[talk] Updated FreeBSD Graphics For Intel GPU's

[Pete Wright]

On 08/30/2017 23:11, Malcolm Matalka wrote:
> Scott Robbins <scottro11 at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 07:49:07AM +0000, Malcolm Matalka wrote:
>>> Pete Wright <pete at nomadlogic.org> writes:
>>>
>>>> hey everyone - so i've been helping test the work that the FreeBSD folks have been doing to get support for modern Intel GPU's based on the
>>>> i915 chipset (which is a majority of the laptops shipped these days).  The initial work was to improve the linux KBI interface in FreeBSD
>>>> which allowed the developers to easily import the linux i915 code into FreeBSD.  The decision was also made to create a port of this work -
>>>> much in the same way that the Nvidia Xorg drivers are handled.
>>>>
>>>> I've been dog-fooding this code for quite a while now and while there are some rough edges it looks like this work has been accepted by the
>>>> ports team:
>>> Do you know if this means it'll start showing up TrueOS UNSTABLE woon?
>>>
>> I was under the impression that TrueOS is already using the drm-next stuff.
>> (I'm going on a vague memory of a message from Warren Block after I'd
>> mentioned my issues with an Intel card on FreeBSD forums, but I can't find
>> it.)
>>
>> If you do try with TrueOS, please update us.
> I've been running TrueOS UNSTABLE on an Asus UX350CA (i think) ZenBook,
> which is Skylake for awhile.  I don't know if the contents of this
> thread are in what I'm running but my experience is:
>
> - Video flickers.  Watching something full screen will have the screen
>    half-updated when it changes a lot.
>
> - Screen brightness doesn't work.
>
> - Suspend/resume worked for a month and then broke, which makes me sad.
>
> Crossing my fingers all of these will be solved in the near future,
> especially screen brightness.  It's like staring at the sun for too
> long.
>
> And those three things left are after a long time of having to run scfb,
> so it's come a long way and I'm very grateful for the hard work others
> have done.

out of curiosity - are you seeing that behavior using the modesetting or 
intel-i915 xorg driver?  my experience using modesetting (and glamor for 
GL acceleration) has been pretty good on both skylake and kabylake 
systems and has been more stable than the intel-i915 xorg driver.  for 
example i frequently watch youtube and other html5 videos with 
acceptable playback.

suspend and resume has been working on my end for quite a while as well 
- although there are certainly some *very* rough edges in this regard.  
one sysctl knob that may help is:

hw.acpi.reset_video=1


-pete

-- 
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
@nomadlogicLA