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NVIDIA Releases New Linux Drivers
mlmitton writes "NVIDIA just released new Linux drivers (1.0-5328). But the early reports by users are less than encouraging. People are weighing in with mostly bad news about how well these new drivers work. Some people are finding that Neverwinter Nights doesn't work and they're reverting to the old drivers (4496). I spent a few long hours recently trying to get the old drivers to work with Fedora Core 1 so I'm going to hold off on these new ones."
Changes:
This release adds support for the latest GeForce FX and Quadro FX GPUs, UBB
and FSAA Stereo, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0, and GLX_SGI_swap_control,
improves XPixamp support, and reduces CPU usage when OpenGL applications
are syncing to vblank.
Complete Changelog/Readme
I'm working fine with the new drivers and NWN:HoTU as well as all my other games (Savage, ET). I didn't use the -update command, I downloaded the binaries from Nvidia, and it compiled for my system (slack 9.1, Dropline Gnome). No issues at all thus far and I played NWN for 3 hours today. I'm using an FX 5900U on a P4 3Ghz w/ HT disabled.
Yeah. Good luck. Try finding a SINGLE 9800XT/Linux success story on the Internet right now. I just sold an XT and am using the FX5900U. Flat out best gamig card for linux right now except for the 5950.
All the graphic chip makers need to get their act together and release better drivers for linux. It took some work getting my 9800 pro working with gentoo, and the worst part is that my card is also an All in wonder, and there is currently no support for it, even with GATOS.
Setec Astronomy
There are prepatched 2.6.0 installers here.
Minion is working fast towards a resolution, but it still looks like the drivers are below existing 4496 performance levels.
Go find yourself the 4620 drivers. They work wonders with my FX5700 Ultra. No lockups like the 4496's.
When X11 starts the drivers Oops, and default to ForceSW so no hw-accel.
Dmesg gives-
Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000010
printing eip:
c024b6cf
*pde = 00000000
Oops: 0000
CPU: 0
EIP: 0010:[<c024b6cf>] Tainted: P
EFLAGS: 00013046
eax: 00000087 ebx: 00003246 ecx: 00000048 edx: 00000000
esi: 00000000 edi: dffe3000 ebp: dad75738 esp: dad75708
ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
Process X (pid: 246, stackpage=dad75000)
Stack: dad96400 dad75764 c01105ac dad96000 00003099 e0d9eca6 00000000 00000048
dad75734 e0dadd1e dbc90800 00000000 dad75748 e0db88cd 00000000 00000048
dad75774 e0db0ee6 dad96000 00000000 00000048 00000080 d9e60000 dad96400
Call Trace: [<c01105ac>] [<e0d9eca6>] [<e0dadd1e>] [<e0db88cd>] [<e0db0ee6>]
[<e0db47b7>] [<e0db6170>] [<e0f51080>] [<e0dbcc1e>] [<e0d9da58>] [<e0f51080>]
[<e0f38b9d>] [<e0f7a5a0>] [<e0f51080>] [<e0f7a5a0>] [<e0f51080>] [<e0dba65c>]
[<e0f51080>] [<e0f7a60c>] [<e0f7a630>] [<e0f7a648>] [<e0f51080>] [<e0dbd809>]
[<e0f51080>] [<e0f51080>] [<e0e489d2>] [<e0f2bd01>] [<e0dd55f7>] [<e0dadd1e>]
[<e0db8818>] [<e0f28151>] [<e0dba1db>] [<e0f28151>] [<e0f28151>] [<e0dba22c>]
[<e0f52700>] [<e0e842db>] [<e0dd0ed8>] [<e0dde76d>] [<e0e842db>] [<e0e84ac1>]
[<e0dae41a>] [<e0d9f95b>] [<e0d9f830>] [<e0dae5a5>] [<e0db9d82>] [<e0f51080>]
[<e0e4b627>] [<e0e8473f>] [<e0d9f195>] [<e0e842db>] [<e0e84ac1>] [<e0e842db>]
[<e0e84ac1>] [<e0ecd0d4>] [<e0e7d552>] [<e0e66833>] [<e0db9d82>] [<e0f51080>]
[<e0e68481>] [<e0e96fc5>] [<e0dbe389>] [<e0e68345>] [<e0dc1102>] [<e0db9d82>]
[<e0f51080>] [<e0dac53b>] [<e0e68bc4>] [<e0e68abb>] [<e0f51080>] [<e0d9dbc5>]
[<e0f38c06>] [<e0dbcbf1>] [<e0f51080>] [<e0d9c8a2>] [<e0f51080>] [<c0114854>]
[<c013c590>] [<c013c7d5>] [<e0d9c61b>] [<c014a0cc>] [<c0108e7f>]
Code: 8b 46 10 8b 50 30 89 34 24 89 4c 24 04 8b 44 24 20 89 44 24
Ksymoops gives-
>>EIP; c02dc0c1 <pci_read_config_dword+41/80> <=====
>>ebx; c3fbe000 <_end+3c02138/20530198>
>>ebp; c3fbf760 <_end+3c03898/20530198>
>>esp; c3fbf72c <_end+3c03864/20530198>
Trace; c01aedfc <pci_conf1_read_config_dword+4c/50>
Trace; e08f8739 <[nvidia]os_pci_read_dword+20/27>
Trace; e090784e <[nvidia]_nv001370rm+2e/cc>
Trace; e09123fd <[nvidia]_nv001241rm+11/18>
Trace; e090aa16 <[nvidia]_nv000171rm+22a/268>
Trace; e0aaab60 <[nvidia]nv_linux_devices+0/580>
Trace; e090e2e7 <[nvidia]_nv001749rm+167/50c>
Trace; e0aaab60 <[nvidia]nv_linux_devices+0/580>
Trace; e0916776 <[nvidia]rm_update_agp_config+e/14>
Trace; e08f7495 <[nvidia]nv_agp_init+78/fb>
Trace; e0aaab60 <[nvidia]nv_linux_devices+0/580>
Trace; e0ad410c <[nvidia].data.end+275/31c9>
Trace; e0ad4130 <[nvidia].data.end+299/31c9>
Trace; e0ad4148 <[nvidia].data.end+2b1/31c9>
Trace; e0ad40a0 <[nvidia].data.end+209/31c9>
Trace; e0aaab60 <[nvidia]nv_linux_devices+0/580>
Trace; e0ad40a0 <[nvidia].data.end+209/31c9>
Trace; e0aaab60 <[nvidia]nv_linux_devices+0/580>
Trace; e091418c <[nvidia]_nv001274rm+7c/b8>
Trace; e0aaab60 <[nvidia]nv_linux_devices+0/580>
Trace; e0ad410c <[nvidia].data.end+275/31c9>
Trace; e0ad4130 <[nvidia].data.end+299/31c9>
Trace; e0ad4148 <[nvidia].data.end+2b1/31c9>
Trace; e0aaab60 <[nvidia]nv_linux_devices+0/580>
Trace; e0917339 <[nvidia]_nv0008
I don't get it, why is this funny?
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
I've got an nForce2 board working (almost) perfectly under Gentoo. It seems to be a timing issue... either your board wants to cooperate at the moment you install, or it doesn't. The only thing you can do is try it. If it doesn't work under whatever distro you're using, try Gentoo. They've built a bunch of nforce stuff into their kernel, so support for mine was out-of-the-box.
:)
If you have an nforce2 board, you probably have a fast enough processor to compile most software in a relatively reasonable amount of time. If you do decide to install Gentoo, make sure you check out the alternate installation guide so you can play Tux Racer while it's building your system.
http://minion.de has 2.6 compatible packages for this release.
Unless something has dramaticly changed in this last release.
THE SOURCE CODE FOR THE DRIVERS ARE NOT OPENSOURCE
The drivers are completely, 100% binary when you download them from nvidia. The only compiling is to customize the wrapper that makes it work with your kernel.
Most people feel this is actually a violation of the GPL.. IE your linking closed source with GPL'd software. Putting a extra layer of code between it and the GPL'd software doesn't change what is going on.
IF it was realy open source, there would be no need to download drivers in the first place. Every distro would have acceleration installed automaticly at install.
I give Nvidia about a 80% for it's support of Linux. ATI is about a 70% or so, was closer to 90% for a short period, though.
Any graphical card company that makes a decent card that actively helps free software developers will find that I would drop NVIDIA like a hotpotatoe and have money in hand for their next product.
Screw wanting to see how they work, most people just want the source so that they can get it to work, period. Since they're binary only it means that they're usually tied to a specific kernel version and sometimes a specific distro. If you deviate from the path of the most popular distros you soon get into uncharted water.
They're in a catch-22: I'm sure they'd like to open the source but it's been mentioned before that some portions of the drivers contain licensed/proprietary code that they do not themselves control. In other words they couldn't even if they wanted to. (Plus, they seem to take drivers very seriously and might see it as giving away trade secrets to the likes of ATI, so maybe they don't even want to.)
The newest drivers are great. I don't think people should complain about their northbrige being unsupported by nvagp, or about their own lack of skillz, that's just my 2 lemurs though.
:p
:)
The 4496 drivers totally sucked. They had display glitches in 3D programs (at 640x480 visual tearing in the middle of the screen even though I enabled vsync, and even worse at 800x600 there is distorted 'garbage' at the lower right corner of the screen, no glitches at higher resolutions though).
So the 4496 drivers are unusable to me, however the 5328 drivers rock! The performance is faster for me, no more strange artifacts or tearing, and yes with vsync enabled the fps on ut2003 has DOUBLED!
5328 is faster on linux kernel 2.4.x than on 2.6.x, but really I am [YOU ARE] lucky to have the very latest kernel supported so quickly
BTW for those who never RTFM, you have to set __GL_SYNC_DISPLAY_DEVICE to your device if you want it to actually sync to refresh. Also, pageflipping is now on by default and the Option name is changed, so look at your XF86Config people...
Thanks Nvidia and thanks Zander too
Not true at all. The closed portion of the nVidia drivers is only the X driver. The kernel module is and has always been open source, and you can compile it for whatever version of the kernel you wish (assuming the kernel module interface hasn't changed drastically, of course).
As far as the original poster wanting to see how nVidia does all the cool stuff they do in software, that's exactly why the driver is closed. If you can see it, ATI, S3, etc can see it as well, and then nVidia could have some series problems ...
Not true... The most current nVidia drivers for my Gainward Geforce2 GTS installed on Win2k are crap. They completely break it. Seems to me nVidia just isn't doing a good job in supporting its older variety cards.
Notice all the "hey these drivers kick ass" comments are comming from users of GF4s or better?
Note: Here's what I mean by being horribly broken.
http://www.hayenga.com/mitch/mario1.gif
I had lots of problems getting NVidia to work with FC1. Things would kind of work, but other things wouldn't. Getting TuxRacer to work is a good litmus test.
Then I found this page of unofficial FC1 FAQ. Yay...!!
Here's what to do - it worked for me:
Use these instructions if there are no RPMs available, or if the available RPMs don't work for you.
Make sure you have the lastest drivers.
Now print this out, or write it down. Then:
If none of this works, do rpm -e --nodeps XFree86-Mesa-libGL and then restart your computer. The need to do this should soon be eliminated -- watch this FAQ or the fedora-list. Note that if you update XFree86, this package will be reinstalled and you will need to remove it again. This solves the "DRI" problem.
On my system, the new driver seems to perform much better if frame rate from glxgears and quake3d is any indication. I am seeing as much as 25% improvement in performance over the 4496!(using 2.4.21 kernel). I also tried the new drivers with patches from minion.de on a 2.6 kernel and could see improved performance. However, synaptic touchpad and pcmcia Wi-Fi seem to be broken in 2.6 so had to go back to 2.4 kernel.
its not a blanket statement. Nvidia drivers for both nForce motherboard chipset and GeForce Graphics chipsets has never _EVER_ been of production quality. nVidia under linux is asking for trouble.
It's too bad too because combined with their drivers for windows, they have the best motherboard platform even when compared to intel chipsets... its a real shame.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
We're actually packaging nvidia drivers for Fedora core 1 for the http://rpm.livna.org/ repository.
See : http://bugzilla.livna.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45
Feedback from the Clueful Ones is welcome.
Good day.
Just FYI, the nvidia drivers contain their own AGP driver,
it can be used by e.g. setting the XF86config option NvAGP=1.
This reliably oopses the kernel in Fedora with this new driver.
If anyone else wonder why the new driver don't work, make sure it uses
the kernel AGP driver, not the nvidia one.
I've installed the drivers yesterday on my DELL Inspiron 8200 (RH 9). APM suspend works, it's standby that is not supported.
I just had a run-in with a driver that demonstrates why an open-source driver is much preferred. Until now, I've not had reason to tweak driver source to get something working.
Over the past few days, I've been setting up a MythTV box on a spare machine. This machine is equipped with a Radeon VE clone (built by FIC, IIRC) with S-video/composite output. I grabbed the GATOS driver source, built that, and got the TV-out jack working great...
The X server detected that nothing was plugged into the VGA port and said "no video for you!" Isolating the offending code and fixing it so it'll work with just the TV-out jack in use was just a few minutes' work. (The patch was posted to the gatos-devel mailing list, if anybody's interested.)
If the driver supplied by nVidia for its cards exhibited the same behavior (since I don't have any of their cards at home, I can't say if they do), what would you do? Lash up some sort of dongle to fool the card into thinking a monitor is plugged in, and hope you don't blow up your card? That doesn't sound like much of a plan.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Don't developers spend money on any testing anymore? Every goddamn program I get these days shows that it was obviously released without any testing feedback. I know Netscape ruined the software biz model by releasing "betas" for consumption, marketing the product before it was tested. And Microsoft has never gotten anything right before version 3.0. But with malware liability looming, when will some kind of quality control come back?
--
make install -not war
With "nv", you can't have load glx. And that's why you are getting "Failed to add GLX extension (NVIDIA XFree86 driver not found)".
With "nvidia", you need load glx, but you have to delete load dri and load glcore. Actually, I played around with it for a while and find that you can actually still load dri, but not glcore.
As for the kernel interface, if you are using a standard kernel from a major distribution, nvidia has precompiled ones. So it shouldn't reached that step unless you really know what you are doing (ie you've compiled your own kernel).
I agree with other poster that you have a weirdly configured XF86Config-4.
They use an opensource wrapper just to comply with the GPL
I think the reason isn't GPL compliance (after all, for many "stock" kernels, they provide a ready-to-load binary module), but rather the fact that Linux doesn't provide an ABI. This is on purpose; so as to discourage closed-source drivers.
Just out of curiosity, but what is so hard about getting the NVidia drivers to work? All you have to do is type sh ./NVIDIA-whatever.run and it compiles and installs the modules for you. Then just change /etc/X11/XFree86-4's driver line from nv to nvidia, in the modules section comment out GLcore and dri and add glx and that should be it. Oh yea, and of course add the nvidia module into your startup scripts somewhere so it loads the module before X starts. Under Debian this was all pretty straight forward. I just threw it in /etc/modules and it loads at startup. I don't understand why people are having such big problems. Here's a hint, if you're trying to use GCC 3.3, apparently it doesn't work worth shit for compiling modules so go back to GCC 2.95. Since I did that I've had no problems with my kernel or compiling kernel modules for it. With GCC 3.3, the NVIDIA installer would mysteriously fail.
And even if they could legally realease the code, it would not be in thier best interest to do so. PC hardware is a dirty business and any one of thier competitors would outright copy their best stuff in a heartbeat if they can get away with it.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's