nVidia Posts First Linux Graphics Drivers for Opteron

Brian Stretch writes "nVidia posted the first publically available Linux graphics drivers for the Athlon 64 (aka Hammer series) on their website today. There are updates for the lesser x86 and IA64 architectures as well. Now, if only the Athlon 64 and Opteron boards and CPUs themselves were publically available, or is AMD's developer program sending out more of these things than I know? (If so, gimme!) I guess I'll have to tough it out with my mere dual Athlon 2400+ workstation for now (heh heh heh)." In related news, an anonymous reader writes "The new AMD Opteron servers designed by Newisys are using embedded Linux for system management. This allows remote management via web browser or ssh to examine processor state, switch power on/off, regulate processor power states and fan speeds, update BIOS firmware, etc. See the docs for more info!"

Comments

whoa

[tps12]

I don't want to look a gift, hoarse in the mouth, but isn't this a little late in coming? I thought that Linux had taken great strides in hardware support in general and game support in particular. Personally, I only use Linux for development and serving Apache web applets, and I've never been much of a gamer. Hell, I don't even have KDE installed, and I guess that's standard now. But the point is, I'm surprised that simple video card drivers took this long to release. ATI has had Linux drivers out forever, correct? I just don't know what to make of this. Maybe Linux users are just too smart to waste their time playing games, or maybe hardware vendors don't see much of a future in Linux. Is it time to jump ship?

Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[BeBoxer]

Ok. I give up, and Google didn't seem to be able to help. What's the origin of the new "In Soviet Russia, blank blanks YOU!" joke? It seems to be quite the "in" joke this month, and I'm feeling left out. :-(

Oh wait, Google did come thru. Yakov Smirnoff, right? I didn't know Google let you use wildcards in "exact phrase" searches. Cool. "in soviet russia * * you"

Re:Drivers

[Omnifarious]

The comment isn't getting old.

I don't care how many times this is mentioned. Every time something comes up about the nVidia cards, I hope we get a whole flood of people posting about this problem. I don't really care what excuse they have for not having Open Source drivers. I only care that they aren't.

It makes my kernel unsafe and insecure whenever I load the non-Open Source drivers into it. I end up suspecting them first in every case of strange system behavior because I know they haven't undergone peer review. I am extremely distrustful of them, and if I had any other choice that was within 75% of the performance and used Open Source drivers, I'd jump to it in an instant, even if it was %20 more in price.

I'm just waiting for the day I can drop their hardware like a hot rock. And if there's something that comes along where I can actively help that day come to pass, I'll do it.