" support for it's cards. You can count on openbsd to never use proprietary drivers. ever.

I was under the impression that this was impossible due to patent licencing issues beyond Nvidia's control.

Not sure I see how OpenBSD can stop proprietary drivers though, assuming they have some kind of pluggable kernel modules interface which is published in the same way FreeBSD does.

[sparcdr]

OpenBSD's stance is against "binary blobs". Because OpenBSD implements security features, such as stack protection, encrypting, and execution restrictions, rest assured that the amount of effort required to get the NVidia drivers to work with OpenBSD's X11 implementation and kernel are not worth the effort to NVidia. There is no FreeBSD compatibility in either userland or kernelspace on OpenBSD.

OpenBSD might not be able to prevent NVidia from porting it, but even with demand most of the OpenBSD core developers could care less about proprietary drivers. This is the reason OpenBSD is so much more secure, they don't take no for an answer when it comes to fixing bugs or implementing security. You could sorta say that it's a bug to allow proprietary drivers to interoperate with a security focused system, for they claim that without the source of a driver, there is no way to audit the security to the degree they need to. OpenBSD constantly audits their tree, and does not accept commercial drivers because of the fact that their stance is to keep the tree open, accessible, and safe.

Sorry to say this, I don't use OpenBSD for this reason. It's a bit too liberal, and can be compared to the GPL despite being a "BSD". The ironic part is that the GPL licensed Linux kernel was the first non-Windows operating system supported by NVidia, and there are no commercial companies behind the BSDs, while there are probably 10 commercial Linux distributions. Sad but true. Use FreeBSD if you like BSD but want your twinview, composite, and proprietary drivers. I am not against NVidia myself, I have a PNY Verto GeForce FX 5700 Ultra AGP and a PNY Verto GeForce FX 5200 Dual-Head PCI, running on FreeBSD. I'm mad about Macromedia Flashplayer support right now myself, NVidia even provides Solaris drivers, what else could you really ask for, besides the source which ATI would love to have?

[Lawrenz]

What if nVidia releases there Hardware Documentation.

Would they do that?

This should be helpful in my opinion.