Slashdot Mirror
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 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 --
The FreeBSD drivers have been out for about a month. The news is that the drivers are part of the official driver package now and will be released with the regularity of the Windows drivers.
Derek Greene
That still means you get shafted if you use something different than i386/i64/amd64whatever. There's still no PPC support, and that sucks. Badly.
I think this will help them a lot. Linux runs quake much better, so if they officially support it they can start advertising the FPS of quake in linux. Users will compare it to quake in windows and think the card is even better.
This will also help get developers(other than the gods at idsoft) to take linux a little more seriously.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
They're arguably equal or (in most cases) superior to most other cards
They've always supported Linux
Installing a Geforce 4200i in my Mandrake box was a snap last year ...
BTW - it was interesting to see the comment by Tim Sweeney of Epic Games (Unreal), who was applauding nVidia for their support of Linux. If we could only get all the gaming companies to pay as much attention to the Linux platform as the consoles or the PC, I could see the entire desktop shifting towards Linux next. Ok, well maybe I'm just dreaming ...
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)
Id software can practically drive the industry sometimes, and without decent driver support for the platform Id would have a hard time putting out games like doom III or Quake III for the linux platform.
- tristan
Please point me to WORKING nvidea drivers for a non intel/amd architecture.......
At best you could say they support i386-linux not linux... and you are still limited to a subset of all the available kernels...
They have linux drivers, they don't support linux.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
NVidia have been "supporting" Linux for a few years so far. Unfortunately, their drivers have been closed-source, binary-only -- a fact which has caused quite a bit of grief for kernel developers, since it makes it impossible to trace the cause for a kernel oops when using the NVidia drivers.
I did a search through the article for the word "open". I found "OpenGL", but no "open source". So, IMHO, this news release is just PR bullshit (apart from the BSD bit, which may be new) -- there appears to be no move whatsoever for NVidia to open up their source.
I wonder what implications the continuing close-source approach of NVidia will have, what with the upcoming abolition of binary-only modules in Linux kernel 2.6?
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
The big push is probably from big studios that use Linux tools such as Film Gimp.
Right, because workstations that use a 2D, time based, painting program need programmable pixel shaders, programmable vertex shaders, hardware transform and lighting, massive fill rate, AGP 8X transfer speeds, and astronomical triangle throughput.
that the economy is Linux's best friend. While the recession continues(and grows deeper), companies will have to work harder to make their profits and grow their company. Like hollywood, these companies will lower their IT spending; this means Linux. This also will means that some smart companies will offer better service which will lead to improved sales which their competitors will notice. 4)Profit!!!
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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
How about because they're released regularly for Linux and FreeBSD, run at 95-99% speed of the Windows drivers, and are the fastest and best-supported cards available for Linux?
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
... that supporting the companies who support open source software ... is also a way of supporting open source software :)
They're regularly released for FreeBSD? How does one release become "regularly released"?
Dinivin
I'd much rather they started shipping RPMs for all the stable kernel versions that are out there. Have they finally produced Psyche RPMS yet?
If I understood the article, the drivers aren't going to be Open Source / Free Software. So I don't see why I would support them...
Yeah, there are so many other companies with superior products who will give us every single bit of code in their drivers. Besides, who needs 3D acceleration on Linux anyway? I suppose I can just take my 3D apps and run them on Windows.
Moron.
A disproportionate number of Linux users have nVidia cards primarily because they have decent drivers which work for all kernels, and tend to install without too much hassle. I downgraded my Linux box to a TNT2 because of this.
This has resulted in a large chunk of the market share going to nVidia, encouraging them to invest a little more in Linux. A sort of feedback loop.
It may only be a niche, but it's another chunk of income for them. nVidia will sell chips to anyone if they can get more money back than they spend.
I doubt filmgimp has as much of an impact. This is a smaller market than 3d enthusiasts with dual boot Linux systems.
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).
I know most people answer "I am not interested with changing or even reading driver source", but they forget why Open Source is good. I will write just two reasons:
Of course it would be BETTER if they were open source. But the reason to support them is that you need a graphics card in your computer, and you'll choose the one that has good linux drivers.
Anyway, any major company that takes Linux seriously is worth supporting. I fully support them. Like I fully support Id software even if they don't make open source games (which would be totally stupid IMHO anyway). Also, maybe some other graphic cards vendors (or other hardware or even software) will look at the highly successful nVidia, and say "hey, they make linux drivers and are successful, so maybe we should do so too."
bool Marketoid::IsGood(){return IsDead();}
just because the drivers themselves aren't Open Source doesn't mean nVidia isn't supporting the open source community by release drivers for Open Source OS's. What's with the All-or-Nothing mentality of the open source community. Can't we just be glad nVidia now sees the linux market big enough to spend resources to develop drivers for can pat them on the back for it?
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1845
NVidia still hasn't realeased a set of drivers that work with the 2.5.x development kernel which, unfortunately, I must use day-to-day -- albeit on a non-production machine.
I won't criticize NVidia too harshly for distributing binary-only drivers -- I understand their reasoning and I accept it. I only wish that since we can't have the source, they'd support us developers with beta drivers that work with the 2.5 series kernel. It'd be nice to have an idea of what and how things will work in kernel-next.
It's actually not their fault. IIRC, their driver code contains a lot of code from other companies that is copyrighted or under very restrictive licensing. This, unfortunately is very bad for people who would like to see the driver code fully released. It'll never happen without all the contributing corporations signing off on it. I support them because they do the best they can do to support the linux community. They also just happen to do it far better than any other GPU manufacturer ever has.
Look, I agree in most cases it makes sense for stuff to be open source and have nice open drivers so that if there are bugs they can be addressed in a more timely fashion.
.....drivers... one ATI's drivers suck, they don't update them across all cards at the same time, and they surely don't update them across all supported platforms at the same time. Guess what NVIDIA now can.
NVIDIA's track record is already to make high quality drivers, now whenever they make a Windows driver the Linux driver will be right there with it because 95 percent of the code base is now shared.
This is a brilliant move to hurt ATI were there problem is
Now if NVIDIA were to release their code ATI wouldn't have to decompile it and scratch their heads trying to figure out exaclty how to compete they would have the freaking code.
NVIDIA has a unified driver for all of their cards, for all of the platforms now so that you know that all of their cards will always work with the latst drivers, the operating systems they support and so on. Good luck finding that for ATI, and I for one don't think that NVIDIA should hand them the code on a platter just because people want everything in Linux to be open source. Sometimes vendor support is just as important.
I have a Geforce2 Dual card which I have been trying to get seperate X screens on so I can play OpenGL games (i.e Terminus, UT2003, etc) on one screen and put XAWTV on the second to watch TV (i.e. Simpsons & Samurai Jack). Well, the new driver supports that...
Here are the highlights of the new driver:
Linux Display Driver
Linux Graphics Driver Download
Version: 1.0-4191
Operating System: Linux IA32
Release Date: December 11, 2002
Release Highlights:
* OpenGL 1.4 with CineFX architecture support
* Support for AGP 8x and nForce2 IGP
* Support for index overlays on Quadro4 to support legacy applications
* Support for separate X screens on nView enabled GPUs
* GLX 1.3 support
Yup, seperate X screens now with the dualhead cards. Hopefully I can put this to the test in the next few days.
BTW, Don't try this on Windows kids....
Jeff
Yes, the latest 40.xx drivers for linux are now available in rpm packages for both redhat 8.0 and mandrake 9.0
_ ia 32_1.0-4191
http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_display
Visit www.minion.de for some patches that will let you use the drivers under 2.5.x (worked great for me under 2.5.50). The author of the patches worked at nVidia as an intern doing work on the Linux/FreeBSD drivers.
Vote for global prefs bug
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.)
Thanks. My god, no wonder they took so long. They have to provide separate RPMs for every single different optimisation for every CPU type???? I hope the kernel gets some semblance of binary compatability soon, that's nuts.
Companies that are bottom line driven (accept it, you won't change capitalism over night) can't usually afford to jump in head first. This goes double for Nvidia, ATI, etc. Their driver source is like a blueprint of the important parts of their hardware.
I prefer open source, but to say there is no place in the world for closed source modules, applications, whatever, is too extreme IMHO.
For me the dividing line has always been commodity vs non commodity. Example: Of COURSE the OS, office software, web browsers, MUA's, MTA's, etc should be open, they are commodities. Specialized programs like AutoCAD, Drivers for up-to-the-minute video cards, and various other areas do NOT lend themselves to the open source model, and I don't believe they have to.
So right now the devil's choice is,
a) fast nvidia drivers for linux/bsd that get released with the windows drivers, which is 2 steps ahead of where we were in July, or
b) only a community supported driver, created by reverse engineering the chipset or windows drivers, released months (and years) after the windows versions.
It's not a perfect world, we have to change it in small steps. Your idealism is duly noted. Give nvidia credit for moving in the right direction, maybe at some point it *will* make sense to go GPL for them..
A computer without Microsoft is like ice cream without ketchup.
You are my personal hero. :-) I'll take a look at these ASAP. Thanks for the info!
I'm not so sure this is a good thing. My multimonitor/multicard setup works fine under the latest Linux drivers, but doesn't work under the latest Win2K drivers. I have to keep using 30.82 under Win2K. I'd report the problem, but they seem to offer no support for the Detonator drivers at all. Any nvidia people out there?
Note: This discussion is a diversion, not necesarily off-topic. :)
While the recession continues(and grows deeper)
A recession is a period of general economic decline; specifically, a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive quarters. We've actually had growth (in the USA anyway) for at least the last two quarters and, I believe, the last four.
Anyway, you're correct that a weak economy is a good way to encourage companies to at least consider open-source software, especially when companies cannot afford to take the hits of security breaches and downtime that competitors are notorious for providing. That doesn't even take into account the licensing costs that are saved by using open-source software.
I see a lot of whining and complaining that these aren't open source drivers, and that they don't really SUPPORT linux if its' not open source, but this is exactly the attitude that makes companies afraid of linux. Everyone feels that if they are going to put anything on linux that they have to open it up. Yes, it would be nice, but let me tell you what I think is even nicer. Having the frigging drivers in the first place. You know what's nicer than that? Having them release the drivers at the same time as their other drivers. If this doesn't seem like a nice thing to you, then just think of it as a step in the right direction and offer a little support.
Three of those applications are available for Windows.
95%-99%? OpenGL under Linux with these drivers is actually faster. Do I need to post benchmarks to people like you, as I have to do just about every week?
I was a huge BeOS fan. I bought the commercial releases and really liked it, but its day has passed. The company that produced it is not out of business and the one that acquired them has no interest in developing or marketing it further. I wish that this were not the case, but it is.
BeOS is no longer cutting-edge technology and the multiple, disorganized, unfunded attempts to create a BeOS clone are unlikely to result in viable products. BeOS lacks the user base necessary to stimulate development, the software base to attract users, and the tech support that is needed by users and developers alike.
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.
NVidia still hasn't realeased a set of drivers that work with the 2.5.x development kernel which, unfortunately, I must use day-to-day -- albeit on a non-production machine.
NVIDIA has better things to than chasing a constantly changing interface (Kernel 2.5.x). The patches available at http://www.minion.de/ were updated for practially every kernel release between 2.5.44 and 2.5.50. Surely you don't expect NVidia to roll new drivers every 2 days, right?
With that said, I can finally enjoy Twinview with dual X screens in the 41.91 release. Their new 2D architecture still needs lots of work though...looking forward to the next release.
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Indeed...
:)
I had started looking at nVidia cards a few months back.. I couldn't really afford to upgrade to a high end card, so wanted to pick up a cheap GeForce2 or something similar to my current Radeon 7200 VIVO, simply because of the excellent Linux driver support compared to ATI. I ended up getting offered a Ti4400 at a crazy price and bought it.
The nVidia Linux drivers are superb (read they WORK) and I have not had any problems getting them working across a range of distributions.
A class act nVidia - i'll be looking to you for my next video card, whenever that is
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
The most higly supported 3d card under linux is the 3dfx Voodoo 3.
Huh?
Care to define "most highly supported"? NVIDIA has been putting out drivers for a good while now, and their cards are rock solid. The drivers are binary-only, granted, but the fact that they're actively updated certainly surpasses the state of the tdfx code, I think.
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
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
Superior software?
Time to lose some Karma here, but bullshit. I love Linux, and I think it is a truely great platform - but the way I see it is that a large majority of Linux applications are clones of Windows applications, and quite frankly they are rarely as fast, functional, or reliable.
Mozilla - very good, feature packed, but no way near as good as IE - it pains me to say it, but everyone harps on about the fact that IE doesnt support all the standards that Mozilla does. But if people dont seem to be coding in those standards, and are using the broken Microsoft ones, then what the hell is the point? IE belts along at a pace I have yet to see Mozilla keep up with, and it renders every website correctly, regardless of whether its using an incorrect standard to do it or what.
Nautilus - pretty but terribly slow - and to be quite honest, frustrating to use. I prefer just regular old GNOME with none of the Nautilus stuff bolted on.
XMMS - better than what? Winamp? I dont think so... XMMS is a superb application, but again is missing so many things that make Winamp truely great.
I wont comment on the rest as I dont use them regularly enough to make informed comments on them.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Look, I know that many people think ideally everything should be open source, but it doesn't work that way. There are good reasons to want to keep the source closed on many thigns. In nVidia's case, one of teh main reasons is because they liscence certian thigns (like OpenGL technology for example) they they are contractually not allowed to release.
Really, I think people ought to quit bitching. Their drivers are fast, stable, and support all the features of their hardware. This is what one would expect from a driver. If they keep it closed for contractual reasons or otherwise, that seems like a poor reason not to use the hardware.
We aren't talking about something like Windows, that is attempting to keep something proprietary, the drivers act purely as an interface between the hardware and the higher level software.
Then just use open drivers - problem solved.
Of course, that limits your choice of hardware significantly, but then if you realyl are going to use ancient unsupported kernels, you won't be that worried, right?
*sigh*
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Winamp is still better than XMMS.
Photoshop is still better than GIMP.
Nautilus is still horribly slow.
EMACS superior wo WHAT ?
Besides, most of the applications you list are avaible for Win32 anyway.
Okay. I love linux. I love having the source available to many different partsof my OS and of many of my applications. BUT I AM ALSO A REALIST. We will never get to a point where everything is Open Source. People do need to protect the their IP some times. People have a perfect right to close source their poject if that is what they decided to do. I am very happy that Nvidia is supporting Linux. I love their drivers. Quake 3 Arena and UT2K3 run really fast. All my little opengl apps I using to learn runs flawlessly. Continue the great work Nvidia...close source your drive if you want or if you are required to by other agreements. Please stop whinning everyone, be glad we are getting good solid support!
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
> 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.
Vicious circle: IE doesn't support [x], web developers don't use [x] because 90% of users won't see it. Hence IE doesn't need to support [x]. Way to hold up the development of the web by barely supporting 6 year old standards.
Funnily enough they do the same with Outlook and their MIME support.
In my experience, Gecko is significantly faster than Trident. Phoenix even goes a good way to making the rest of the UI similarly speedy.
Erm. Y' know, if we didn't spend so much of our time working around IE bugs, half the sites out there using CSS would probably be unusable with stylesheets enabled in IE. Of *course* it renders websites in pretty much the way we intend -- we spend ages working around the broken box model of IE5 and the broken positioning model of IE6 and the stupid clipping bugs it's covered with and the poor selector support and... you get the idea.
That's not to say the other browsers are pefect, but IE really takes the cake for destructive and annoying to work around bugs.
The page claims that the new NVidia drivers support power management, as in suspend/resume on laptops.. That doesnt seem to be the case.. Have I missed something?
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.
When I think of all of the effort that they are expending and how it could benefit a modern, viable platform, it seems a terrible waste.
Rereading my post, I caught a rather ugly blunder. I said "The company that produced it is not out of business" when I meant to type "The company that produced it is now out of business."
Sorry for any confusion.
Although I would like to believe you on this, I will have to disagree...
While many video games such as Quake3 will run better under nVidia/Linux over win32/Linux, this usually has nothing to do with the raw video performance. Most of the time it has to do with the overall system performance, aside from video. If you can show some true numbers that prove that the actual VIDEO performance is better, then it would be another story..
Then again, I'm not really up to date on it all, so I could be wrong, but I do know that in the past, nVidida drivers have been sub-par to the win32 drivers.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
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
When I think of all of the effort that they are expending and how it could benefit a modern, viable platform, it seems a terrible waste.
It's not!
Where do you think people cut their teeth learning how to program? That's right, those same dinosaur platforms!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Where do you think people cut their teeth learning how to program?
In general, on PCs running Linux or Windows.
I hate having to access my drives with letters, which are randomly garbled everytime I add or remove some drive, install a new SCSI driver, or whatever.
That may have been the case under Windows 9x/Me, but, under 2000 and XP, you simply assign the drive letters you want and those drive letters stick.
Yes, that's a big job; and, yes, that's nuts. Of course, when you have the source, you don't need binary compatibility!
It is certainly nice that nVidia is going to be making the same sort of effort for us that they make for the several versions of Windows. I realize that they're going to a lot of effort to provide binaries for a few of the distributions that I might use. Have they gotten around to Yellowdog yet?
I'm afraid that I'm not impressed by their effort, though. They have chosen, for their own good reasons, not to let volunteers from the comunity do it for them. This is like walking 20 miles, through the snow, uphill both ways to get to school, when you live next door to the school and the schoolbus would take you free.
See what I've been reading.
Sure, it's cool that they're getting drivers out the door, especially with nVIDIA's history of buggy drivers.
nVidia doesn't have a history of buggy drivers. You
are thinking of ATI.
But "almost as fast as Windows" isn't going to cut it
Actually, it's a crap shoot. Some things are faster
on windows (d3d stuff) and most opengl stuff is
slightly faster on linux/freebsd. granted we are
talking about 1-3 percent differences here.
We Linux users are used to, and demand, superior software. Mozilla, Nautilus, XMMS, the GIMP, EMACS...these applications blow away anything available for Windows. 95-99% of Windows speed is "too little, too late."
Here is where the obvious troll is. Who actually
bought this crap?
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
Of course, the solution would be to work on pushing for a unified free driver between ATI, Matrox, 3DLabs (as possible, meaning perhaps only the Permedia line), and NVidia. However, I suspect it might be harder to do here than across card from one manufactor.
Further, while it seems that for some cards, we have the info needed to program the rasterizer, I don't think anybody has specs on geometry engines for any card. And even if we did, optimization would have to be a trial and error process since we don't know what is ideal for the card. It would be something interesting to work on though, to try and see if one could write TNT and pre geometry engine ATI drivers that are faster than the vendor supplied ones, then try to attack the geometry engine problem. I think that the DRI guys are doing this somewhat already, except for they seem more focused on getting things to work rather than optimizing them (which is very sensible really).
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
I wish there was a good way out of this mess. Unfortunatley, until somebody figures out how we can all make money out of inventing stuff without IP laws, it won't get any better.
If "IP Laws" worked then they *could* open the source, because the "laws" would prevent the source from being used in ways they don't want. In fact they are acting exactly like IP laws don't exist.
That's an excellent point. The whole purpose of our intellectual ``property'' laws is to stop this sort of silly secrecy. Patent requires disclosure, and I believe that copyright requires publication. We give the inventors/authors privileges to restrict the use of their works in order to encourage them to make their work public, not to allow them to more effectively keep secrets!
Yet another bit of evidence to add to the enormous mountain of evidence that our ``IP'' laws need reform.
See what I've been reading.
I'm already running Opera, and won't downgrade to mozilla or the like. I play games like Return to Castle Wolfentstein and Tribes2. They're closed source, and I have no problem running them. So what's the big deal about using a closed-source driver? Who ever said that I must use a 100% open source system?
Keep in mind, that you have choice with other cards, like ATI or Matrox.
Choice is good. But the choice bewteen dealing with buggy, third-party, months-late drivers for ATI cards (which can be non-trivial to install), or using slow Matrox hardware is no choice at all. My GeForce2 cost me about a hundred bucks, and is incredibly fast. The drivers install in about 45 seconds. The card works great and 3D is fine. There's not a chance I'd "put up with" those other video cards. Not when nVidia has made it so easy to use their hardware.
I understand what you're saying about Open Source and I realize all its benefits. I'm a big proponent of open source. But none of the Open Source alternatives to using nVidia cards even come close to comparing. There isn't much choice there. So I have to use a closed-srouce driver. When I look at what I get in return, I think "big deal" and move on.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
FYI, Matrox G-series cards have a feature-complete open source driver, 3dfx cards all do, and most ATI cards have at least a working, if not feature-complete one.
Insulting people with whom you disagree is not an efficient way to convince them of your point of view.LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
nVidia clearly hates me. I had problems installing their drivers on my Redhat 8 system a while ago, and was too busy with my schoolwork to put on a different distro, or recompile everything on my system to get it to all work together. But that's okay. I needed to be doing my work anyway, not playing UT 2003.
They decided to release their updated drivers, complete with a Redhat 8 RPM, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF EXAMS! To make matters worse, UT 2003 makes my system clock lag quite a bit, and I didn't have ntp set up, so in addition to getting no studying done, I was late to an exam. I'm convinced that they're trying to sabotage my academic career.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
"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"
Correct me if I am wrong, but the drivers are free, right? Just because software isn't open source doesn't mean they are not free. Would I have to buy an NVIDIA card to be able to download their drivers? No, I could just go to their website and download them. In my mind, free software is anything you (technically/legally) don't have to pay for to obtain and use.
Project Steve
From what i've heard, the latest driver build breaks things very badly on many 2.4.x kernels, as well as slowing down 2d performance to the point where the generic open-source drivers outperform this build.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
There are two meanings of the word "free" at work.
There is free (as in beer), which you do not have to pay for.
There is Free (as in speech), which does not restrict what you can do with it.
Obviously there can be no universal freedom. There is a saying "Your right to swing your fist stops at the tip of my nose". You are not (or should not) be free to yell "Fire" in a crowded enclosed space. Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation and the GPL is software that you are free to modify, and distribute as you wish, for any payment you wish. You cannot place restrictions on the software as to what can be done with it after you have given it to someone.
You get something for free (as in beer). If you modify it and distribute it, you must give everyone the same freedoms that you were given. To me it seems a small price to pay for getting the original software for free.
I'm not a GPL fanatic, but I like some of the ideas behind it. In todays software economy, lots of money is made by selling the right to use software, something you can't do with Free (as in speech) software. But many companies spend a lot of money on custom software that is never traded on the open market, either by developing in house or contracting out the work. In these cases companies could save a lot of money by adapting an existing product to their needs, rather then writing everything from scratch.
I wandered a bit, but this shoudl serve as a quick intro into free and Free software.
Democracy isn't about no one telling you what to do. It's about everyone telling you what to do.
I won't criticize NVidia too harshly for distributing binary-only drivers -- I understand their reasoning and I accept it.
Then perhaps you can explain to me what that reasoning is, because I do not understand it. But do not say that it is to preserve their trade secrets, because binary modules are no safer from determined prying eyes than source code is. Nor should you say that it is because they are contractually prohibited from releasing parts of the code they they do not own - if this were true, only those parts would need to be placed in a binary module. That leaves... err, exactly what?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Yup, great for Linux users... Oh, what's this word in there? F-r-e-e-B-S-D. Oh well, let's just ignore it... Yup. Great for Linux users.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Then perhaps you can explain to me what that reasoning is, because I do not understand it.
Sure, look here. In a nutshell, a lot of the code in the drivers does not belong to nVidia. Instead it was written and contributed or licensed to nVidia under highly restrictive licensing. Therefore nVidia cannot release the source without each of the other parties' explicit permission.
You've got to give nVidia some credit. They do a hell of a job supporting the *nix community. Better than any other GPU manufacturer ever has -- ATI and 3dfx both included. Compared to most other manufacturer's complete lack of drivers, nVidia releases complete, stable drivers.
If you're really worried about your kernel being tainted,this article, mentioned earlier on Slashdot, talks about the changes the kernel team is making to prevent non-GPL binary drivers from tainting the kernel. I applaud the kernel team for making these changes and so long as nVidia follows the rules, I have absolutely no problem with using their binary-only drivers.
There's a lot of wisdom in those words. For example, it is well known that DOOM1's source code was delayed, because id needed time to remove the sound engine from the game(i.e. it was licensed from someone else AFAIK). And people, don't get your panties in a bunch.
"Then perhaps you can explain to me what that reasoning is, because I do not understand it."
Sure, look here [slashdot.org].
Err, did you just put forward an unsupported Slashdot post to buttress your argument?
In a nutshell, a lot of the code in the drivers does not belong to nVidia. Instead it was written and contributed or licensed to nVidia under highly restrictive licensing. Therefore nVidia cannot release the source without each of the other parties' explicit permission.
That argument does not hold water. If it were true, and I have reason to believe otherwise (they have a competent in-house driver team) but suppose for the sake of argument it were true, then they could just put those parts in a binary module and open the rest. Since they have not done that, I conclude that contractual restriction is not the reason they don't provide the source.
You've got to give nVidia some credit. They do a hell of a job supporting the *nix community. Better than any other GPU manufacturer ever has -- ATI and 3dfx both included.
That is not true. Both ATI and Matrox provide much better technical documentation and are much more helpful to developers than NVidia. So, they get some credit for having providing drivers at all, but they fail the test of doing what is best for their customers.
So... since ATI is winning both the performance race and the mindshare sweepstakes, don't you think it's about time for NVidia to pull their collective heads out of their butts, before they go the way of 3Dfx?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Read the OSI's Open Source Definition or, better yet, the original Open Source Definition Version 1.0, published in 1998, when the Open Source Initiative was founded.
Then, after you read the Open Source Definition 1.0, read The Debian Free Software Guidelines.
Now, keep in mind, that The Debian Project was officially founded in 1993. The creation of Debian was sponsored by the Free Software Foundation's GNU Project, before the Software in the Public Interest organization was formed. Debian is the only GNU/Linux distribution, which correctly use the operating system name "GNU/Linux," while all other GNU/Linux distributions refuse to give any due credit to The GNU Project, for some reason.
Now you should have some idea why "the OSI definition typically includes most of the same freedoms that are found with Free Software."
And you should probably also have idea why so many people get so angry when most of the world is talking about Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds as the only heroes in the community -- Eric Raymond, who started the Open Source Movement and OSI in 1998 (never minding Richard Stallman who started the Free Software Movement and FSF in 1985), and Linus Torvalds, who wrote the whole operating system in 1991 (never minding, again, Richard Stallman, who started The GNU Project in 1983). See this recent farce, as an example on what I am talking about.
The facts are, that Linus Torvalds took an 8 years old operating system project, which only lacked the finished kernel, wrote a kernel and published the whole operating system (GNU system plus his own kernel) as "Linux." In my opinion, this operating system should be called simply "GNU," however Richard Stallman and the FSF wish to give both projects equal credit (for not equal work, mind you) calling the whole operating system "GNU/Linux." Still, most of the people call it just "Linux," refusing to mention GNU at all, for reasons which are beyond me. The same strange attitude we can observe with "Open Source Software" and The Open Source Initiative vs. "Free Software" and The Free Software Foundation.
Why is that so important? For a good example, see the "Linux" definition from this recent Sony Press Release from December 18, 2002:
"Linux: a Unix compatible open source operating system created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, then a graduate student at the University of Helsinki."
Now I think it should be obvious for everyone. Keep in mind that I am talking about Sony here. This is the misinformation, which most of the people outside the community will take as truth. And when anyone will start to wonder why this software was started in the first place, she will go to Linus Torvalds and OSI's explainations, because she will not even know about the GNU and The Free Software Philosophy.
I think that the "Open Source Linux OS" vs. "Free Software GNU/Linux OS" schism is very harmful to the community at large, because the people outside of the hacker subculture have not only no idea who in fact has done which work, but they also have no idea why, which is much more important.
The real reason is freedom, but when people think that they use a "Linux OS," which was written by Linus Torvalds as an "open source software," which was invented by Eric Raymond, then they will never know that it is all about freedom at all. So, they are happy with proprietary device drivers, the very same thing which made Richard Stallman start The GNU Project in the first place.
This post will probably get moderated down, as most of Slashdot users unfortunately represent the let's-never-mention-GNU attitude of the young Internet community today. Of course, at the same time, some other post will get moderated up as +5 Funny, because it says GNU/this GNU/that -- yes, very funny indeed, especially after repeating this idiotic joke million times a week, not even stopping to think why it is important to talk about freedom, as the main motivation behind The GNU Project and the Free Software Movement at large...
Sad. Very sad.
~Christopher Doopov