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nForce2 GART Driver Finally Released For Linux
Rejoice, Radeon owners! For those of you who bought an nForce2 motherboard with the hopes of doing a bit of linux gaming on it, I'm sure it was a pretty hard let down to find out there was no AGPGART driver for the nForce2 -- until now. nVidia has finally released a kernel patch for the 2.4.20 release that is now providing GART support. Perhaps this means that nVidia is re-thinking their closed source-isms in favor of a more open policy in the future. A note on AGP 3.0: Note that AGP 8x mode is not available in 2.4.xx series kernels. If you find that X will not start, try disabling 8X mode in your BIOS. AGP3.0 has been implemented in the 2.5 series.
I believe nVidia's 'closed source'ism is due to the fact that their drivers for their video cards include code that is not theirs, and licensed from other companies, and thus not publishable... Thus, I can't really see this as a shift to a more open source view.
Because, before this patch, under linux you could only run an Nvidia based AGP card... Nvidia (used to) only supply an NVAGP module that would not work with ATI products...
/. no-no) but they are better performance-wise than the open-source ATI DRI drivers...
Essentially this meant that if you ran linux under nforce you were stuck to an all Nvidia lineup...
The only hiccup is that IMHO Nvidia has better drivers under Linux than ATI... true, Nvidia's are closed source ( a
_CMK
Bad spellers of the world untie!
Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system
Information on token ring support for linux is available at www.linuxtr.net
As far as I know ext2 does not really need to be defragmented as performance is not affected as much as it is on fat*/ntfs. Also there are ways to defrag it.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that we would be required to publish our source code for others to use.
You switched to Linux without reading the copyright? Not to mention that you only need to release the source code if you modify existing gpl'ed projects.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive with Microsoft is this GPL...
Now you're just trolling, this is offtopic anyway. The only reason Linux has become successful is because many people add to it...
You either have no knowledge on Free Software licenses, hire incompetent lawyers, or are deliberately trying to spread FUD (I can assure the latter will not work on /.)
(1) The "GPL compatible licensed" terms only applies to _distributed_ work. If your organiztion really are doing internal only work, you do not have any obligations to make available your source or binaries.
(2) Compiling code with GCC does NOT make your code automatically GPLed (how/where did you dig up lawyers like that?)
Because they was no way to use the AGP port without using the binary Nvidia drivers.. which was ok if you happened to have a nvidia graphics card in your nforce motherboard, but if you were running a ATI, or matrox card you couldn't load the AGP driver :-(
It was one of the reasons I purchased a ti4200 to drop in my nforce1(415-D - no inbuilt graphics card) (and now nforce2) motherboard.
I assume you were using the IGP.. as this would have allowed the nvidia drivers to load.
"Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable."
This is simply untrue. Many non-free systems are compiled using GCC. Many propreitary systems are built using the Gnu Compiler Collection, and I have never heard of the Free Software Foundation claiming that they must release their code. I think this is either a misinterpretation by your lawyers or general just fear, uncertainty, and doubt on behalf of your company.
"I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it."
The GPL is hardly more draconian than the Microsoft EULA. Furthermore, the GPL is clearly not about companies. The GPL is about giving freedom to the user.
"Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects."
Your comment significes the overwhelming sensibility of sharing code. All the public resources that have gone into creating the myriad of propreitary products is generallyh wasteful. Their is no point in trying to re-invent the wheel. Their is no point in not sharing generally useful technical information.
I personally admire what your company did in contracting to modify Free software for specialized purposes. This is exactly how Free Software would benefit to our economy, especially for developers such as yourself. The only reason that things like Microsoft EULA's exist is so that someone can take away the freedom of their users and exhibit a system of power over them as people. The arguement that companies must protect their intellectual property is flawed because the money that they make generally doesn't go into paying for the costs of distrobution. It goes into things like making Bill Gates a very rich man. That's a system not at all concerned with compensating the developers, once you make an analysis and really think about it.
Alright, NVIDIA's 3d-drivers are closed-source. But they do offer kick-ass performance under Linux.
Unfortunately, they have been jumping through all sorts of hoops in order to keep releasing closed source 3d driver binaries, while keeping them up to date with XFree86 and Linux kernel updates. This is unnecessary, since XFree86 already has an infrastructure in place, which is well suited to solve this problem: The Direct Rendering Infrastructure, or DRI.
In the past, NVIDIA's argument against DRI could have been that DRI wasn't a sufficiently mature technology, but nowadays, this is no longer an issue. Also, NVIDIA is the only company in the graphic card business, which used a different proprietary infrastructure for their 3d drivers. All the other companies, such as ATI, Matrox and Videologic (regardless if they release sources to their 3d-code or not) all use the DRI-model.
Currently, there DRI-model fits NVIDIA's predicament perfectly: NVIDIA has already released the sources to the 2d-part of their drivers long ago (and they have been part of XFree86 for quite some time), but they just want to keep the 3d-aspect closed source. That's exactly how DRI-based drivers work! A 2D-part, which is part of XFree86, combined with a 3d-part, which plugs into the 2D-part of the driver through a (standardized) modular architecture!
An added advantage is that these binary DRI modules are OS-independent, just architecture-dependent. It is even possible to use DRI modules with GUI systems other than XFree86. DirectFB has been (successfully) working on DRI-support.
In other words: had NVIDIA already switched to the DRI model for their driver, then they wouldn't have had to go through the trouble of porting their drivers to FreeBSD. The same binary module already available for Linux would have worked on a FreeBSD system with a DRI-enabled kernel (which FreeBSD already supports). The DRI modular architecture has been deliberately designed that way. All NVIDIA would have to do is release the 2D specs under open source (which they already have done) and compile DRI module releases once for each architecture they'd want to support: x86, Motorola/IBM G4, IA64 and AMD64 architectures. These modules would then work out of the box on any OS with DRI support (on any of these architectures).
Example: if Zeta, the BeOS "reincarnation", would be updated to work with DRI modules, then it would be able to make use of the 3d capabilities on NVIDIA-cards right away!
Furthermore, the DRI model would have made it a necessity vor NVIDIA to release open source AGPGART kernel code for the NForce2 in the first place, because this would be required for even NVIDIA's drivers to work. A proprietary alternative AGP handling hack (like what they have been using in their drivers until now) would have made no sense.
Lastly, the fact that NVIDIA would then not be using a different architecture then the other companies would be causing a lot less headaches for 3d application developers under Linux. Right now, many games and other applications under Linux, such as Winex 3.0 and the Neverwinter Nights port, have been optimised to work with NVIDIA's drivers, but still need work on proper support for DRI (basically covering all other 3d solutions for Linux).
If any NVIDIA driver engineer is currently reading this: please seriously consider switching your drivers to the DRI model! It would save both you and others a lot of work and potential compatibility problems, without having to release any 3d driver sources. This way, you would also instantly be expanding the number of operating systems able to support 3d on NVIDIA cards, without you having to do any additional work for it!
The only disadvantage for NVIDIA that I can think of is the status quo that NVIDIA would possibly like to uphold: games and other 3d applications having better support for NVIDIA (currently being the market leader on Linux) and all the DRI-using competitors remaining behind. In the longer term, how
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"