Working with the graphical environment on FreeBSD

Contents

  1. Working with the graphical environment on FreeBSD
    1. Team
    2. Roadmap
    3. Tested hardware matrix
    4. Ports
    5. Kernel drivers
    6. Wayland
    7. Reporting

This page and all the linked articles presents the status and directions of all the low-level components making FreeBSD usable as a desktop.

This includes:

However, this doesn't include:

Team

Name

Responsible for

Baptiste Daroussin

Eitan Adler

Jean-Sébastien Pédron

Kernel video drivers

Jung-uk Kim

Koop Mast

X.Org-related ports, Mesa ports

Niclas Zeising

X.Org-related ports

The best way to contact us is:

We have a blog. We use this blog for:

What have we been doing:

Roadmap

Project

Comment

Status

Blocks on

Notes

Ports: Mesa: turn on --enable-glx-tls

WIP

Kernel: DRM & drivers: Use the Linux shim

Reduce the diff with Linux

WIP

X.Org: update xf86-video-intel to pre 3.0 releases

WIP, needs more testing

Version 2.99.917 (git snapshot) is in the xserver-next branch and works on my Sandybridge system (kwm@). Needs xserver 1.18+

X.Org: support Glamor

Enabled in xorg-server 1.17.2, not enabled in drivers yet, need more testing.

Required for 2D hw acceleration on recent Radeon GPUs

X.Org: support usb_id attribute in config:devd

Not started

Requires libusb and pretty complex string parser

Kernel: DRM & drivers: Update to the newest Linux

Update to the newest possible version of Linux

Not started

Reduce the diff with Linux first

Kernel: DRM & drivers: Add PRIME support

Used to move buffers between GPUs

Not started

Ports: find a solution for udev

udev is used by critical components

On hold

It has been reported that udev will be replaced in the Linux world in the medium term (say, a year). The next solution isn't known yet, maybe something tightly integrated to systemd.

Mesa: handle udev dependency

Mesa depends on udev for components used by OpenCL and Wayland

WIP

Mesa now uses libdevq to replace udev functions. This has allowed to build libgbm, drm egl platform, and the first OpenCL tests are working.

Ports: libevdev and libinput

evdev GSoC will help with this

Ports: Make port for Wayland

Xorg replacement

WIP

Experimental port made, but completly untested because there isn't anything that can use it yet. Probably Weston at first

Overview about Wayland status.

Ports: Make port for Weston

WIP

Dependency to udev and libinput

Weston is a composer reference implementation of wayland.

Ports: DRI3 support

Information about what needs to be done for DRI3 to work.

Not started

Needs PRIME support in kernel

Ports: Xorg-server update to 1.18

Update the xorg-server to 1.18

Finished (xserver-next branch)

See blocker table below.

Xserver 1.18 blockers (please note that these ports are not maintained by the graphics team):

Port

Status

Notes

virtualbox

WIP version available

Version 4.3.x doesn't support xserver 1.18. Virtualbox 5.x does but isn't available in FreeBSD ports. WIP versions are here: 5.0, 5.0.4, but has locking issues and clock/timer issues with kernel modules.

nvidia-driver

Update nvidia-driver bug 201340

Needs update to at least 358.16.

nvidia-driver-304 and nvidia-driver-340

Need updating to 304.131 and 340.96.

See the archive for finished project.

Tested hardware matrix

About the tested hardware matrix

The tables below aren't an exhaustive list of hardware supported by FreeBSD, they only show what was actually tested by developers and users. Devices missing from these tables may or may not work on FreeBSD. If you tested a component not listed below, please report how it went by following the instructions below.

Video cards

About GPU codenames vs. marketing names

The entries below are misleading because they use the marketing names as the "key". This table needs to be rewritten using GPU codenames as the key.

If your GPU is not supported

If your GPU is not supported by FreeBSD, you can fallback on VESA (if your computer uses a BIOS) or SCFB (if your computer uses UEFI). For the latter case, you can find instructions to setup SCFB in a dedicated article.

Manufacturer

Video card family

State

Min. FreeBSD version

Comments

AMD

Radeon 7000

RV100

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon 7500

RV200

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon 9000

RV250

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon 9200

RV280

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon 9250

RV280

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon 9550

RV350

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon 9800

R350

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon X300

RV370

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon X600

RV370

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon X700

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon Xpress X1270

RS690

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon X1650

RV530

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 2400

RV610

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 2600

RV630

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 3200

RS780

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 3400

RV620

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 3450

RV620

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 3650

RV635

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 3870

RV670

Doesn't work

Any

See notes: 1 - See "KMS on Radeon HD 3870" on x11@

AMD

Radeon HD 4200

RS880

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Mobility Radeon HD 4200

RS880M

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 4350

RV710

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 4650

RV730

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 4670

RV730

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 4850/4870

RV770

Works

Any

See notes: 1

AMD

FirePro 3D V4800

Evergreen / Redwood

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Mobility Radeon HD 5000

Madison / Redwood

Doesn't work

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1 - Hybrid platform

AMD

Radeon HD 5450

Evergreen / Cedar

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 5750

Evergreen / Juniper

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 5770

Evergreen / Juniper

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Mobility Radeon HD 5870

Evergreen / Juniper

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 6250

Northern Islands / Palm

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 6310

Northern Islands / Palm

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 6250

Northern Islands / Wrestler

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 6290

Northern Islands / Wrestler

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 6450

Northern Islands / Caicos

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 6550

Sumo

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 6800

Northern Islands / Barts

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 6950

Northern Islands / Cayman

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 6970

Northern Islands / Cayman

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

FirePro V4900

Northern Islands / Turks

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 7340

Northern Islands / Wrestler

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 7560D

Northern Islands / Cayman

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 7660D

Northern Islands / Cayman

Works

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1

AMD

Radeon HD 7700

Southern Islands / Cape Verde

Partially supported

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1, 2 - Acceleration doesn't work yet.

AMD

Radeon HD 7800

Southern Islands / Pitcairn

Partially supported

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1, 2 - Acceleration doesn't work yet.

AMD

Radeon HD 7950

Southern Islands / Tahiti

Partially supported

9.3, 10.0

See notes: 1, 2 - Acceleration doesn't work yet.

AMD

Radeon HD 8000

Sea Islands

Not supported

AMD

Radeon HD Rx 200

Volcanic Islands

Not supported

Intel

GMA 950

Calistoga

Works

9.1

Intel

GMA 4500 / 4500MHD

Eaglelake / Cantiga

Works

9.1

Intel

i[357]-xxx processors

Ironlake

Works

9.1

Intel

i[357]-2xxx processors

Sandy Bridge

Works

9.1

Intel

i[357]-3xxx processors

Ivy Bridge

Works

9.1

Intel

Xeon E3 V2 processors

Ivy Bridge

Works

9.1

Intel

i[357]-4xxx processors

Haswell

Works

11.0

See Update i915 GPU driver to Linux 3.8

Intel

Xeon E3 V3 processors

Haswell

Works

11.0

See Update i915 GPU driver to Linux 3.8

Intel

Broadwell

Not supported

Intel

Skylake

Not supported

NVIDIA

GeForce 6600 GT

Works

Any

Using nvidia driver

NVIDIA

GeForce 8200

Works

Any

Using nvidia driver

NVIDIA

GeForce 8800 GTS

Works

Any

Using nv driver, only report on current

NVIDIA

GeForce 8800M GTS

Works

Any

Using nv driver

NVIDIA

GeForce GT 440

Works

Any

Using nvidia driver

NVIDIA

GeForce GT 520

Works

Any

Using nvidia driver

NVIDIA

GeForce GTX 550 Ti

Works

Any

Using nvidia driver

NVIDIA

GeForce GTX 560 Ti

Works

Any

Using nvidia driver

NVIDIA

GeForce GTX 650 Ti

Works

Any

Using nvidia driver

NVIDIA

GeForce GTX 960

Works

Any

Using nvidia driver

You may refer to the following resources to determine your video card family:

Notes:

  1. Radeon video cards:
    • AGP cards not supported before FreeBSD 10-CURRENT
    • Features not yet working/implemented:
      • Hardware-assisted video decoding

      • Audio over HDMI or DisplayPort

      • Multiple cards sharing output connectors
      • Power management
  2. The GALLIUM backed Software renderer works.

Ports

Development repository

Before going into the official Ports tree, work is made in a separate Git repository hosted on GitHub. The workflow is described in a dedicated article.

To contribute, you should clone the repository and if you don't have write access, you can submit your work using:

Kernel drivers

In sync with Linux...

Component

Linux version

DRM

3.8

TTM

ff7c60c (between 3.8 and 3.9)

i915

3.8

Radeon

3.8

How to contribute

We have a dedicated article to get people started with contributions to the kernel.

Video driver loaded at boot time

If you want to automatically load a video driver at boot time, we recommend to do it from /etc/rc.conf: 

kld_list="radeonkms"

Loading the driver from /boot/loader.conf is not recommended and may not even work. For instance, loading i915kms like this is known to cause a hang early in boot with a black screen.

Wayland

While Wayland isn't ready for general use. This article will collect some information about Wayland.

Name

Status

Comment

wayland

Ported, not tested

Not tested use to no users

libinput

Not ported

Input library from the Wayland folks, for keyboard, mouse, touchscreens.

weston

Not Ported

The Weston Wayland Compositor

libEGL

Backend not enabled

libEGL from Mesa has a wayland backend.

Some known users.

Users

Comments

GNOME 3

Has support for Wayland in x11-toolkits/gtk30, x11/gdm (3.16), graphics/cogl, graphics/clutter, x11-wm/mutter and x11/gnome-shell. Additional it needs libinput to work. There might be other user of Wayland in the GNOME stack.

KDE 5.2

KDE doesn't use Wayland for the windowing system yet, but only for the kde-plasma-workspace for the screenlocker currently.

Webkit2

The www/webkit2-gtk3 2.8.1+ has wayland support

cairo-dock

gstreamer1-plugins-bad

Uses wayland-egl (from mesa)

Reporting

What information to provide

If you encounter problems with either the kernel driver or the in-development ports, please send a mail to freebsd-x11@FreeBSD.org and join:

If everything is working for you, you may report on the same mailing (this helps us know which hardware/software configuration are believed to work) and join:

Known issues

Graphics (last edited 2016-04-13 20:28:30 by BradDavis)