Switchable graphics support status in FreeBSD for Intel IGP +AMD DGP

[Abraham79]

As common in recent laptops, mine is a HP 15-BS576TX which has an Intel HD 620 Integrated Graphics and AMD Radeon 520 discrete/dedicated graphics using dynamic switching with no hardware muxxer. In Debian, it works. In Linux, it works using "vga_switcheroo" for Intel/AMD and Bumblebee/Optimus for Intel/Nvidia. I searched the forum and there isn't any recent updates about this. Is it possible to run hybrid graphics in FreeBSD current or stable. Any proposal for supporting these features.

 

[shkhln]

discrete/dedicated graphics using dynamic switching with no hardware muxxer. In Linux, it works using "vga_switcheroo" for Intel/AMD

Not quite, vga_switcheroo is actually a driver for controlling a hardware multiplexer, it's not related to AMD in any way and it will not work with muxless notebook.

Intel HD 620 Integrated Graphics and AMD Radeon 520

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PRIME. Whether it works on FreeBSD I have no clue.

 

[Abraham79]

Not quite, vga_switcheroo is actually a driver for controlling a hardware multiplexer, it's not related to AMD in any way and it will not work with muxless notebook.



See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PRIME. Whether it works on FreeBSD I have no clue.

Yes. I forgot to tell that, switchable graphics is working fine in Linux, am using it since October 2017. DRI_PRIME=1 can be used to switch to dGPU. Would like to know, if FreeBSD-12 or TrueOS supports this switchable graphics tech. I hope they add the support, if not already.

 

[shkhln]

Would like to know

Give it a try. Update xorg-server (https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=196678), install the latest drm-whatever-kmod, report issues to https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/kms-drm.

TrueOS

Stay away from TrueOS.

 

[Abraham79]

Stay away from TrueOS.

Any reason why?

 

[shkhln]

Ah, well... Since FreeBSD development is notoriously slow, TrueOS essentially wants to be a bleeding edge version of the OS for integrating and testing shiny new features. (Most of which aren't actually focused on the desktop, hence the recent "Core OS" announcement.) That means it's going to break a lot. Now they are trying do even more work with the same tiny team: two distributions instead of one; maintaining OpenRC configuration that upstream doesn't want to merge. I can only expect a complete disaster in the future.