NVIDIA Responds To Linus Torvalds 497
jones_supa writes "NVIDIA's PR department has issued a statement following the harsh comments by Linus Torvalds last week where he referred to the graphics company as the single worst company he's ever dealt with, called them out on not supporting Optimus, and other issues. Basically the company replied they're committed to Linux using their proprietary driver that is largely common across platforms, and this allows for same-day Linux support with full OpenGL implementation. They also say that they're active in ARM Linux for Tegra and support a wide range of hardware under Linux. Despite having not made any commitment to better support Optimus under Linux nor providing technical assistance to the Nouveau community, NVIDIA assures us that 'at the end of the day, providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms for all of our customers continues to be one of our key goals.'"
I'd agree with them on that.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically the company replied they're committed to Linux using their proprietary driver that is largely common across platforms, and this allows for same-day Linux support with full OpenGL implementation. They also say that they're active in ARM Linux for Tegra and support a wide range of hardware under Linux. Despite having not made any commitment to better support Optimus under Linux nor providing technical assistance to the Nouveau community, NVIDIA assures us that 'at the end of the day, providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms for all of our customers continues to be one of our key goals.
Posting anonymously because some people are _incredibly_ opinionated on this subject, but not everybody has the opinion that everything linux related must be open source. Linus Torvalds, while a visionary and certainly one of the most technologically-minded people of our age, disagrees with this, and that's too bad. Just because Linus Torvalds thinks you're doing it wrong doesn't necessarily mean you are.
Cheers.
At least open the specs. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Torvalds less critical of closed source drivers and more critical of closed specs. Nouveau would be improved greatly if Nvidia provided more transparency on the hardware.
Re:At least open the specs. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure AMDs offerings would be greatly improved too if Nvidia released more specs on the hardware.
Re:At least open the specs. (Score:5, Informative)
I've read the specs for AMD. It's mostly just a list of registers and what numbers to dump into them to control it. It's hardly giving away how it works.
As an offtopic, there's over 500 of the bloody things. I sort of glazed over when I saw it. The people writing drivers with no support are doing a grand (but probably quite fun) job.
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Plus, with all this closed stuff, who knows, or can know, what software/hardware patents might be getting cheated? What stuff that's just trade secrets (but good stuff) needs to be kept secret?
Yes, it would sure be nice if NVidia could give us more support - I'm
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what makes you believe that reverse engineering isn't possible and not done by all companies? yes, its harder than reading the source, but the open source drivers arent also based on the closed one, so the open source ones will not give you that information, at very least you would need to look at the firmware (closed source and that you can also extract from the closed source driver)
Re:At least open the specs. (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think that your bank account PIN can't be guessed? Please post it.
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My bank account PIN is 12345. It's the same as my luggage just so I won't forget it.
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I once met a man that could remember all PIN codes. Amazing guy.
Re:At least open the specs. (Score:5, Insightful)
Keeping the source closed might mean they have some secret tricks but at what cost? At the end of the day updating a binary driver is a pain in the arse. Every time the kernel changes, the video driver must be updated. The natural inclination for Linux users is to favour AMD or Intel products and forget about NVidia completely. And yet NVidia is stuck with testing and develop a driver that runs across an eclectic range of kernels and distributions. If they opened the source, or assisted nouveau by releasing the tech specs they could turn over a lot of support and maintenance to the distributions themselves.
They could even implement some reasonable and sane end of life policy where once a GPU is more than 2 years old they turn over the specs or some reference driver so the hardware can be community supported. It would gain them a lot of kudos and alleviate them from a lot of the hassle of maintaining drivers.
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Re:At least open the specs. (Score:4, Interesting)
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1:Put module source in the DKMS tree
2: reboot into the new kernel so the module automatically gets rebuilt
3:????
4: profit
Is it really that hard nowadays?
nVidia is the only option on Linux (Score:3)
I'm going to third this opinion. I make my living writing and maintaining Linux-based 3D simulators for the FAA. We use only nVidia cards, and only the proprietary driver, as we just can't get the performance out of nouveau or ATI's joke of a driver.
Hell, I remember at my last job when we got our first 8800GTX, and the Windows driver was completely borked (couldn't disable vsync, control FSAA, anything), but the six month old Linux driver we were using gave us 150fps on a dual-channel setup to drive the HMD
re: Why risk tipping their hat? (Score:3)
I don't know.... Right now, I think both AMD and nVidia have pretty good handles on how to produce graphics boards consumers think are worthwhile. They could start copying every single innovation that each other formerly had as "company secrets", to the point where both brands of board performed absolutely identically in benchmark tests -- and STILL, I suspect they'd both sell about the same number of boards as before.
The real problem is, the marketplace has consolidated so much, you really only have these
Right to Repair bill in Massachusetts (Score:5, Interesting)
So, maybe we could get Bay State voters interested in open other things?
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Re:Right to Repair bill in Massachusetts (Score:5, Interesting)
Getting a bit off topic, but I don't see the conflict between Federal law and state law.
By not providing the codes (including decryption codes for encrypted onboard electronics) the auto manufactures would be violating state law. Instead of trying to crack the encryption, auto mechanics could sue them. No DMCA violation necessary there.
Re:Right to Repair bill in Massachusetts (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck selling your cars in a state where you don't comply with state law.
Do you think car manufacturers don't have to meet California's tougher emissions standards because Federal law trumps state law?
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Good luck running your state if you make it impossible to sell cars there.
This would not make it impossible to sell cars there. The auto manufacturers are already providing these service manuals to their dealers. This law would require them to sell them to anyone who wants to buy them. This doesn't make it even difficult for them to sell cars there.
Damn good idea. (Score:2)
Apart from the video card issue, I hate auto makers for playing this game. Good for MA. They catch a lot of crap but this is good legislation. I hope other states follow their lead.
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and I guess do-it-yourself people
I am not a do-it-yourselfer when it comes to repairing cars. I am however aware of just how many mechanics will rip you off, and on more than one occasion caught a mechanic breaking things so that they can later fix it. I want access to my error codes so that when I can know that the engine light came on because the gas cap is loose or a fuse blew out before I get to the mechanic who tells me that the on board computer needs replacing at $1000.
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My NVIDIA experience has vastly improved when Nouveau started supporting my chipset. Thank you Nouveau guys!
Finally, Flash does not crash any more (apparently 2 closed-source apps are too many).
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I think Torvalds less critical of closed source drivers and more critical of closed specs. Nouveau would be improved greatly if Nvidia provided more transparency on the hardware.
The way they probably see it, the hardware-independent graphics API layer (DirectX/OpenGL) is the "spec", and the stack that they offer, including the hardware, hardware-software interface, and the driver, is their "implementation" of that spec. So the hardware-software interface (which Linus wants them to publish) is sort of an implementation detail, which they may want to change without notice.
Re:OP here.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Openly bashing NVIDIA for doing things their way is wrong, because it's their product, and, therefore, their decision.
The right to make a decision does not include the right not to be criticised for the descision one make.
Re:OP here.. (Score:5, Insightful)
because it's their product, and, therefore, their decision.
As long as they don't sell it. Once they sold their products to millions of user, they are also responsible for that what they are selling has no built-in secrets what so ever.
NVIDIA sells hardware. That's one market. NVIDIA distribute software. That's an other. Not releasing the information about their hardware creates a situation where NVIDIA (an the rest of the hardware market virtually) is abusing its market leading position on one market, to sniffle the other. All this because of contracts all around between Microsoft, the gaming industry and so on. For fuck sake, that's my fucking video card, I'd like to know how to use it. I didn't by with a computer, and I could use it in a completely different architecture. No, they narrow the market choices, to control not the product, but the customers, so they can get juicy extra money through anti-competition deals from software companies.
Re:OP here.. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I'm happy to openly bash them repeatedly for making a choice that sucks. Yes, it's their choice to make. If I didn't think that, I would be advocating they be sued to force them to make a different choice. Otherwise, I'm expressing my opinion of their awful and stupid choice. And I should be perfectly free to do that. It's not like freedom is a one-way street here.
Re:OP here.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't call Linus's off-the-cuff speech "bashing". While his exact words were "Fuck you, nVidia" it was in a jovial sort of way. Americans might not understand, but for most English speakers (especially Brits and non-natives) "Fuck you" is not always incredibly harsh.
His main criticism was, they were making a lot of money off Linux (selling chips to run Android), and were being difficult to work with.
Also, it was an off-the-cuff remark. He's not a Presidential candidate or CEO, he's a programmer. Some people talk in a way that PR flacks don't, and if they are well known it causes a bit of a PR shitstorm. The media reports their "rant", instead of the 49 other minutes before it, in which they were speaking quite insightfully.
Seriously, everyone knows about the Tanenbaum–Torvalds "flame war", in which Linus came up with such withering remarks as "linux still beats the :-)", and sprouted fanatical anti-free-software rhetoric like "For the true hacker, not having source code is fatal, but for people who just want a UNIX system, there are many alternatives (albeit not free)".
pants of minix in almost all areas", and Andrew shot back with things like "You would not get a high grade for such a design
Strong stuff.
I guess people are more interested in shit-slinging (or even pretending that there was shit-slinging) than the technical points these guys raise.
I've heard Linus is a bit mean at times (rejecting patches? refusing to mentor new contributors?), but the idea that he's an angry angry man seems to be more myth than anything.
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Ah, hang on. I can remember when the railways were de-nationalised in this country. The morons who got the control suddenly decided that people who used bicycles were going to have to pay for their tickets and their bike's space on the train.
So the people who had bikes had a choice, use the bike or use the car.
Uh, so the bikes take up space that could otherwise be used by paying passengers, but you don't think you should pay more? So if someone rides the train but doesn't take a bike with them, they should subsidize those who do by paying the same?
You're either using a poor analogy to make your point or you don't seem willing to acknowledge the concept of paying for what you use. Unlike the railroads, nVidia is in competition and is trying to keep a competitive edge. We may disagree with them on how they are doin
Re:I'd agree with them on that.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Posting anonymously because some people are _incredibly_ opinionated on this subject, but not everybody has the opinion that everything linux related must be open source. Linus Torvalds, while a visionary and certainly one of the most technologically-minded people of our age, disagrees with this, and that's too bad. Just because Linus Torvalds thinks you're doing it wrong doesn't necessarily mean you are.
Cheers.
Afaik Linus Torvalds has admitted on this topic that proprietary is better than nothing at all so try again, I think he's asking for simple co-operation.
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He should start looking at making a stable API for drivers, and draw a line in the sand to firewall GPL compliance.
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Ati learned the way
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The fact that we have a binary blob driver of such high quality (compared to the ATI experience)-- and have for recorded history-- indicates that they DO care about linux.
Re:I'd agree with them on that.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should the Linux community take the burden to design, maintain and upgrade a "stable API for drivers" only to bend to the desire of a company that by their own admission doesn't care about Linux?
Because this is a problem for ALL drivers and every other OS does the correct way. Why should hardware manufactures take the burden to design, maintain and upgrade drivers only to bend to the whims of the linux community?
By and large the "whim" of the Linux community is "tell us how your card works on the register level and we will write the drivers ourselves." Most manufactures fell in line years ago when they figured out that they were being asked to do less, not more. Nvidia is one of the last holdouts.
The most likely reason for their unwillingness to release specs is incompence. They have most likely never produced decent documention even for internal use. In other words, their developement process is disorganized. Producing good documentation might mean employing two or three extra persons. But, it would be worth it since not only Linux driver developers would benefit, their own developers would benefit. After all, the binary drivers of which they seem to be so proud do not exactly have a reputation for high quality.
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> the graphics manufacturers (who really don't need the currently tiny linux market at all)
Eh? You mean every tablet without a fruit on it and most smartphones? The only platform that isn't fruit based that is growing? That tiny market? We have a different definition of tiny.
> available through wine, cedega, etc
Oh, I see your problem. You want to play games released for Windows but for unexplained reasons find dual booting unacceptable. You you have this expectation that until Linux becomes exac
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For example:
Some of these drivers are from board support packages of PC-104 CPU boards or serial synchronous cards that have extended functions that require direct access to the hardware. They have always ran well as a kernel module and they are pretty much self contained. However if the hardware needs to be included in a system which uses a new kernel and the other hardware contained in that system requires the newer kernel, the user will most likely (and have on many occasions) change constant variable n
Re:I'd agree with them on that.. (Score:5, Interesting)
If these cards don't do 3d acceleration in my computing environment, what good are they?
And yes, I had this problem once before, with Matrox and the G450/G550 cards, back in the day. Aggravating as hell. Worse, if you were their corporate customer and asked for 3d accleration drivers they'd release them to you, but as a private consumer you had to justify the need. Apparently nothing that a noncommercial user did was considered justified. It was friggin' compiled! I wasn't even asking for source code!
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I don't have any problems with closed source projects in general; I think there would be a lot of needed software for small industries that wouldn't get written otherwise as open source needs a huge group of knowledgeable users to work. I don't get close-sourced drivers, though. I don't get it just from the side of a open source user OR from the business side. I just underwent another struggle with closed source ATI drivers over the past couple of days in which the regular Ubuntu installer wasn't working
Re:I'd agree with them on that.. (Score:5, Informative)
As sibling said - I don't think anyone particularly cares if they write closed-source software - just open the effing API and specifications, so the community can write its own drivers for it.
Also, Nvidia is still not providing any Linux support for the one chipset that seems to be the most commonly used in laptops... go figure.
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In addition, despite their claims of supporting Linux on ARM, their Tegra open source support is piss-poor compared to TI's OMAP4 support.
Their mainline cpuidle support is still shit. They also have not published any TRM whatsoever for the chip, unlike TI who provides a comprehensive OMAP4 TRM.
Hell - they're so diverged from mainline that products running ICS are still running 2.6.39 kernels unlike 3.0.8 which is the official standard for Android devices running ICS.
Re:I'd agree with them on that.. (Score:5, Informative)
Even when not thinking that everything linux should be open source, NVidia does not provide a working linux driver for its optimus cards (that is, 90% of cards sold in laptops today). With no open source solution and no closed source solution, we can simply stare as a fact that their support simply sucks.
Re:I'd agree with them on that.. (Score:5, Insightful)
and I suppose this response from nvidia outlines why Linus is frustrated with nvidia.
the response doesn't have anything to do with the issue he complained about and the response is just about waving hands to make people look the other way, "look, we do provide drivers! we provide the same drivers on the same day!(but please don't ask us about optimus)".
(also, traditionally one reason for closed source and binary blob graphics drivers has been just plain old bullshitting and lies about what the card does on card with hw. also about selling same products for different clients for wildly different pricing).
There are facility for that. (Score:3)
Did it occur to anyone that optimus (as written) won't work on Linux.
Well to be more precise, the way Nvidia does optimus in Windows won't work on Linux, and thus can't work with their strategy of "rebuild the same driver as on Windows and throw some shitty wrapper module in between".
Basically you have to have hardware carveout memory shared between the two graphics units (nvidia and intel integrated) and that memory model doesn't mesh with the linux driver memory model
Indeed. The linux kernel has a way to do such routing from card to card. It works. Even to the point that it's possible to do crazy stuff like ouput 3D on an external USB LCD display pannel, which was accelerated by the GPU card inside the computer (as long as the GPU card has an opensource driv
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...but not everybody has the opinion that everything linux related must be open source...
You're confusing Linus for RMS.
If you see the video, you'll notice that he doesn't stress as much on open source drivers than he does about how Nvidia comes in his/developer's way. If Nvidia drivers aren't of such a poor quality, and the company would be so ignorant of the drivers *while depending on his product* in such a large way, he probably wouldn't be so pissed about the whole thing.
Open source drivers are good for some things... (Score:4, Insightful)
Open source software in general has (among others) some practical advantages:
With a closed source driver, those 2 options are thrown in the trash. This is especially important for hardware drivers, if there's no way to patch drivers to work with newer versions of an OS (or another OS), then no further driver releases basically means: "throw away your graphics card".
The net result may work fine for many people, but it tells me NVIDIA puts their roadmap before their user's roadmap(s). I read that as marketing, not user support.
Re:I'd agree with them on that.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking as someone who was gullible enough to think that nvidia had linux compatible hardware, and who bought an nvidia card with the specific intent of running linux. I don't care one bit whether the drivers are open source, or closed source. I just want them to WORK. something that has consistently not been the case. The open source drivers miss hardware acceleration, and various video resolutions/modes on my card, and the closed source ones often don't have the acceleration working right either, and sometimes cause X to crash.
I've learned my lesson, this is my last computer with an nvidia card in it.
I don't care how you support linux, but if you claim to offer support, it should be every bit as good as the support you offer to any other operating system you support. If this isn't the case, then it should be noted, clearly, on the same table that brags about that support in the first place. I was sold my current card under false pretenses, based on lies on nvidia's website. I won't make that mistake again.
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I think this is BS. I don't recall Linux ever saying that "everything linux related must be open source", in fact I think he's pretty pragmatic about the whole thing and has nothing against proprietary software running on top of Linux. You're thinking of RMS, who wants all software to be open source and under the GPL license; Linus and RMS are very different.
What Linus does think, however, is that all kernel-space drivers in Linux should be part of the kernel. That's a very different issue than proprieta
Cannot open drivers source (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Cannot open drivers source (Score:5, Informative)
I think he means that there is no real difference between a Quadro GPU and the consumer GeForce GPU, only a PCI ID and some limits in the firmware.
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My understanding (though I'm not involved with hardware manufacture) is that batches of chips that pass quality control perfectly are labeled as the highest level, and chips with a few minor defects get labeled as inferior, so their driver never tries using that damaged part of the chip. Anybody else looking at the chipsees they're the same, and since it's done in batches it's common for perfect chips to be marketed lower than what they can actually do.
I say this only as passing on what I've heard. Perhaps
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Small number of bins of numbers of defects (Score:4, Informative)
it's common for perfect chips to be marketed lower than what they can actually do.
You do realize that the whatsit where the defect is doesn't actually work, right?
For one thing, perfect chips get marked as defective if there aren't enough defective chips to meet the demand for low-end hardware. For another, there are probably only a small number of bins of numbers of defects. If there are models with 48, 64, and 96 working whatsits, and 63 of them work, it'll be sold as a 48, and drivers won't be able to use 15 of the working whatsits.
Re:Cannot open drivers source (Score:5, Interesting)
Most common excuse for don't open the source for drivers is IP. But most part of times, the real reason is users will see there is no difference in hardware between standard and platinum cards.
Well, there's one that's not visible in software: The RAM is tested to be less error-prone. If one pixel in a game isn't correct for 1/60 of a second, it doesn't matter. However, it does matter (potentially literally making the difference between life and death) when your CUDA calculation returns incorrect values.
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I think people are more skeptical of NVidia's IP reasoning than they have a right to be. Yes, I'd love more open drivers like Nouveau that actually performed well, and I'd like to not have to run NVidia's special installer every time I upgrade the kernel. Yet, I can easily conceive of situations where seeing driver source code might reveal something about the underlying hardware. It's probably a moot point in 6 months after a new card is released, when the cat is out of the bag on the hardware tweaks and
Diplomatic response (Score:2, Interesting)
They should have blasted him for not having a consistent set of APIs and changing things, often for little benefit, which break binary compatibility and make supporting Linux in all it's variants a mighty task.
Sure, Linus made Linux and uses it to push his agenda (i.e. that of FOSS), but when Commercial software houses struggle to keep up with the changes, I don't think he should be blaming them. Instead he should look more at what Linux can do to help non-FOSS software exist on the platform without needin
Re:Diplomatic response (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, Linus made Linux and uses it to push his agenda (i.e. that of FOSS)
No, Linus uses FOSS to push Linux, not the other way around.
Re:Diplomatic response (Score:5, Informative)
Apps have a stable API, so non-FOSS software can work fine with linux...
now DRIVERS have to comply with the kernel API, that might not be stable over time and can change... hardware builders should integrate their drivers in the kernel tree or suffer the pain of outside development. Its their choice, having to work together with the community and have the pain for legal process and code cleanup (not all trash is accepted in the kernel) is harder in the beginning, but will pay off for everyone (users, developers and company) on the long run... or play dumb and keep the closed driver and keep updating it when things change.
Releasing the hardware papers will allow the community to develop their drivers without the company have to work much, so between open source drivers, papers or close source drivers, the company have a lot to choose.
Most companies choose the first or at every least, release some papers or demo driver. They are seen as heros.
Nvidia is one of the few that choose closed sources drivers and so earns the hate of many users and the kernel developers.
Again, its their choice. Also, its the user choice to buy their cards or not.
i personally prefer open drivers and stability over better performance and locked in over on my own machine. other might have other opinions.
finally Linus dont have a hidden agenda, he cares only about the kernel and closed source drivers make very hard to almost impossible to debug problems. He choose GPL as a license as it protect his work from being abused by others. Linus didnt even wanted to migrate to GPL V3, so is clearly dont have a hidden agenda.
Again, if NVIDIA dont like the kernel license, they can choose to work only with *BSD kernels.
Hobson's choice (Score:2)
Also, its the user choice to buy their cards or not.
What other choice is there for 3D graphics on a laptop, apart from Intel whose performance is perpetually 6 to 10 years behind?
"consistent" experience? (Score:4, Interesting)
They're saying "providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms for all of our customers continues to be one of our key goals".
So, my interpretation of that is:
"If we released the drivers as open source, then people might figure out how to optimize and tune the Linux drivers. This could result in a better GPU experience on Linux than under Windows. That would embarrass us. To ensure a consistent experience across platforms, we therefore must prevent others from tinkering with the drivers, which mandates closed source."
Does anyone else read it that way?
Re:"consistent" experience? (Score:5, Insightful)
No the "Consistent Experience" statement is just PR bullshit.
If providing a "consistent experience" was a true goal of the company they would be implementing Optimus on Linux.
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Considering that the NVidia drivers consistently hard-freeze the machine and force either a remote "ssh sudo reboot" (if you're lucky) or a complete reset - I'm not sure I really want their "consistent experience."
Seriously, it's been my experience that more often than not the Linux NVidia drivers crash after running for a day or so, leaving you with a completely non-responsive desktop. I had to revert to Nouveau, which gives me a functional machine with no pretty graphics.
This has been my experience with t
It Is Positive (Score:5, Insightful)
It is positive sign that they care enough about the Linux community to bother to have their PR department give the usual empty corporate zero content response.
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The macbook air in front of me has an intel GPU.
Nvidia has said this all along.. (Score:3, Informative)
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nope.. this is particularly about optimus for which they're not giving specs(switching between using integrated and a discrete gpu).
also the nvidia answer dodges that _totally_.
Re:Nvidia has said this all along.. (Score:5, Informative)
Disappointing response (Score:5, Interesting)
lol.. consistency (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't had an NVIDIA driver work the same in Linux as it does in windows. Ever. Random screen blanking (nouveau driver), weird X errors (poly request too large or internal Xlib length error) and re-compiles every time there is a system kernel update. In comparison, all you need to do in Windows to get the NVIDIA driver working is hold down the enter key with a stapler while it's installing. Accept all the defaults. reboot. it's working.
At "the end of the day" this is not consistency, it's crapsistency.
I used to agree (Score:4, Insightful)
These days I have a GTX460 and I get tearing all the damn time. I have turned off compositing, I have turned it on, I have switched to xfce I have tried gnome3.
I hear the Open driver would fix this. If you can't even stop the tearing, then let someone else write your drivers.
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I have disabled compositing and enabled vsync. I will check to see if I have page flipping enabled.
How in 2012 you have a driver that does not work with xrandr and you claim it works I cannot understand.
The community failed on ATi (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The community failed on ATi (Score:4, Interesting)
Huh? The radeon driver is pretty damn good these days.
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If you actually bothered to read his complants, they were directed at Optimus (almost completely unsupported in Linux) and Tegra (Nvidia is making a shit-ton of money off of Linux and not being cooperative. Their PR bullshit about contributing to Linux is inconsistent with the reality of the code. They might have had the most changes from 3.3 to 3.4 - but that's probably because their shit was in the worst state to begin with. Even in 3.4, looking at their codebase it's woefully incomplete in mainline, f
Re:The community failed on ATi (Score:5, Insightful)
The AMD community supports all (11 now?) chip types, over all (4 now?) generations of Radeon released (since 2000).
KMS (kernel mode setting) and other features of the Linux graphics stack are supported over all hardware, including TV out, and other features.
3D is a work in progress. Yes, it's been almost five years, but the features do work.
I would say that, objectively, the open source drivers have been a success. I would even say that the open source drivers are arguably superior to the closed ones. Work continues (especially in the 3D area). Does the proprietary driver support stuff like multi-seat?
Of course, you claim that it doesn't work at all, and that the effort has been for nought. Please clarify. Bug reports would probably be welcome (not sure, but check x.org, freedesktop.org).
At the least, please post your hardware information, so that other people will know to avoid it.
The better question - and solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyone is upset NVIDIA doesn't give away all it's secrets. There hard earned property. that they built. Why not go the more open route and create one set of driver standards for video cards. VESA -- everyone knows the standard and its up to the manufacturer to optimize their side and on the consumer side you get what you asked for.
This is actually a battle over special features -- my hardware can do some pretty sweet stuff, but I wanna control how you can access that stuff. the concept from above still applies, but there is no incentive for the hardware designer to devote resources (people and the salaries they have to pay those people) to help you bang out that new framework.
I love open source, but it's built on peoples free time. Companies have to justify how something makes them money. Saying this will build product sales in a 10% market share is not enough. So come halfway and get the framework done and they will optimize their side. This is the best of both world I get a product and they stay behind their doors, but it's a blackbox I can use.
MBA's and idiots without cloths. (Score:5, Interesting)
They all think there is secret sauce in their product with some genuine trade secret level information.
In reality, having seen the secret sauce from a 3rd party perspective a few times, it turns out that often times the competitor is doing it basically the same way. So the only people being hurt by not publishing the hardware specifications (as was the normal state of things until the late 1990's) are the hackers and budding engineers trying to make the product better in some way.
In the case of graphics companies, it seems they are somewhat justified for not releasing the source to the proprietary drivers, as that is such a huge part of their performance work (aka sometimes the games aren't faster because the hardware is faster, they are faster because the driver is using a better algorithm, or has more micro optimization). Not releasing the hardware specs is just silly, because at this point, a big portion of the graphics chips are understood well enough that releasing information on mode setting or shader setup is more like filling in the details, rather than giving away any secrets.
The Optimus stuff is a prime example, its basically just going to be information on enabling/disabling parts of the chip or setting power envelops for certain functions. The real secret sauce is how to use that information. I have a similar issue with my little NAS box at home based on a guru plug. Marvell claims to be open source friendly, and gives away specifications that look good until you actually try to do something like power down an unused sata port. Then your SOL without the NDA, because knowing the register which controls the power gating is some kind of secret....
Mostly, what is being hidden is the fact that the emperor has no cloths.
Both Sides are Wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
First off, Nvidia are buttheads. They are. But they also have a right to make money. Apple, EA games, Sony, Intel, and on an on - they all operate this way, as does 99% of business. Where Nvidia is wrong is, well, where can I go out and pay $5 or $10 for a driver from them that works? You see, part of it is that the companies say that they offer a proprietary driver but I can't actually go out and BUY it from them or obtain it from them.
But this brings up the other side of the dirty coin, as it were. That the Linux (in particular) community seems to have a major issue with paying for anything. I have zero issue with paying small fees. I do it all the time. I pay for my sandwich at lunch, my gas in my car, and well, pretty much everything in life. I just want a solution and to move on to the dozen other things that that I have to do during my day. So there's this great divide. They often don't even deal with issues or fix things at all, because it requires paying "the man" or using their code. ie - if it's not free and 100% open-source, we won't touch it at all.
It's just as bad as Windows. They have effectively decided that you're SOL and stuck with their vision of 100% free or it's impossible to obtain view of their OS (which while open-source, is controlled on most Distros by a group of whingey, anal buttheads that might as well be CEOs at a typical software company, since they control the project with an iron fist) And this filters down to the forums and "help" groups that are as useful as a wet rag most of the time. Yes, the people mean well, but it's always "just install this". Without any explanation or documentation. Instead of mentioning the exact codecs you need to buy, they just will say "there is no package for that". No link - it's this attitude that if it's not 100% free, we don't even mention it or link to it.
This idiocy is most apparent with "projects" like Wine. There has been a long-standing mouse driver issue that never gets discussed, fixed, or worked on. Because the code to make it work, is proprietary and there is no work-around (requires paying Microsoft a small fee, and their code is the only way to make it work properly). Cedega had a version of the driver that worked. Cedega went out of business, and as an end-user, stuff just stopped working a few months ago. The mouse driver(among other things like sound drivers and so on) and is effectively locked away as it's Cedega's proprietary (and legally protected) code. Wine won't release it.(yes, these are the same people) The official response over at Wine is "there is no fix". There is an actual fix, but they refuse to release it or make it available for a small fee.
They whine about everything having to be open-source to the point of acting like it's a holy war, and yet when there's money involved, the same people don't act any different than Nvidia.
Me, I just want to pay my fee and get on with my life.
I'd settle for a checkbox during setup (Score:2)
"Nvidia compatible hardware accelerator detected. Enable Nouveau?" Yes No
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Umm...What?
I haven't had any issues* with nouveau. If you need a compatitbility list, I've used it with a GT210, GT240, 9800GT, 6200, 7150, Quadro FX 1800, and currently a GTX 460 (can't recall if I ever used it with a Geforce 3). Usually I use Red Hat or Fedora, but I've not had issues with my cards when I've used Gentoo, Ubuntu, Debian or Slackware either.
*I preferred the nvidia driver when gaming under Linux, it provided much better 3D preformance. But, that was several years ago I must admit (Neverwi
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what!? Did you even read their statement?
3) We are a very active participant in the ARM Linux kernel. For the latest 3.4 ARM kernel – the next-gen kernel to be used on future Linux, Android, and Chrome distributions – NVIDIA ranks second in terms of total lines changed and fourth in terms of number of changesets for all employers or organizations.
(emphasis mine)
Unless you yourself are even more active in Linux then they are, it would be more appropriate for them to say to you ... Fuck You.
Re:Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Summary (Score:5, Informative)
There's what they say... And then there's the code.
If they're really contributing as much as they claim, then why is the mainline cpuidle support for Tegra in 3.4 so piss-poor compared to that of their own forked 2.6.36 branch? Where's the documentation on their CPU's idle/power management capabilities? Why is the Tegra code so badly branched that devices running Android 4.0 on Tegra are running 2.6.39 instead of the officially recommended 3.0.8?
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1. is correct.
2. Is not. nVidia is spending time and money to write Linux drivers. They actually work pretty well. If they where going to say Fuck Linux then they wouldn't provide drivers.
Let's be honest about what the FOSS community wants. They want nVidia to keep writing the drivers and make them open source. But hey if you still want to stick with the party line of "If you provide the documentation the community will write the drivers for you" then buy AMD/ATI video cards and stop complaining about nVidi
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It makes the Linux and open source communities look bad when the man who has essentially become the face of it all is publicly throwing childish profanities at a major company for not offering software to Linux users in the way that he thinks they should. If we want help from other hardware manufacturers down the road then we should at least appear somewhat civilized. I enjoy using Linux but don't appreciate that this is how my best interests are being represented.
It's enough of a miracle that nVidia has th
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It's certainly not impossible to do, but there's a huge difficulty. Computer architectures today involve a lot different bits and pieces from different manufacturers. To get all the pieces from completely new manufacturers who are willing to give all the specs, I mean, ALL THE SPECS is pretty hard given that most of the existing companies are involved in some market distorting practices, such as patents, holding back the manuals, and copyright and other bullshit.
Even worse, because we already have a billion
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