Next Linux Kernel Due Early March 196
Posted
by
timothy
from the that's-what-I-call-a-public-good dept.
from the that's-what-I-call-a-public-good dept.
swandives writes "The Linux.conf.au is in full-swing in Wellington, New Zealand, and Computerworld Australia has an interview with Jon Corbet in the leadup to his Kernel Report. The latest kernel release is due early March and will include reversed-engineered drivers for Nvidia chipsets."
Thank goodness for those drivers (Score:4, Interesting)
I have such a chipset and I've been cursing NVIDIA on a regular basis. After updating to any new kernel, I must boot into no-X mode, then run the proprietary driver installer.
Re:Thank goodness for those drivers (Score:4, Insightful)
So, Nvidia writes drivers for your system, and those drivers work. What's the problem? This is hardly a new situation, so presumably you knew this when you bought your Nvidia chipset.
Re:Thank goodness for those drivers (Score:5, Informative)
Please see the last NVIDIA linux drivers story.. for fuck sake.. it's only been a month.
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/12/11/1556237 [slashdot.org]
Go argue with last month.
Re:Thank goodness for those drivers (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, I have no problem with that. I've been using Linux or long enough to remember having to spend a lot of time getting around issues of hardware compatibility. Nvidia was in there quite early on providing good drivers for its chipsets at a time when just about every other manufacturer just shrugged its shoulders and told us to "Fuck off, We don't support Linux."
That alone has promoted a lot of goodwill as far as I'm concerned, and so nVidia chipsets are right at the top of my preferred brands list. So I get very tired of hearing people badmouthing nVidia without giving an adequate reason why.
Re:Thank goodness for those drivers (Score:4, Interesting)
So, Nvidia writes drivers for your system, and those drivers work. What's the problem?
Indeed, I have no problem with that. I've been using Linux or long enough to remember having to spend a lot of time getting around issues of hardware compatibility. Nvidia was in there quite early on providing good drivers for its chipsets at a time when just about every other manufacturer just shrugged its shoulders and told us to "Fuck off, We don't support Linux." That alone has promoted a lot of goodwill as far as I'm concerned, and so nVidia chipsets are right at the top of my preferred brands list. So I get very tired of hearing people badmouthing nVidia without giving an adequate reason why.
Goodwill Schmoodwill. This is business. For quite some time, the only way I've been able to easily install Ubuntu on several of my Nvidia machines has been by swapping out the graphics card(s) for ATI, installing the OS and nvidia drivers, then installing the Nvidia cards again. True, this is an Ubuntu issue, since they insist on a GUI install only (sorry, but the alternate CD is a pain, at least use curses to emulate a GUI before making Mom and Pop use Debian), and they don't include the nvidia driver on the CD. The nv and vesa drivers are both broken for lots of nvidia cards (nv causes green verical lines, and vesa just crashes X continuously.
If Nvidia had created a usable neutered (2D) OSS driver that Just Worked (TM) with their cards, a la ATI/IBM, then I'd still be suggesting their cards for Linux newbies like I did back in the Aughties. Instead, I've been suggesting IBM first, ATI next, and Nvidia only for experienced folk who need superior OpenGL cards.
Re: (Score:2)
If Nvidia had created a usable neutered (2D) OSS driver that Just Worked (TM) with their cards, a la ATI/IBM, then I'd still be suggesting their cards for Linux newbies like I did back in the Aughties. Instead, I've been suggesting IBM first, ATI next, and Nvidia only for experienced folk who need superior OpenGL cards.
I've never heard of IBM graphics cards. Do you mean Intel or something else? I personally recommend Intel graphics for Linux users, since the only drivers they make for Linux are opensource, with full 3D capabilities ("full" as in what the chip is capable of).
Re: (Score:2)
I've never heard of IBM graphics cards. Do you mean Intel or something else?
Wow, I shouldn't post just after waking up. Yep, I meant Intel.
Re: (Score:2)
Last I checked, the GMA500 didn't have open-source drivers. Of course, I believe that this is a chip which Intel rebrands, but it does mean that you can't simply trust that if it says "Intel graphics" it will be well-supported.
Re:Thank goodness for those drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
nv drivers broken for a lot of cards? Which ones would these be? They would not happen to be perchance cards that any Windows users would consider laughingly out of date?
I think you will find legions of users that think you are full of sh*t and especially full of sh*t for adding Ubuntu to your rant.
Re: (Score:2)
nv drivers broken for a lot of cards? Which ones would these be? They would not happen to be perchance cards that any Windows users would consider laughingly out of date? I think you will find legions of users that think you are full of sh*t and especially full of sh*t for adding Ubuntu to your rant.
Maybe laughingly out of date by Windows standards, but that usually means gamers. A geforce 6600 is still a good card, even if it's old (not as old as my TNT cards that still work). And if it's old, shouldn't it have better drivers? Just sayin'.
As for the Ubuntu rant, perhaps you should do a search for "vertical lines" on ubuntuforums.org?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22vertical+lines%22+green+site%3Aubuntuforums.org+nvidia&aq=f&oq=&aqi= [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps you should use your own argument rather than poaching someone else's.
I've personally used nvidia cards from the 6150 to the 9400 and taken good advantage
of the features that don't exist in the open drivers but are well supported in the
proprietary ones. I also have firsthand experiences with some of the alternatives.
Re: (Score:2)
You can still switch to single user mode in Ubuntu, thus being able to install the video driver. Switching the video card to do this is asinine....
No, you can't do that with the install CD. Really. Using vesa causes xorg to reload once a second, and you can't type anything. Using nv causes half of the screen to disappear in the virtual terminal. Believe me, I've been using Linux for more than a decade on x86, ppc, sparc, others, with tons of distros (one of my jobs required me to evaluate as many popular ones as possible on a regular basis). I've had a lot of experience getting weird hardware working with Linux and X/xorg. Switching graphics car
Re: (Score:2)
That sounds insane, for installing the system your Nvidia card will work perfectly fine using the vesafb or nv driver. After you have the system up and running you can install the proprietary Nvidia driver via the 'restricted drivers' tool from within the GUI. You don't even need to use a console to get it working.
Do you seriously swap you video card for an Ubuntu install or are you just trolling?
If I were Trolling, I think I'd be doing it with an account with less Karma, or AC. I seriously have to switch out nvidia cards on a regular basis to do an Ubuntu install, and no, nv and vesa do _NOT_ work. nv driver causes vertical green lines, and vesa driver causes the xorg server to reload once a second (because Ubuntu is stupid and decided to make xorg not fail permanently and gracefully). With xorg reloading once a second, it's impossible to get any editing done in the virt-term. Without an ATI or
Re: (Score:2)
While you can still reboot no-X (for example, by passing options to GRUB when booting - not the easy way, but the first that came to mind ;-), I do have to agree, the failure to accept Xorg failures is my least favorite decision made in Ubuntu.
Hell, you can't even manually kill KDM anymore.
I've never had your problems with the nv drivers, though - they've been universally solid across several cards, if slow.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So I get very tired of hearing people badmouthing nVidia without giving an adequate reason why.
Here's mine: Times have changed. The Free Software community has successfully convinced the large majority of those other vendors to support Free Software properly by releasing specifications. Once upon a time, NVidia's support was "good" relative to other vendors (but, to be clear, no good in terms of the Free Software community's goals), but today better support is available from the other vendors. Since NVidia's support for Linux and the Free Software community's goals is less good then their competit
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You'll still need to do that if you want 3D support. nouveau is replacing the old nv driver, but it's not ready to replace the proprietary driver.
no such problem with Fedora (Score:2)
I'm running Fedora (12) and with the rpmfusion(-nonfree*) repository added, i don't need to run nvidia's installer. I just update my entire system, including the nvidia driver. If you're fed up by your way of updating, give Fedora a chance.
Re:Thank goodness for those drivers (Score:4, Interesting)
You must be new to this "Linux" thing. That your Hardware OEM is providing Linux drivers at all is highly unusual. That the drivers are effective is astounding -- that the installer provided the drivers is rudimentary is not worth complaining over. In any case if you really mind I'm sure you can write a replacement installer.
Re:Thank goodness for those drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that the two other major Graphics providers, Intel and AMD, both give the Linux community far better support than NVIDIA. Intel is writing excellent well-integrated open source drivers themselves, which AMD is providing full specs, which has allowed others to write drivers. AMD's making the specs available is far better Linux support than NVIDIA making closed source drivers available.
NVIDIA has provided neither open source drivers, firmware, nor specs. So the open source developers have to resort to reverse engineer the drivers. And to make all kinds of jumping through hoops to use the firmware, which NVIDIA has not allowed to be redistributed in binary form.
So I think we have every right to criticize NVIDIA when comparing to the marked at large. They are doing a horrible job at supporting Linux.
Re: (Score:2)
Except that the two other major Graphics providers, Intel and AMD, both give the Linux community far better support than NVIDIA. Intel is writing excellent well-integrated open source drivers themselves
Has AMD actually caught up yet, or are they still generations behind on releasing specs? And I have an EEE 701 and every time intel tweaks the graphics drivers they break something in the janky intel video chipset. You have to have the newest and greatest intel GPU (which is still shitty) to have good driver support. 9xx series is poo, and worked better with the old drivers.
nVidia drivers work, as long as you have a supported card. You have to check the driver support before you buy. But since that's true o
Re:Thank goodness for those drivers (Score:5, Informative)
Theres another side to this - if you have ever tried to work with 3D apps on Linux, free or commercial - Blender, Maya or written your own OpenGL apps, and wanted support for the standards and good performance, you would realise that NVidia is your only choice. Compared to their commercial rivals, and the open source community, they do a *stellar* job at supporting Linux.
Every other manufacturer has provided such piss-poor reliability and/or performance under Linux, they just aren't an option.
I think its great that AMD docs and lots of hard work by the Xorg and driver coders mean that radeon drivers are getting to the point where they challenge NVidias status in this area, but for the last 5 years, AMD/ATI were next to useless on Linux for serious work, and Intel graphics weren't (and still aren't) an option where anything even remotely current in terms of OpenGL API usage (e.g. GLSL shaders) are concerned.
The Open Source community has done an awful job of architecting their graphics stack, with no foresight, planning or consistency across drivers. Thats not a bash, thats the natural result of open source evolution, and why they're rearchitecting it.
Now this is being reworked, we're seeing massive churn and widespread breakage. NVidia saw this coming and wrote their drivers to bypass this mess. Many of the design decisions taken by the Xorg guys are very much influenced by how NVidia handles things.
Intel, supposedly the paragon of openness and open source, managed to show a massive performance regression in the kernel and X.org revisions prior to the current ones, and their latest 'Poulsbo' chipsets have no documentation, and no open source drivers. Intel's support for these cards on Linux is way worse than NVidia. Theyre also walking away from any open source OSes except Linux by relying on Linux-only kernel mode setting.
AMD/ATI continue to release fglrx drivers that are plagued with bugs, refuse to release documentation of current products, and have 2D performance that is so abysmal it makes the VESA framebuffer look pretty good in comparison. AMD/ATI open source drivers (while improving greatly and probably a good option today for people who don't really need full OpenGL coverage,) are very much a work in progress, incapable of running even moderately advanced OpenGL apps, and they too are dumping any support for non-Linux open source OSes.
As a 3D developer, I can't rely on anything but NVidia to work, and stay working across distro upgrades. If thats the definition of 'horrible job at supporting Linux', i think you need your head read. There just isn't anything else that is usable for professional or semi-professional 3D work on Linux.
I am extremely grateful to NVidia for enabling any kind of consistent 3D support on Linux while everyone else, commercial or open source, struggles to catch up.
Re: (Score:2)
What you two completely ignored, probably with your minds fully in the windows world:
A installer?? For Linux???
How sick is that?
Linux has package managers. The package belongs into the repository, just like any other software.
Installers are Windows speak.
And those packages are a source package (e.g. source or binaries in tar.bz2), and a description file. Sometimes wrapped in one (e.g. RPM.)
This ensures comfortable installation, uninstallation, dependency management, updates/patches, etc.
Installers... silly,
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Thank goodness for those drivers (Score:5, Informative)
I haven't had to do that for a few years now, modern distributions (Mandriva and OpenSuse for eg.) automatically setup DKMS or use some other mechanism to update the NVIDIA drivers automagically when a new kernel boots.
That said however it'd be better to have a working NVIDIA driver in the kernel, as these solutions are a bit hacky and potentially an open-source driver would have a faster pace of development (instead of being the poor cousin to the Windows drivers in NVIDIA's internal development priorities).
Re: (Score:2)
Using Ubuntu 9.10 here, which seems not to do that automatically...
Re: (Score:2)
I don't use Ubuntu so can't say for sure but it looks like they do have packages for it, so I'd think if you used those packages it would keep current with the kernel (that seems to be how the Opensuse Nvidia packages work):
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia [ubuntu.com]
They even recommend not to install manually, probably for this very reason:
This is not the recommended way to install the NVIDIA drivers - please see BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia for the supported method.
https://help.ubuntu.com/commun [ubuntu.com]
Re: (Score:2)
|. Switch to nv driver
2. Upgrade kernel
3. Switch to nvidia driver
Not that I've ever done that, I use a distro that packages the kernel and binary driver for me. Maybe if you want a userfriendly solution you should get one instead of trying to do everything manually, then complain about having to do everything manually?
Nouveau will be much closer to nv than nvidia in pretty much everything. They got no specs, and even with specs writing a good open source 3D driver is tough, as AMD has shown us. So expect no
Or just use a decent distribution (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you could get one of the many, many, many Linux distributions that handle this automatically. Mandriva comes the mind since it has handled this stuff for years and is extremely user friendly, but as I say there are many other options as well.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Hm, to quote a near-forgotten troll; "You Do It Wrong"
ProTip: Hit linuxquestions.org [linuxquestions.org] and post a detailed outline of your problem. Be sure to include things like versions, names of distributions, and how many servers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H desktops you're having this issue on.
I'm sure you're not running X on bootup on a server, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Reverse engineered nVidia drivers? (Score:2)
Re:Reverse engineered nVidia drivers? (Score:5, Informative)
yes, Nouveau.. its referring to a previous Slashdot story late last year:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/12/11/1556237 [slashdot.org]
And yes, that link could have been supplied, but that would require some sort of editing.
Re: (Score:2)
Noveau is included in staging (which means that it comes with the kernel, but is not considered stable). Nv isn't a kernel driver at all, but merely an X.org driver from nvidia. Though the noveau kernel and X.org drivers are more fully featured than the nv offering, they still don't support 3D-acceleration very well.
Re: (Score:2)
"nv" is the current nvidia kernel driver. "nvidia" is the official, proprietary driver from Nvidia.
Re: (Score:2)
"nv" is the current nvidia kernel driver. "nvidia" is the official, proprietary driver from Nvidia.
Correction. nv is the current reverse engineered driver provided by Xorg.
nvidia is the official, Nvidia corporation driver to support Xorg systems
Re: (Score:2)
It's a reverse engineered driver, but instead of copying it, the devs went to convert it to Gallium3D driver architecture. There are two components. One is the Direct Rendering Manager component (lives in the kernel) and the second one is in Mesa (the free OpenGL implementation) as a state tracker.
A Gallium3D driver is making the graphics card visible to the system by means of an API. On top of that API features can be written (like OpenGL, OpenCL, vector graphics acceleration, etc) which are called state t
Dtrace for Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
Tell me more about this dynamic ftrace. Are there any "how-to" basic scripts to fire off a SNMP trap when ftrace picks up something of importance? It's nice for debugging, but more importantly to tie this into some network monitoring system like Nagios to be used for clustering and high availability systems. This could easily be integrated to prevent runaway virtual machines, and actually see whats robbing a system of CPU cycles - perfect for performance tuning a VM stack.
Will the kernel ever get to 3? (Score:4, Interesting)
Are we ever going to see major new features (along the lines of the USB implementation, or SMP), or a major re-think? Or is this basically as good as it will ever get?
It does appear to me that all the kernel is doing these days is mimicking the features and support found in "other" operating systems - rather than pushing the boundaries of innovation and novelty, itself.It would be a shame if Linux just fell into line and became a follower in a world of twisty little O/S's, all the same rather than producing some killer features, unique to it's implementation, that made people WANT to run Linux on their desktops and enterprise systems.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
USB and SMP are things the kernel implemented, but weren't created inside it. The kernel can't add implementation for a bus that doesn't exist, so it's not going to get more things like that, unless new standards get created.
But, new things get added all the time, just watch the kernel reports at LWN [lwn.net].
Re: (Score:2)
The kernel can't add implementation for a bus that doesn't exist
and that's why it will alway be a follower rather than a leader. The innovations are what creates the need for standards. Without them nothing new would ever be developed and there would be no need to codify and standardise any developments.
What I would like to see is some innovation, some game-changers: giving the Linux kernel new features that no other O/S has - but once it has them, EVERYONE realises how useful, necessary and well-done they were and therefore how necessary they are to modern, leading
Re:Will the kernel ever get to 3? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If I recall, what Google innovated on was OS choice for their employees. I believe I read that they can choose whatever they like for their OS, and for their 20% projects they can use any number of platforms, etc. I think because of familiarity with Linux and competition with Microsoft, we won't ever see Google running on IIS, but I think that's a business move.
Re: (Score:2)
In the meantime, those of us who use our computers to get real work done will continue to use Windows 7 [...]
*Cough* Ah, yes. That heap, which because of various security problems and incompatibility with disk encryption, will not be used by certain government labs for at least a year, and probably much longer. Thanks be to Torvalds that linux does pass the tests, even the miniature distros, and is allowed, so we can get real work done.
Re: (Score:2)
LOL, and yet lin-sux cannot play a flash video at full screen without stuttering. Perhaps you imbeciles should spend less time adding NUMA support to your crappy kernel and more time writing actual working video drivers. In the meantime, those of us who use our computers to get real work done will continue to use Windows 7 and OS X.
I can't say I've ever needed to play flash video at full screen at work (where I and most of the other researchers run Linux), as there's not much use in it. It does handle my simulations wonderfully though, particularly when I can run them in a console with screen on the server, then switch my PC off for the night. Not sure if it would be quite so seamless under Windows, as even the Windows users tend to run Linux in a VM to do the actual work.
At home though, my DVDs and avis run just fine at full screen,
Re: (Score:2)
Linux got USB3 before anyone else. Linux ran on 64-bit x86 before anyone else - before AMD made even made the first chips. What on earth would constitute something innovative in an operating system? It's a resource manager, and new resources (i.e. hardware) gets added all the time. What is this innovation you speak of?
I could see some really innovative way to handle all those hardware variants comming alo
Re: (Score:2)
You're so totally right! What Linux needs is drivers for hardware that doesn't exist. Here's the sales pitch: You may not yet be able to purchase a combination printer/scanner/fax/toaster/singing fish/unicorn horn fabricator with a 42 megahexametapassamaquoddabit UFB (Universal Fairy Bus) 3.0 connection, but when you do, you can be sure it will work just fine with Linux, as we alre
Re: (Score:2)
Sure. Just get a time machine and you can go back to the day before Linux was the first to implement USB 3 ;-) As far as a "major re-think", the purpose of thinking things through seriously and thoroughly in the first place (before diving in) is so that you won't have to do major re-think. Major re-thinks are a bad thing unless you didn't do it right the first time.
Re:Will the kernel ever get to 3? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I hope the kernel will contain less. Let's take USB for example, do we really need all sorts of various connectors? Or would we rather just use USB, teach the kernel to do low level read/write to USB devices and then do keyboards and mice and printers and scanners and digicams and webcams and external hdds and whatnot over USB in userspace? In fact, much the same applies to drivers in general, there's no reason why so many printers are paperweights under Linux. Can't there at least be one universal idiot mode where we feed it uncompressed raster data and it prints? Seriously.
Kernels are best at being mediators, be it of CPU time, GPU time, IO bandwidth, network bandwidth, whatever. Something offers resources, something consumes resources and the OS is that gray glue in the middle. Whatever killer feature you want, you probably don't want it in the kernel. You want to write a desktop environment or an application or something, and the kernel will make sure it runs gracefully together with everything else. There's a quite a few more bits to the kernel, but they're just adoptees brought into the kernel for performance reasons.
Re: (Score:2)
The kernel does this to a large part already. In fact, printing is implemented in userspace, as well as many other devices. That's what libusb is for.
Devices li
Re: (Score:2)
Can't there at least be one universal idiot mode where we feed it uncompressed raster data and it prints? Seriously.
It already exists, and it's called "postscript".
And you can also use Photoshop CS4 to crop screenshots, if "overkill" is not in your vocabulary.
Re: (Score:2)
I have no clue why would it be overkill, it's supported perfectly fine by printers that are positively ancient these days and rotting on junkyards.
Re: (Score:2)
Because it's a turing-complete programming language with font management and a rendering engine, that was ditched on almost all low and mid-level printers because it added cost. I'm talking about a mode where you pipe it all to Ghostscript on the computer and pipe the output as a series of raw pixels/dots right to the printer, no font management, no rendering, no instruction language beyond setting up the print area and most importantly, something that could hopefully be done on a 49$ printer without adding
Re: (Score:2)
Raw pixels comes out to a rather large number per page, though.
There is another standard: IPP, which is widely supported by network printers. AKA CUPS, which is what Apple uses.
In any case, I don't see what any of this has to do with Linux. Go and ask the printer manufacturers to standarize on a bitmap format, and I'm sure Linux would quickly get support for it.
But, if you're worried about cost, you shouldn't be buying a $49 printer in the first place, as you'll quickly pay for that cheapness by getting gou
Re: (Score:2)
mimicking all those other OS that scale from an embedded device to a supercomputer, or that run on more than a dozen architectures? let me count them.....uuuhhhhmmmmmmmm..........
Re: (Score:2)
Sour grapes from the losers...
In truth, anything on the desktop is a shallow immitation of something that was done in academia 20 years ago.
So anyone whining about Linux copying something else is like a dwarf calling a midget shorty.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's been tons of innovative stuff in Linux, just on a level most users don't have to interact with it. And that's the way it should be.
Your comment is like knocking on Toyota for basically making the same car as everyone else, the only difference being their superior production methods and products.
In fact, the Toyota prodcution process and Linux are a lot a like: Linux is where it is today through a philosophy of continuous improvement, not any one great feature that is a world beater.
For those of you
Does Plymouth now work with nvidia cards (Score:2)
And can I switch back to the propitary drivers when my desktop boots up?
That said, for my main desktop computer, I may switch to the Nouveau drivers since I only use it to browse the web and encode movies. I don't even have my speakers set up to that machine.
Be nice not to have strange lockups. (To be fair, I am not sure if that is a nivdia or KDE issue but my mouse quits responding to the button click but I can still see it moving on the screen. This usually happens when running virtualbox so maybe it i
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't used to but it is happening frequently enough for me to be using non-x terminals for my encodings since they usually take several hours.
I tried using openbox as with window manger for KDE but I still ended with the same problem. I have a hunch it is related to virtualbox but cannot prove it. And the nvidia driver I install very quickly because the nv driver is painful. I can see pages redrawing when I scroll. I usually end up using the vesa driver if I ever have problems with the nvidia binary
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wish I had mod points.... Thanks
3D (Score:5, Funny)
If those NVidia drivers don't support hardware accelerated 3D, then I really don't understand the point. 3D hardware acceleration is 15 years old. Linux is an operating system that should be at the frontline of technology. Working in the dark ages of pre-3D acceleration, the times of Motif GUI's, should be far past us. How can something that ignores such an important part of the graphics card, almost half the computation power of the whole computer is there, be accepted?
If they do support 3D, then congratulations, ignore my post above :)
Re:3D (Score:4, Insightful)
Ignoring the obvious troll:
Anything that works will be accepted, like every other driver in the kernel... if it doesn't make *everything* work, that's not a big problem. Especially new drivers rarely have code that actually makes the device inherently useful, or supremely accelerated, immediately - but it will function. That's how you code - one bit at a time, gradually building as you go. When you have all the DMA, 2D drawing, multiscreen crap worked out *THEN* you can think about 3D. At the moment, even simple combinations like dual-displays can cause major headaches with some chipsets, whether the hardware supports them or not.
The programmers are effectively working blind with unknown hardware - and programmers don't work that way, that's a reverse engineer's job. To say they can't merge *anything* until all the features are working just means you'll never see *anything* at all. But if they merge a 2D driver today, they can add basic 3D access tomorrow and 3D acceleration the day after and maybe some day you'll see something of use. If not, at least you'll be able to boot Linux and *see* something in X-Windows on any computer that runs off that chipset (or has backwards compatibility for it).
You will not see full 3D accelerated drivers for any chipset (especially not any that compete with manufacturer's drivers in terms of acceleration) that matters to you on a new computer until manufacturers fully co-operate and help get coding too. Don't expect it, don't complain about it, don't moan when it doesn't happen or only "obsolete" chipsets ever get 3D support. When the manufacturer's co-operate, it takes nothing to make a driver. When they don't, it means knowing *everything* they know before you can really start properly.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not my intention to troll. I'm a Linux user because I like the style and way of working with that operation better than Windows. So anything that is BIG and tries to limit the choice of users to "Windows-only" is bad to me (that is, things like Direct3D, IE-only webpages, Office formats, ...), because I think users should be able to make a choice what OS to use and have a good range of software choices on all.
IMHO, I see no reason to not use the NVidia drivers, that they make for Linux, and allow me to
Re: (Score:2)
It's sad, perhaps OpenGL would have evolved faster had Microsoft implemented it for Windows 9x.
Re: (Score:2)
The reason you're being modded Funny, I hope, is because 3D drivers (and actually any kind of acceleration for GPUs) is a userland thing by tradition and convention. The nouveau project does sponsor development of a few Mesa/Gallium drivers, none of which are yet production-quality, but it has nothing to do with the kernel part.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well I wasn't trying to be funny...
Re:3D (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, look, we already did. We put two memory managers in the kernel, one for discrete chipsets and one for IGP chipsets. We added a system for lockless submission of commands to the GPU, and a series of checks to prevent GPUs from being easily hardlocked.
Re: (Score:2)
If those NVidia drivers don't support hardware accelerated 3D, then I really don't understand the point.
The point is that the xorg nv and vesa drivers are broken for quite a few nvidia cards.
Re: (Score:2)
> If those NVidia drivers don't support hardware accelerated 3D, then I really don't understand the point.
IIRC kernel video mode setting will be available with nouveau: for a silky smooth boot experience :-)
Re: (Score:2)
A fair point - not really funny mod material ;-) The Nouveau drivers being merged are an important step in the right direction. The current situation, particularly for Free Software-only distros like Fedora is that when you install the system and boot for the first time you end up using the open source "nv" driver, which was provided by NVidia to provide basic 2D support but apparently is not very good. The Nouveau driver has support for KMS (kernel modesetting), which is needed for flicker-free graphica
The Kernel Report (Score:2, Funny)
Flickering on Intel chipsets (Score:3, Interesting)
I upgraded to 2.6.33-rc4 from 2.6.32 because of strong flickering and tearing on my Intel chipset.
If you're affected by the problem you might want to give it a shot even in -rc state.
Just for the sake of graphics? (Score:2)
I guess what I'm really asking is: is there any chance the next kernel will fix this [kernel.org], or will using USB microphones and CDMA modems on my Pavilion P6130F remain a pipedream?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nope, just 2.6.33. Even less exciting is that 2.6.33-rc4 was available 5 days ago.
This isn't news, but what should we expect of a late night update, eh?
Re:Year of the linux desktop (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I have lived in both NZ and the US.
In the US, I get vast quantities of stuff (medicine, scanners, machines) thrown at me whenever I go to the doctor or hospital, but to get an appointment at the doctor takes a minimum of two weeks.
In NZ, I didn't get as much stuff thrown at me, but I still got what I needed, and I could see a doctor within a day or two.
In the US, I have a phenomenally good health care plan thanks to my employer, so whenever I have to go to the doctor or the hospital the amount I have to pay
Re: (Score:2)
A 2.7 kernel would not be for general consumption, it'd be used for development during a transition to 2.8. I believe Linus has publicly stated that he has no intention of going to 2.8 anytime in the forseeable future though.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
All the rest of the crap on top of it, not so much...
Re: (Score:2)
Yes.
Seriously you could put a bid in to have it in a field in Texas, and, if you're the best bid they'd give you the conf.
I was on the 2008 team, and putting on a conf to the level LCA does is a huge amount of work, so if you can bid and do it you have a real chance.
Of course not being in Australia (or New Zealand) makes it very expensive for those people to attend, so unless you can find a sponsor for flights you really aren't likely win for LCA2012 in Texas.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Ahh, no. NZ is not part of continental Oz. Australasia is commonly used to group Oz and NZ (and sometimes other countries). Apart from mutually taking the piss out of each other there is little logical reason to group the two separated land masses.
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
guess again, New Zealand is part of the continent Zealandia [wikipedia.org]
it is NOT part of the continent of Australia, different shelf.
makes sense our schools gave up teaching geography and history, who needs that when we have blogs.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Pfffffffffft... It's an urban myth made up by kiwis to make themselves feel special, pay no attention to it.
Re: (Score:2)
What are you talking about? The overwhelming academic consensus is there is no such continent as "Zealandia."
Re: (Score:2)
guess again, New Zealand is part of the continent Zealandia [wikipedia.org]
it is NOT part of the continent of Australia, different shelf.
makes sense our schools gave up teaching geography and history, who needs that when we have blogs.
Hm, according to the Ultimate Truth (aka Wikipedia), it seems New Zealand is between plates. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
well heck, all it really is is a sand bar that partially surfaces during ice ages. Kiwis being part of the biofilm crud that accumulates then. no offense to actual biofilms.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Get this, India (and Sri Lanka) are both in Asia!
Huh? Are you unaware of how parentheses are used?
Re: (Score:2)
Except it's more like Linux.conf.us being held in Cuba. Just a little bit wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
New Zealand is part of a continent called Zealandia, not Australia. but by all means pull some more "facts" out of your ass, it's more interesting than reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealandia_(continent) [wikipedia.org]
Re:huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, this fighting is fun (and I have no horse in the race!). Note that even in the most generous listing of continents (comprising 7), New Zealand is NOT separated from Australia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Number_of_continents [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
actually no, after more proper definitions of a continent, your article says "some geographers take Australia, New Zealand and all the islands of Oceania (or sometimes Australasia) to be equivalent to a continent, allowing the entire land surface of the Earth to be divided into continents or quasi-continents.[11]"
so some silly people construct what we would call a "continent equivalent", which has no scientific meaning like the true geological continent.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
And sheep. Never forget the sheep...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I think you will find that it is the other way around. We even have Royalty here to endorse addition of the West Island to the kingdom of New Zealand.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
More of a sand bank than a proper island. The average chunk of NZ is, what? 10cm across? Over here you are lucky to find grains > 1mm.
But we are slowly winning. After our circuit around south island in 2008 my wife and son insisted on bringing back five or ten kilos of "interesting rocks". Customs in Melbourne nearly had a fit. Another million years and the top metre of NZ will be features in Australian back yards.
Re: (Score:2)
Considering what New Zealand women are like, can you blame them?