4k@60Hz on RX 580 + HiDPI, ideal BSD flavor to try for first time?
reddit / BSD

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Esp724 · 2018-11-27 10:27

I'd like to try out a flavor of BSD as a desktop OS, but I'm not
certain on the state of the graphics driver support.

I have a RX 580, and use a 4K display at 60Hz over HDMI. As I
understand, this was only relatively recently enabled on Linux out-
the-box with kernel 4.16 or 4.17 with Display Core. Along with
4k@60Hz, I'd like a scalable UI that works at 200% (GNOME and KDE on
Linux do this no problem).

On Linux, it seems the graphics stack is mostly the same between
distros, but some contain a more outdated stack than others just based
on update policy. But how is this on *BSD?

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illumosguy · 2018-11-27 11:37

Unfortunately only FreeBSD has [ported
amdgpu](https://www.freshports.org/x11-drivers/xf86-video-amdgpu) so
far, therefore only FreeBSD supports it, and even here,  I have now
clue about the extent of stability and reliability  of the  driver:
I'd bet it's still largely experimental (if you find it too spartan,
my suggestion is staying with Linux, at least for the moment). Anyway,
your choice is kinda obliged, unless you want to try another *BSD on a
second spare machine (didn't you really sell your old laptop, did
you?)

NetBSD (-current), OpenBSD 6.4 (stable), and DragonflyBSD 5.2 (stable)
all have i915(4) and radeon(4)  drm/kms drivers based on Linux 4.4
(the whole Radeon HD series + KABINI, MULINS, BONAIRE HAWAII chipsets
are supported) . NetBSD has nouveau too, support is surprisingly great
already, as long as you don't try it on 10xx


 Naturally, I'm not (rather, openly against) with those who will tell
you to  use unaccelerated framebuffer driver on  OpenBSD  and waste
all the precious money invested in such an  expensive device.

The good new (for you) is that FBSD has both KDE5 (5.12.5) and GNOME3
(3.28_1)

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floatboth · 2018-11-27 19:21

FreeBSD certainly. I have an RX 480 and a 4K display at 60 Hz over DP.

> this was only relatively recently enabled on Linux out-the-box with
kernel 4.16 or 4.17 with Display Core

Nope, everything worked fine even back on 4.9. But we do have Display
Core now :) (stable gpu drivers are from 4.16, currently an upgrade to
4.19 is developed)