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NVIDIA Drivers for 2.6 Kernel

fmileto writes "Kerneltrap.org is reporting that Nvidia has released drivers for the 2.6 series kernel. The driver and install directions can be found on Nvidia's website."

24 of 437 comments (clear)

  1. Release Highlights from Nvidia.com by elviscious · · Score: 5, Informative

    Release Highlights

    * Support for Linux 2.6 kernels.
    * Fixed AGP failures on some VIA motherboards.
    * Fixed a problem that prevented X from running on Samsung X10 laptops.

  2. Huh? by Aardpig · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been running the 2.6-series kernel since test6 (IIRC), and all the time using the Nvidia GFX drivers for my Ti4600. This story suggests that Nvidia users have had to wait for a new 2.6-compatible release of the drivers, which clearly isn't the case.

    --
    Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
  3. kernel 2.6.1 by Jayanef · · Score: 1, Informative

    # cd /usr/src/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-5336-pkg1/usr/src/nv
    # make
    Unable to determine kernel version.
    make: *** [select_makefile] Error 1
    #

    I don't know it's still have problem with kernel versions

    --
    -- There is four mistake in this sentences.
  4. The 2.6 compatibility is good but... by eldacan · · Score: 2, Informative

    The best part I think is Fixed AGP failures on some VIA motherboards: minion.de has been proposing a good patch for 2.6 kernels for long, while this AGP issue was really boring. I hope it really works better now.

  5. Official Feedback Thread by The+Baron+(nV+News) · · Score: 5, Informative

    is here, courtesy of Andy Mecham, NVIDIA's Linux driver guru.

    --

    ---
    nV News

    1. Re:Official Feedback Thread by Znork · · Score: 2, Informative

      Why not use MythTV? As far as I can tell ForceWare doesnt have any features myth doesnt have... (and MythTV has a few ForceWare doesnt appear to have).

  6. Answering my own question...link to README by LouisvilleDebugger · · Score: 5, Informative

    ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-53 36/README

    From the README:

    If you do not have a working XF86Config file, there are several ways
    to start: there is a sample config file that comes with XFree86,
    and there is a sample config file included with the NVIDIA driver
    package (it gets installed in /usr/share/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/).
    You could also use a program like 'xf86config'; some distributions
    provide their own tool for generating an XF86Config file. For more
    on XF86Config file syntax, please refer to the man page.

    If you already have an XF86Config file working with a different driver
    (such as the 'nv' or 'vesa' driver), then all you need to do is find
    the relevant Device section and replace the line:

    Driver "nv"
    (or Driver "vesa")

    with

    Driver "nvidia"

    In the Module section, make sure you have:

    Load "glx"

    You should also remove the following lines:

    Load "dri"
    Load "GLcore"

    if they exist. There are also numerous options that can be added to
    the XF86Config file to fine-tune the NVIDIA XFree86 driver. Please see
    Appendix D for a complete list of these options.

  7. Re:ATI by Jason+Hood · · Score: 2, Informative

    My 9500Pro works great in linux with 2.6 kernels. It has since the beginning of december. Perhaps you dont have a good agpart driver?

    --
    Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
  8. bugs are still there by GweeDo · · Score: 4, Informative

    The nvidia kernel driver has been easy to get working with 2.6 since the 2.5.x days. Problem is, they still haven't fixed the nasty mangled console bug that has been in the last three versions. It is always great to exit X windows and have to reboot before I can go back into X windows or else it will lock up my box. But...even if I exit X windows my console is so mangled I can barely use it any how...this sure has promoted my use of X and only X :)

  9. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Until now they had to use a third party patch, found here

  10. Stuck in nvidia hell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I made the mistake of getting sucked into the wonderful price point of my nforce2/Athlon system..

    The proprietary graphics drivers have been a huge pain.. nvidia support has been terrible when compared to the open source community. For much of 2003 the video would go blank once you exited X11 (forcing a reboot whenever you exited X!).

    And now they have gone to a monolithic installer "to make things easier". Right.

    The little bit I saved pales in comparison to the time I have spent dealing with this BS.

    And how long until nvidia makes my board obsolete?

  11. PowerPC not yet by leandrod · · Score: 4, Informative

    GNU/Linux PowerPC users -- such as in Power Macs -- are still out of luck.

    --
    Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
    DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
    GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
  12. Re:But when by The+Baron+(nV+News) · · Score: 2, Informative

    they CAN'T, because of S3TC support. have to have a license for it, and that implies that it can't be open-sourced.

    --

    ---
    nV News

  13. Re:ATI by 13Echo · · Score: 2, Informative

    ATI's drivers officially supported 2.6x kernels *before* nVidia's.

  14. Re:No by LDoggg_ · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ok I'll bite,

    Maybe he wants to play the linux versions of Unreal Tournament 2003, or Medal of Honor, or Neverwinter Nights, or Quake3, or Return to Castle Wolfenstein, or Enemy Territory, or Savage , or Rune, or SpaceTripper, or Tribes 2 or Serious Sam, or Postal2, or America's Army or another of the various other games on Linux that requires 3D acceleration. Sure, a far cry from what's available on windows, but more games then I'll ever have time to play.

    --

    "If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
  15. Rome wasn't built in a day by DG · · Score: 4, Informative

    Whenever you start talking about hardware drivers, especially bleeding-edge hardware in a highly competitive market like video cards, you run into the following problems:

    1) There is a natural desire to keep technical details (both in the hardware and in the driver implimentation) secret from one's competitors, so as to build a competitive advantage.

    2) You may not own all the technology in the hardware or the drivers, and your licencing agreement with the 3rd-party technology providers may include terms of non-disclosure.

    This tends to disincline one from open-sourcing the drivers.

    The advantages of having them opened up everybody here is well aware of. But realizing those advantages takes time to sink in at the hardware company - especially when their Linux market is very small (so the perceived risks outweigh the rewards)

    As time goes on, and especially as the Linux market grows (to the point where it is providing a signifigant fraction of a company's revenue) I believe the value of opening up the drivers will become more compelling to the driver authors (and more importantly, their management)

    Baby steps. Rome wasn't built in a day.

    In the meantime, there is value in supporting companies who provide closed-source drivers for products where there is no other alternative. Help them build the Linux experience - both on the technical and social aspects - that will eventually lead them along the path to opening their drivers up.

    Would I prefer to see fully open-and-GPLed NVIDIA drivers? You bet your ass. But for whatever reason, they aren't ready to jump off that particular cliff, so I'll support them anyway in anticipation of the day when they DO open the drivers up.

    We're fighting 20 years of a culture of secrecy and code-hording here. It'll take time to work through that.

    DG

    --
    Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
  16. Re:Huh? by Broodje · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yeah, I used page to guide me through making nvidia drivers work on a toshiba laptop running debian with a NVIDIA(R) GeForce(TM) FX Go5200 and a 2.6 kernel. Worked right away too.

  17. Re:Huh? by Turmio · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, well, perhaps the title of the story should've been Official NVIDIA Drivers for 2.6 kernel since what we've been using for months has been an unsupported hack. For most of people, including me, it has been working just fine, though, as you suggested, but before this there has been no-one to blame if didn't work. Now it's supported by NVIDIA.

  18. Same problem - this does not work with 2.6.1 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I just tried the new drivers.. They failed to work for me.

    This is the same problem I had earlier this week when trying to migrate from 2.4.24 to 2.6.1 with the minion nvidia patch (4496). Google searches showed that LOTS of people were having this same problem.

    I hope this can be resolved with a simple kernel tweak. Any suggestions?

    Jan 29 11:12:43 tool kernel: nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
    Jan 29 11:13:48 tool last message repeated 2 times
    Jan 29 11:13:48 tool kernel: 0: nvidia: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 NVIDIA Kernel Module 1.0-5336 Wed Jan 14 18:29:26 PST 2004
    Jan 29 11:13:50 tool kernel: space, but we're in an interrupt or holding a spinlock
    Jan 29 11:13:50 tool kernel: 0: nvidia: trying to map 0xd40ff000 to kernel space, but we're in an interrupt or holding a spinlock
    Jan 29 11:13:50 tool last message repeated 156 times
    Jan 29 11:13:51 tool kernel:
    Jan 29 11:13:51 tool kernel:
    Jan 29 11:13:51 tool kernel: Badness in pci_find_subsys at drivers/pci/search.c:132
    Jan 29 11:13:51 tool kernel: Call Trace:
    Jan 29 11:13:51 tool kernel: [] pci_find_subsys+0xe9/0x100

  19. Re:But when by ImpTech · · Score: 2, Informative

    Oh I dunno about assholes... As a proud owner of a NForce2 board, yeah I'm frustrated as hell with their crappy sound drivers (well, tecnically I use the ALSA drivers, but they're based on the nvidia-released ones and still aren't any good). But I mean, they *did* give us the nforce agpgart stuff for free. I guess they were bitches about the nforce ethernet driver (which was trivially reverse-engineered), so feel free to be angry about that. However, on the sound front, from what I've heard SoundStorm is at least as full of proprietary badness as their video drivers, probably Dolby IP among others. And the unofficial word is that they *are* working on a binary driver, which is probably the best they can do.

  20. Parent is absurd by phoxix · · Score: 4, Informative

    Tried installing drivers for a dlink nic on 9.2 and got a message that the binary only drivers would "pollute" the operating system or some such. Refused to install them at all - there was no do it anyways option.

    First RPM doesn't give such error messages, nor does RPM prevent you from installing the RPM you desire (Remember: Unix assumes that root knows everything, and never limits root from doing anything either)

    Secondly, you are possibly confusing the above error with something not done by mandrake, but the kernel. The kernel automatically complains about non GPL/BSD modules being loaded, however this DOES NOT prevent the modules from being loaded. Issue the /sbin/lsmod command as a user to see for yourself.

    Lastly, as another poster already pointed. Mandrake sells a commercial version of their distro that automatically uses such binary only drivers. (Their 100% FLOSS distro does not ship with them but like *any* other distro, can use them.)

    Sunny Dubey

  21. one down, two to go by sc00p18 · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is good news. Now we just need to get lirc support and ivtv support without nasty hacks, and I'll be good to go.

  22. Re:Awesome by (startx) · · Score: 2, Informative

    I know you were just trying to be funny, but for those who think you may be serious...

    No you don't need to get the 2.6 kernel to run these drivers. They still work with your old 2.4 kernel as well!

  23. Turn off your frame buffer by brunes69 · · Score: 2, Informative

    You use riva frame buffer right?

    This has been around for a loong time, before the last 3 releases. It's not directly NVidia's bug, it's related to the riva frame buffer conflicting with the NVidia drivers.

    Turn off frame buffer support and use a plain console and you will be fine.