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nVidia Unified Drivers Including Linux/FreeBSD
Screaming Lunatic writes "nVidia has decided to include Linux and FreeBSD in their Unified Driver Architecture and offer more tech support. Sounds like great news for Linux developers and users if Linux drivers are released at the same time as Windows drivers. (The NV30 emulation driver for Linux was made available about 3 months later than for Windows) The big push is probably from big studios that use Linux tools such as Film Gimp. More info here ." Added by Heunique: You might want to look here if you are using the latest development kernel.
... it's FreeBSD that is the news!
It would be fun if someone would have a look at the drivers and port them to BeOS. Geforce4 is yet to be supported.
-- http://z80.org - all opinions, all the time --
How about releasing the drivers as open source? Then you'll have a lot of support from the Linux community. (see previous thread about the linux kernel)
Quoth the AC: I like drivers that work.
Apparently those who do not understand history are condemned to repeat it. The formalization of the Free Software movement by RMS in the form of the FSF was a direct result of a buggy driver (for a printer). So while it's nice that nvidia sees value in releasing these drivers and giving GNU/Linux the option to play on a level field with Windows... it hardly pushes the cause of Free Software forward to pollute machines that would otherwise be 100% Free with little bits of wholly un-Free software. Now, as I understand it, it's unfortunate that much of the competitive edge nvidia's hardware has is actually the result of the proprietary code in their drivers. It's going to be hard to convince them to forego that, since it would endanger their cash flow.
I do not have a signature
Considering this story about binary modules in the Linux 2.6 kernel, it's either not a problem for proprietary software developers to have these restrictions placed on them, or they haven't gotten wind of the news (which is highly unlikely).
The drivers that the Weather Channel was paying for - did anything ever come of that? This announcment from Nvidia is definitely great, and I have no doubt it's the most they can do right now, but...
It would be much better to have open source drivers available. You'd get more people looking at things like security and performance issues, and then we could have support for architectures other than x86. (Which is probably something Nvidia themselves isn't going to bother with.)
Several people seem concerned about nVidia's drivers and the forthcoming 2.6 kernel. I can't say much for tomorrow, but today, I have the latest (4191) nVidia drivers working just fine with the most recent development kernel.
To make it all work, the drivers need a minor makefile patch and updated modutils, but otherwise work just fine. You can obtain the required files from:
Unofficial nVidia driver patch
Updated modutils
Those did the tirkc for me. Your mileage may vary.
All about me
> I decided long ago that I did not want to become like those sad people that cling to long-dead platforms, constantly predicting their return and vocally defending their virtues. Let BeOS rest in peace.
I like those people. Like the ones who do insane amounts of hacking to add upgrades and get more speed out of their Amigas. Or Acorns. Or Ataris. I think they do more than most groups to make the computing world interesting, and I applaud their efforts. And I wish I had the time and money to join them. I think the efforts of Apple II and C64 people are cool too, but have less desire to join them.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
Wouldn't that be due to your monitor?
That's like making the assumption your photographs are bad because the paper used.
The developer, film, lens, camera, and photographer are all variables in that equation, also.
While a good monitor will certainly enhance a computer image, it's not going to be able to magically fix a crappy signal sent to it. 2D quality on video cards is not standard. And, yes, nVidia does take some liberty with high-fidelty for the sake of performance.
If you want an outstanding 2D image from a video card buy Matrox. Their 3D implementations aren't that hot, but their 10bit color cards are used almost exclusively for high quality imaging devices (think medical applications) because of the clarity and quality.
Anyway, a large-scale replacement of artists' desktops is taking place, moving from expensive SGI hardware to faster, cheaper x86 hardware running Linux. This is why it is so important that high-quality drivers are available for high-end graphics cards in Linux, and, unfortuantely, the best for nVidia comes from nVidia in binary format. Monkeying around wtih the kernel's binary interface with each incremental release is not going to make nVidia's job any easier.
--sdem