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."

Comments

fp

[Anonymous Coward]

cool!

But when

[glamslam]

But when will they make them open source?

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

the day patents are declared illegal. and hell freezes over. and when bill sells linux.

Re:But when

[c_oflynn]

They won't - there is too much good stuff in there for people to steal. I haven't had trouble with them yet, so if they work who cares.

Re:But when

[DaveInAustin]

No, they aren't going to make them open source. If you want open source drivers, write one yourself. What we need now is a good driver for the centrino. And if Intel actually releases it, they should be praised, not critized for not being pure open source.

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

when bill sells linux.

Perhaps he already does.

Re:But when

[Geopoliticus]

Good question. I often wonder if companies that choose the closed source route are "testing the market". What I am suggesting is that they want to see how little they can give, but still make the sale.

What if this catches on? Then what will we have? Imagine mb chipset manufacturers doing the same thing.

Perhaps nVidea has no intention of providing a open source driver as long as people are happy to pay for a card that gives them SOME way to use it. Not necessarily the preferred way.

Re:But when

[Mateito]

> But when will they make them open source?

Unless there is a huge change in their business model, they will never make them open source.

The code for these drivers contains a lot of information about the underlying design... of both the hardware and the accelleration (sp?) techniques that give this product the edge... exactly the sort of stuff competing companies would love to get their hands on. Remember that a good driver can really have a marked effect on the performance of a graphics card.

Of course, all their competitors have probably already reverse engineered every card on the market, but who wants to make it easy?

I love open source as much as the next guy, but we have to accept the commericial reality that just because something runs on an open source platform, it isn't necessarily open source itsself. Oracle is a good example of this.

Linux on the desktop may change this. When enough people avoid buying Company X's product because their cross-platform support blows goats, they may very well be ready to open the source.

Re:But when

[Zen]

I agree. Everytime somebody on /. mentions Nvidia the very first thing that is replied is when will they be opensource. I've never had a problem with the binaries either.

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

Never. This would be suicide for Nvidia. The hardware between Nvidia and Ati are fairly similar. The drivers are their IP and the key to making their cards different.

We all know the OS (Linux) is going to be open source. This paves the way for non open source applications to be built to run on Linux. Someday soon people will need to realize that applications and drivers won't necessarily be open source and free. Just the OS!

Re:But when

[pe1rxq]

Atleast that is what they want people to think...
For the video drivers that might be true. Although I doubt there is really anything really new in there... a lot of manufacturers overestimate their own brilliance.
But for there chipset drivers (e.g. nForce) they are just plain assholes.

Jeroen

Re:But when

[dmayle]

I know what you mean. I recently put together an SFF Athlon 64 system (Based off of the Biostar iDeq 200P), and I was torn with what to do for a graphics card, because I want to run gentoo as my primary OS. (With windows for the occasional test-compile for work).

I chose an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro because they have better open source drivers (community developed) for they're slightly older stuff, as well as binary support for what's current, but they can't be bothered to release 2.6 AMD64 compiled drivers, and now I'm left wishing I'd bought an Nvidia card just so it would be usable, when I know they have almost no open source support at all..

I want the graphics card companies to realize, when a decently fast graphics card (notice I didn't buy top of the line, so that's a clue to you up and comers) comes out with open source drivers, that's where I'll put my money, and where I'll tell my friends and family to go. You've got to please the geeks, guys, 'cause we influence the purchases of others, as well.

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that nVidia did have an open-source driver for linux. Of course it was obscured beyond recognition and sucked (unstable as hell, and slow).

This was a few years ago. They didn't want to port their good codebase to linux, so they made an ugly hack driver that was open-soure.

Re:But when

[pe1rxq]

No, they should be critisized for promissing something and not doing it for a year....

Jeroen

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

so if they work who cares.

I care. For a few weeks I have been using the 2.6.x kernels, but had to do without NVidia's drivers, so I decided to use the GPLed ones instead. Now if NVidia had released theirs as free software, I could have been using theirs all along since I could have recompiled the driver along with my new kernel (assuming that it would work). So do they work? Sure, but only when NVidia wants them to. Which is the problem with non-free software. Having already had trouble with their drivers and my new kernel, I think I'll just skip their drivers altogether going forward.

My next video card purchase will be from a company that makes GPL-compatible drivers. Suggestions anyone?

Re:But when

[PyromanFO]

So you've never ran the 2.6 kernel up until now? Have you never had trouble with the binary drivers because you wait until the binary drivers won't give you any trouble? Sort of self fullfilling don't you think?

Re:But when

[MrNybbles]

Personally I would rather have a Linux Module/Driver Standard for drivers that would (almost) never change allowing the same modules to work across all future versions of Linux. I doubt things will ever be that way. But I can dream, can't I? Can't I??? Windows makes things simple with binary drivers after all. In fact there are several versions of Window Drivers for Win 9.x, NT, etc. . .

Actually in the long run having the source code and/or specs to build a driver/module would be better in that the OS driver spec may change, but all you would need to do is rewrite the driver to work under the new system. (Yes, easier said than done.)

On the other hand binaries are so much easier to deal with though. Install them and they either work, kinda work, or don't.

Maybe those IBM-Linux commercials are right, "the future is open" because with closed source software and companies not supporting every single platform for ever the closed-source software is destand to become unsupported and eventually become stuck in the past. Does Windows XP support all old hardware that may still work in your computer?

Then again maybe I just think too much.

Re:But when

[The Baron (nV News)]

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

Re:But when

[mattdm]

My next video card purchase will be from a company that makes GPL-compatible drivers. Suggestions anyone?

We're basically screwed. Nvidia's success with binary-only drivers has made ATI do the same thing. Unless the Weather Channel decides to fund development of drivers for the newer cards, Radeon 8500 is the end of the open-source line. And no one else really exists in the high-performance 3D graphics card market.

I hope Red Hat uses some of their new half a billion to do something about this, but they've probably got other goals to hit first.

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

Why stop there? You can get an entire open-source video card at http://icculus.org/manticore/

Re:But when

[Aardpig]

So you've never ran the 2.6 kernel up until now?

See my post below. I've been running 2.6 since it was released, and have never had a problem with the Nvidia binary drivers. YMMV, however.

Re:But when

[Perl-Pusher]

My next video card purchase will be from a company that makes GPL-compatible drivers. Suggestions anyone?

Yes, build your own card. Because their aren't any. The open source drivers in linux weren't made by the card manufacturers, that is why they will never perform as well as the closed source ones. So if you want an open source driver that performs, you will have to create your own. If and when Linux ever gets the market share to create a demand, I think you will find distributions selling a separate driver CD's, and / or downloads on the manufacturers site that keeps pace with the windows drivers. But I highly doubt you will ever see open source drivers by any hardware manufacturer that faces stiff competition from others. The only periperial card that I have ever bought that had GPL'd drivers by the manufacturer was a multitech modem that contained 4 modems on the board. This was highly specialized for dialin networking and linux has the market share there to make it possible. And modems aren't exactly cutting edge stuff.

Re:But when

[mean pun]

If you want open source drivers, write one yourself.

Sigh. Like nobody thought of that before.

The problem is the documentation isn't there, and aparently reverse-engineering it is too difficult/dangerous. And yes, there are good reasons for wanting an open-source driver. For example, the current driver is known to do a double memory free on some occasions. Could have been fixed easily if the source was available. And it would have been far better if the NVidia driver could have been developed with all the other drivers during the 2.5 development cycle, because any bugs could have been detected much earlier.

There are very good reasons for wanting open-source drivers, even if you're not an OSS fundamentalist.

Re:But when

[mikeee]

Agreed. I'm likely to be buying a new system in a few months; are there any options with OSS drivers and at least respectable 3D acceleration?

Re:But when

[13Echo]

The ATI DRI drivers don't support S3TC for this reason. In many ways this does cause a problem with some applications that rely on S3TC (like UT2003), but for many purposes S3TC isn't needed and the DRI (open) drivers work very well without it.

In my opinion, ATI have done a pretty good job with supplying documentation for their older cores. Pretty much everything up to R280 is supported under Linux with open-source drivers. That includes 3D. Most other features like dual-head and tv-out work as well. Video capture works too, with the GATOS variant of the DRI drivers.

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to use an unsupported kernel you should use the XFree86 nv driver. If you don't think the nv driver is good enough then you should have put a little more thought into your purchasing decision and maybe purchased hardware for which quality Open Source drivers exist.

Re:But when

[ajs318]

Find a country where the law (1) forbids manufacturers to keep secrets from customers and (2) specifically permits the use of reasonable force in certain situations; or (3) forbids the release of closed-source software. {This may require the purchase of a small uninhabited island, but you probably can pick up a used one on ebay. Alternatively, there was talk about some Central / South American countries outlawing closed-source software: see if you can find one that actually has}. Go there and take a graphics card with you. Request driver source code from manufacturer. Point out that local law says you have a right to that information. If driver source code is not forthcoming, disassemble binary driver under reasonable force provisions of local law. Publish source code as discovered by you on secure web server located in that country and with all logs diverted to /dev/null. Get general feeling that this is like DeCSS all over again. Wait for authorities in USA to determine that your liberated source code is not illegal. Sue prosecutor.

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, aren't you the self-important one?

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

My next video card purchase will be from a company that makes GPL-compatible drivers. Suggestions anyone?

Older Matrox cards (E.g. a G400) are available cheaply and the drivers are Open Source & excelent quality (Even DRI in the OSS drivers) Sadly Matrox had a brain hemorage and not only are their newer drivers (E.g. Parhalia) closed, they even decided to pull the original Developer website which used to carry complete databooks for every single on of their chipsets.

So the next on the list would be SiS/Via, who recently released their latest driver source under an Open Source licence, including the driver for the infamous CLE266 MPEG decoder on the Via EPIA boards. A nice move, although we have to admit that SiS chipsets are hardly high-spec if you want to play many 3D games. Of course their newer chipsets may change all that, so keep your eyes peeled for them.

If you need the power and you need it now, I would suggest ATi. They at least contribute some code and provide databooks to the XFree86 guys. The XFree86 drivers may not have features like complete DRI support for ATI hardware but the 2D stuff is all there and ATI are happy for that to continue with their blessing, which is more than nVidia have done for XFree.

Re:But when

[ImpTech]

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.

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows has a different kernel design. They use a micro kernel, we use a monolythic.

Linux is smaller and faster then the NT kernel and undergoes continous developement. The kernel design doesn't allow people to make drivers like they do for windows.

Nvidia and ATI will always be losers when it comes to drivers, people will always complain, and they will always have to put much more work into them then they have to. Until they get on the ball and make proper linux code that can be incorporated into the kernel properly.

Re:But when

[dmayle]

The fastest consumer graphics card available WITH OSS drivers (not binary-only) is the ATI Radeon 9100. You can also get the FireGL 8800 which is a little bit faster...

Re:But when

[Sunda666]

and what hardware is that, sunshine?
decent (like 'rtcw @ 1024x768+, 4x AA, 8x Anisotropic') only comes with binary drivers
either from ATI or nVidia.

cheers.

Re:But when

[4of12]

I've never had a problem with the binaries either.

I have.

Perhaps I'm a corner case use with 1920x1200 DVI and using OpenGL, but earlier drivers would crash X on me.

Recent nVidia binary drivers, like 4496, have not crashed in months of use.

Re:But when

[putzin]

This may be true, but I would bet on market forces here. If company X decides it can get away with binary modules, and that module has serious issues, who's gonna by the hardware? With a video card, at least there's the fallback option, but with a northbridge driver, or with an ATA driver, you won't be able to boot your PC.

Some products, such as video, possibly wireless, or whatnot, can probably get away with binary only drivers and survive in the Linux space. Other hardware will just fail. Until Linux on the desktop is a little more popular, it's not going to be an issue though. I do expect some companies to do whatever they can to scam the community. I don't think this is what ATI and Nvidia are doing.

Re:But when

[Aggrajag]

A person with a decent disassembler and knowledge of reverse engineering can get to your secrets even if they are binary only, so that argument is not valid. IIRC, Nvidia stated that their driver include some third party code that they cannot open source.

Re:But when

[13Echo]

Oh. Wow. A post below just let me to this link:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=3Ddri-devel&m=3D 10 7171185522684&w=3D2

Apparently, you *can* patch the opensource DRI Radeon drivers to support S3TC after all.

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true. Creative had released GPL ALSA drivers for Sound Blaster Live, back when the company and the card had overwhelming edge against the competitors. You see, it is all in the licence. The MIT licence in Xfree allows other companies to make improvements without giving anything back, which is exactly why we get stuck with proprietary drivers. In fact, Xfree's insistence on MIT licence suckered Mesa developers into this proprietary mess.

If it were GPL drivers, we would have open source drivers for latest hardware by now. It may sound strange, but think about it, will you use a CPU that require you to sign some dumb NDA just to know how it works, let alone writing programmes for it? If you think that is absurd, it is exactly what happens with video hardware.

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry pal, the latest SiS/XGI Volari chip is nothing but a joke. Even with cheating drivers, the Volari Duo V8 Ultra can't even match a mid range card. Read the Club 3D preview.

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

and what hardware is that, sunshine? decent (like 'rtcw @ 1024x768+, 4x AA, 8x Anisotropic') only comes with binary drivers either from ATI or nVidia.

Then stop trying to use them with an unsupported kernel, or stop fucking complaining about those binary drivers when you do attempt to use them with an unsupported kernel. Some people are such whiney bitches, I fucking swear.

Re:But when

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well, sucks for SiS then don't it? I personally couldn't care less, I don't want nor need any 3D at all. I'll happilly use a GeForce 2 or Matrox card with the XFree drivers.

Re:But when

[Unknown Lamer]

Drats, I just got a used 9100 because I thought it was the fastest card with Free drivers (used because I'm not giving ATi any more of my money until they start to release Free DRI drivers). I have my principles and I'm standing up for them. I was one of those people who wouldn't buy a portable music player until it supported Vorbis and had a Free sync client. This is why I have a Neuros (I'd have tricked my brother into buying it from me and then gotten a Karma if he had a Free sync client, but sadly it lacks one). I haven't used proprietary software in about three years now.

I have this fear that I'm going to be stuck with the Radeon 9100 / FireGL 8800 as the fastest graphics card I can get for many years to come. At least the pro-audio people woke up and release specs (I can use a 96 channel RME Hammerfall just as well with ALSA as I can with Windows or OS X).

Re:But when

[master0ne]

and the source still hasnt been leaked from nvidia??? we had the source to halflife 2 months before it was finished, and thats a full game, this is small enought to be emailed via hotmail! geez, where are the blackhats when you need them, someone on a 2800 baud modem copuld download the source in less time that it would take them to read this article!

Re:But when

[SuperFrink]

I was really upset when I first tried to get ethernet working on my nForce 220 board. It used to run fine for a bit then the whole system would hang for 3 to 10 seconds especially if the network was active. I said I'd never buy another nVidia product if I could help it. I put in some realtek card and was on the net in 10 minutes with no problems since.

That said I appreciate the fact that nVidia is supporting Linux. If they were not then I'd really have to buy different hardware. The only thing I'd really like is to not have to recompile the module every time I recomiple the kernel (which I do quite frequently of late as I'm working on in-kernel code). If I could link the nVidia module into bzImage I'd be really happy.

PS: 1) yes "experimental" module versioning is on 2) yes maybe I'm just missing something.

ATI

[Omni Magnus]

Now if only ATI would do the same.

Re:ATI

[Jason Hood]

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?

Re:ATI

[PepsiProgrammer]

I have ATI's drivers running under 2.6.1 in gentoo and they seem to be running ok. They are slow as shit though compared to their windows counterpart, ATI needs to get their act together and optimize their linux drivers.

Re:ATI

[13Echo]

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

Re:ATI

[13Echo]

The ATI drivers are a bit slow, actually. On the other hand, they recently added a boatload of GL extensions and extra functionality in the 3.7 release. I'm hoping that next month's release is quite a bit faster. I think that they are merely trying to work on one issue at a time. Optimizations will probably be the next step.

On the other hand, my Radeon 9500 PRO has been quite suitable with the current drivers. Savage 2.00c and UT2003 play very nicely with the details cranked, and the drivers have been very stable for me so far. I'm pretty happy with my ATI card on Linux, and I hope that they continue to improve their drivers.

That isn't to say that there isn't a lot of work for them to do. I do, however, believe that the R300-350 based cards are suitable alternatives to nVidia's cards at the moment, assuming you can get them configured properly. For the $100 I spent on my 9500 PRO, it hasn't let me down yet, and is also serving me well in beta tests of several other games.

Re:ATI

[fshalor]

Better yet... NO modules Needed... I've been anti modules since the 2.2.18 days... It's actually the reason why I'm an ATI guy... then there's the whole text thing.. I just perfer the look of large spreadsheets with ati cards. (19" 1600x1200 sony trinitron). Not really sure why, but the eye strain issues seem more pronounced on Nvidia's.

Of course game play is a bit better on the cheaper nvidia's I've played with..

Re:ATI

[The Other White Boy]

they worked fine for me in 2.4.22-10 and 2.6.0-1 kernels on my 9700pro and 9000M respectively (although the 2.4 machine was on a via chipset that caused some issues when compiling).

Re:ATI

[taniwha]

only if you have the cards they support, I bought a top-of-the-line Sony laptop last year - no still no 3d support because they don't support the mobile chips - next one I buy will will be NV based if they don't hurry up and fix this problem

Re:ATI

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried DRI yet?

Re:ATI

[Anonymous Coward]

The OSS driver does not completely implement the potential of the chip. And they are buggy as hell.

huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had this at least a week ago.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Huh?

[otis wildflower]

You had 3D acceleration?

(you can't run the lament screensaver (or glmatrix) without a decent 3D accelerator.. too slooowww..)

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah well.. Even with the Minion patch and 2.6.1 my syslog quickly filled up with these:

Jan 26 11:31:05 tool kernel: Badness in pci_find_subsys at drivers/pci/search.c:132
Jan 26 11:31:05 tool kernel: Call Trace:

Bunches of other folks have been in limbo with the same problem (which the kernel guys say is all nvidia).

Re:Huh?

[Aardpig]

You had 3D acceleration?

Fer sure, and its definitely been working (smooth 3D viewing of 100,000 polygon meshes). Either that, or the Underpant Gnomes installed a 10GHz processor in my machine while I was asleep...

However, its worth noting that I'm using the drivers as packaged by Gentoo. This may include the patch which another reply to my OP mentions; I wasn't aware of this patch when I posted.

Re:Huh?

[Chris_Mir]

I wondered this myself, as I'm using kernel 2.6 since test2, also with nvidia support (incl 3d. nvidia logo is showing on X startup). Perhaps it were the gentoo devs who made it possible, as all I did after starting with the new kernel was "emerge nvidia-kernel nvidia-glx" and it worked.

Re:Huh?

[Cid Highwind]

Yes. There's been an unofficial patch available to compile(*) the nvidia drivers against 2.6 kernels since before the 2.6.0_test series.

* Yes, most of the nVidia driver is binary-only, but there is a small module that has to be compiled for your kernel. That is the part that had to be patched.

Re:Huh?

[jtshaw]

There are patches out there at minions.de that allowed use of the nVidia driver with a 2.6 kernel but the drivers in there default state from nvidia.com did not work until now.

BTW..... the gentoo sources did contain those patches:)

Re:Huh?

[Broodje]

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.

Re:Huh?

[Turmio]

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.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your running 2.6 kernel on Gentoo ? Any tips ? I've been thinking of switching kernel soon. Is it in the portage tree yet?

Re:Huh?

[dnoyeb]

Should have also mentioned that these were Video drivers as the most important drivers for me are nforce.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

A patch that is quite frigging difficult to install properly. When I used it, I couldn't apply it from the top level directory, and the error messages were not helpful in understanding the problem.

Re:Huh?

[aonaran]

You need to emerge either development-sources or gentoo-dev-sources (same as development, but with patches that will eventually be in the gentoo-sources ebuild)

The 2.6 kernel needs /dev/pty support turned on manually, or your consoles won't work.

Other than that it's pretty straight forward if you've ever done a manual compile before. I don't know if genkernel works with 2.6 yet or not, I haven't tried it. (and have no plans to)

Re:Huh?

[lcde]

Either that, or the Underpant Gnomes installed a 10GHz processor in my machine while I was asleep...

do a:
#cat /proc/cpu

I'm sure you'll find those underpant gnomes are sly devils.

Re:Huh?

[kelnos]

are you trying to use the rivafb framebuffer driver? if so, don't. it doesn't play nice with nvidia's X drivers. use vesafb instead.

Re:Huh?

[Trejkaz]

... a patch which is automatically applied when you're using Gentoo, and therefore causes many users to not realise they're even running a patch. :-)

Re:Huh?

[djcapelis]

Yes, portage automagically applies that patch if needed, I've been using it too. I've applied it myself with other distros, but with portage I've watched it automagically work. :)

Awesome

[esaloch]

That'a great. Now all I have to do is get the 2.6 kernel.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

insightful? Someone must explain this to me.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure... this guy's thinking that if it was "news for nerds", NVidia must have open-sourced the driver. Just releasing a proprietary driver isn't even news; they've been doing that forever.

So the logic is

1. This was posted on /.
2. therefore must be newsworthy
3. therefore 2.6 must be different than 2.4
4. therefore must be open source

Re:Awesome

[(startx)]

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!

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

The mod was probably on crack, but my guess is he was assuming the grandparent meant that he refused to use the 2.6 kernel until the nvidia drivers were released.

It should have instead been modded -1, Vague.

Re:Awesome

[esaloch]

I know, I have it running on the 2.4 kernel right now.

GPL soul

[CaptainAlbert]

> For those who've sold their GPL soul

My soul is proprietary, thank-you-very-much. (Under an exclusive license, at that. ;))

Re:GPL soul

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL soul?

I'm skeptical. I don't expect James Brown, but I hope it isn't as bad as the Free Software Song.

Re:GPL soul

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... since when did EBay/Paypal start dealing with that stuff?

Re:GPL soul

[Anonymous Coward]

heh, i had to license my GPL sould with SCO, apparently their IP is in my soul source.

Re:GPL soul

[pavon]

Yeah I was going to copyleft my soul, then some dude came and claimed that he was author and thus held copyright. I totally didn't believe him but all the paper work was in order. I guess it turns out that I have an exclusive license that allows free use of my soul, but sublicencing is prohibited. bummer. Oh, and the wierdest part was that every time I tried to ask this guy his name he'd get all pissy and go on with this "I am who I am" bit. Sheesh - artists are weird.

Re:GPL soul

[BurritoJ]

That's too bad... Mine is merely

Re:GPL soul

[BurritoJ]

doh!!!...
correction... That should read..
Mine is merely tainted.

Re:GPL soul

[dpilot]

My wife and I have sublicensed our souls twice.

But now you're telling me that Daryl claims to own my derivative words. Does this mean he's going to fund their college expenses?

Re:GPL soul

[GT_Alias]

My soul is proprietary, thank-you-very-much. (Under an exclusive license, at that. ;))

We believe parts of your soul have been copied from the intellectual property of SCO. Your friends and family and anyone else you have come in contact with can expect to be hearing from our lawyers. -Darl

Re:GPL soul

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I was going to copyleft my soul, then some dude came and claimed that he was author and thus held copyright. Then he made me pay him 699 bucks just so I could use it! Can you believe it?

Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[elviscious]

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.

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[PepsiProgrammer]

I just installed em on my Debian Laptop (GeForce 4 440mx go) getting fairly good performance.

On a slightly OT note, anyone know why the mouse is nonfunctional and/or haywire for a few seconds after x starts on 2.6.x kernels?

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[SpaceLifeForm]

Make sure you have preempt enabled in your kernel.

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[Zocalo]

Feh. You missed this one:

* Currently, there are drivers for both Linux and FreeBSD.

See - Nvidia confirms it: *BSD is *not* dying after all! ;)

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I do have preempt enabled

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[pyros]

Feh. You missed this one:

* Currently, there are drivers for both Linux and FreeBSD.

See - Nvidia confirms it: *BSD is *not* dying after all! ;)

I think you missed the point here. nVidia released BSD drivers so we can all watch it die in realtime at 248 fps in 1600x1200 on a 21" monitor!

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on, clicks on link, copy pastes four lines, gets a +5. Stupid moderators. How was parent not totally karma whoring?

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[rotciv86]

I noticed that happening only when i had the mouse set to 'auto' in XF86Config

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[EvilAlien]

What about the theory that Nvidia has been dying since the 3dfx asset acquisition?

For references to this theory, please see every ATI Radeon review for the past year.

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[Anonymous Coward]

and bingo was his name-o

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think you missed the point here. nVidia released BSD drivers so we can all watch it die in realtime at 248 fps in 1600x1200 on a 21" monitor!"

ROTFLMAOAPIMP!

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[cdemon6]

Mod parent +5 funny ;)

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[ultranova]

Are you sure that the problem actually lies with your mouse ? Maybe the X server is still busy starting up and thus either doesn't redraw the cursor or read the mouse device.

After all, why would switching to graphics mode be the last step of X startup ?

Re:Release Highlights from Nvidia.com

[bkeeler]

Also, if you're running Debian and 2.6.x, don't forget to set your X server "nice" value to 0 instead of the Debian default -10. You can change this in /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config.

Huh?

[Aardpig]

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.

Excellent - OS ones worked OK though...

[c_oflynn]

Someone made an install for the 2.6 kernel that worked great already, so no huge news I guess.

I'd download the new ones but my Linux box is broken :/ Damn motherboard blew (volt-regulator poped... literally) and its been 3 weeks so far w/ no new one comming in!

BTW, does anyone know how to Overclock a GeForce 5600 in Linux? Haven't found anything yet...

Re:Excellent - OS ones worked OK though...

[noyren]

http://www.linuxhardware.org/nvclock/

"GeforceFX support is still a bit problematic. GeforceFX 5600 (and perhaps 5700) overclocking is starting to work."

Re:Excellent - OS ones worked OK though...

[CrosseyedPainless]

OK, I can usually pass these by, but....

The thought of a voltage regulator *literally* poping just grabs me. I can hear the heavenly choir from here!

Re:Excellent - OS ones worked OK though...

[c_oflynn]

lol.. just ment that by "my motherboard blew up" that it wasn't just some random thing and its just an expression. There was smoke, there was pieces of silicon around, etc ;-)

Re:Excellent - OS ones worked OK though...

[FyRE666]

Damn motherboard blew (volt-regulator poped... literally) and its been 3 weeks so far w/ no new one comming in!

BTW, does anyone know how to Overclock a GeForce 5600 in Linux? Haven't found anything yet...

Why do I get the impression that your motherboard problem wasn't entirely unprovoked? ;-)

Re:Excellent - OS ones worked OK though...

[c_oflynn]

hehe... actually this time it was unprovoked :p

I have a computer case that looks like Tux - and each side of his bow-tie is a button. One power, one reset.

So I go to reset it, and hit the power button by accident. Then I hit it again right away to turn it on. Then it smokes...

So now I've installed two power buttons (have to hit both at once)...

Re:Excellent - OS ones worked OK though...

[jrockway]

That happened to me, too. See my journal :)

Re:Excellent - OS ones worked OK though...

[KewlJedi]

try adding two switches where you need to turn two keys at the same time to activate and put the switches on opposite sides of a room. i havent had problems since

Re:Excellent - OS ones worked OK though...

[ndogg]

volt-regulator poped... literally
It became holy?

Re:Excellent - OS ones worked OK though...

[shepd]

>See my journal :)

Check your powersupply for faults.

When this type of thing happens, it usually comes down to the power supply.

kernel 2.6.1

[Jayanef]

# 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

Re:kernel 2.6.1

[prr56]

Make a symlink to /usr/src/linux. Also you should sh NVIDIA pkg.run

Re:kernel 2.6.1

[PowerBert]

Whats wrong with:

# nvidia-installer -a -f

Re:kernel 2.6.1

[Jayanef]

# uname -a
Linux lavender 2.6.1 #4 Wed Jan 21 19:16:04 WIT 2004 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux

the linux 2.6.1 source still in /usr/src/linux after I've compiled the kernel

if I choose sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-5336-pkg1.run
the same problem still exist

for now I'm still using 1.0-5328

Re:kernel 2.6.1

[javahacker]

Install the kernel source.

Re:kernel 2.6.1

[arodland]

/usr/src/linux is wrong, in general. You should have a /lib/modules/$version/build symlink to the source tree for the relevant kernel. If it says it couldn't figure out your kernel version, Im not sure what's up. Make sure that 'uname -r' reports something sane.

Re:kernel 2.6.1

[prr56]

You have to have the NVIDIA installer to be able to read the kernel headers and that is why you have to point it to /usr/src/linux which points to your kernel

Re:kernel 2.6.1

[Crazy Eight]

Not necessarily. It looks like the parent might have unpacked the makeself archive (get the pkg0 files -- they're much smaller as they come without precompiled modules for stock distro kernels) to compile the module by hand. The makefile should detect KVERS and KSRC in the environment so you can export those values by hand. That will ensure you're really getting what you want and it must be done if the automagic detection fails. The admonition against a /usr/src/linux symlink has sound merit as it's easy to break kernel specific compiles on a system with more than one kernel source tree. `make modules_install' puts a link to the source as it is at /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build so linux -> linux-2.4.24 isn't really necessary.

The 2.6 compatibility is good but...

[eldacan]

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.

Framebuffer Support?

[LouisvilleDebugger]

I have been wrestling with getting Framebuffer support to work with the driver that ships with the 2.6.1 kernel, and the XFree86 4.3.0 nv driver. Could never get them to play together. Perhaps this will be the ticket for getting my NV17/GeForce4 card working.

Any hints on what the best kernel framebuffer device/XFree86 configuration is with the new drivers?

Re:Framebuffer Support?

[The_Dougster]

I use the VESA framebuffer with mine. Just read the vesafb.txt file from the kernel docs to get a mode parameter to activater it, if you use GRUB as your bootloader, you'll have something like this:

kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 vga=0x0318

I've been running it with kernel 2.6.0-mm1 and the previous unofficial 2.6.0 nvidia driver package from minions.de and haven't noticed any problems with my Debian unstable system. You'll know if it kicks into framebuffer mode when you see the little penguin in the corner at boot-up. I'll probably ugrade my stuff this weekend.

Official Feedback Thread

[The Baron (nV News)]

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

Re:Official Feedback Thread

[swordboy]

If you comment to this guy, make sure that you emphasize the need for a Linux port of ForceWare. This is (IMHO) the closest thing to a TiVo competitor for the PC world. Right now, it is Windows-only.

If it weren't for the GPL and the non-binary rule, NVIDIA could actually release a linux based PVR ISO for their nForce boards. Oh well... maybe they can do something in BSD?

Re:Official Feedback Thread

[Znork]

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).

Re:Official Feedback Thread

[Afrosheen]

From the Forceware link you mentioned:

COMING SOON! The ForceWare Multimedia application will be available from NVIDIA in the near future. Keep checking this site for release information.

So basically it hasn't been released yet. Maybe asking for a linux port also isn't asking too much...yet.

Re:Official Feedback Thread

[shepd]

That sounds a lot like VDR, except it's missing the ability to receive a satellite signal, and it's had way less development.

I like the Amiga better, it has a TOASTER!

[Anonymous Coward]

toaster,toaster toaser, do you have toast in you yet i think
so!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Im not a toaster!!!!!!!!!!And one more
thing........YOUR A TOASER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND A COOKIE WITH MILK SOAGE
MILK!!!!!!!!!!AND A BUTT WITH POOP IN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Damn drivers. I want the SOURCES!

[kyknos.org]

s - o - u - r - c - e - s

Re:Damn drivers. I want the SOURCES!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

here it is:

#include "stdio.h"
#define s 1
#define o 1
#define u 1
#define r 1
#define c 1
#define e printf("You won't get any source. Go away!\n -- signed: NVidia\n")

main()
{
s - o - u - r - c - e - s;
}

Enjoy...

Re:Damn drivers. I want the SOURCES!

[c_oflynn]

Why? Just so you can say you have them? I mean there are people who would go an modify the sources and it would be good.

But I get the feeling NVidia could release any damn source and say it was the video drivers and 90% of people who complain about the drivers not being open-source would be happy.

It could just have a makefile, and spend a lot of time configuring. Then it compiles some huge-ass program, and that program does nothing. Then it installs its own propetory driveres. Problem solved.

Re:Damn drivers. I want the SOURCES!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

But I get the feeling NVidia could release any damn source and say it was the video drivers and 90% of people who complain about the drivers not being open-source would be happy.

Well not quite. The problem is, without the sources, when the kernel API (or something else) changes, it won't compile anymore. Similarly, try to run the old Qseeme binary on modern Linux distros : you'll have the darndest time getting it to go (if you get it to go at all) because it's linked against libc5. If the sources for Qseeme had been released, someone would have adapted it to glibc for example.

Re:Damn drivers. I want the SOURCES!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your example does not compile.

Re:Damn drivers. I want the SOURCES!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the grandparent, but it seems to work fine with gcc 3.3.3 for me.

Re:Damn drivers. I want the SOURCES!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Enjoy... undefined"

No

[Anonymous Coward]

I want ATI to make some DECENT drivers for Linux, PERIOD. I would not have bought a Radeon 9800 Pro if I knew the support for it under Linux was so shitty. The damn drivers from ATI's website don't compile under SUSE 9.0 so I have NO 3D support. I'm stuck in Windows XP until they get their act together. Seriously, ATI's 3D support is the ONLY thing that keeps me from ditching Windows COMPLETLY and using Linux.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

why would you say 'stuck' with windows xp? why do you have such a powerhouse card in linux, to play tux racer??? oh wait, that's for windows too.

Re:No

[LDoggg_]

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.

Re:No

[stratjakt]

Maybe he should have done 5 minutes worth of research with google before investing $400 bucks or so in a video card.

Or maybe his research was limited to the fanboy rantings of how superior the card is based on artificial benchmarks.

Why are the super tech geniouses of linux land always shocked to find the expensive hardware they just bought has no/little linux support?

Anyhow, for ATi to supply good linux support, that would mean true OpenGL support - something even the windows drivers for the Radeon series are pathetically lacking.

The cards are the 'fastest and greatest' only in Direct3D benchmark apps.

Re:No

[Chess_the_cat]

Dude, that's like 10 games and they've all got Windows versions. Maybe he wants to play the linux versions

Are you telling me that he maintains a separate Linux box to play Medal of Honor when he could just as easily play on his Windows box? Because I'm sure the Linux version is SO much better. You Linux nerds are getting sillier every day. Sure, a far cry from what's available on windows, but more games then I'll ever have time to play

You need to free up some time brother because I finished all those games before breakfast. Sheesh.

Re:No

[Klowner]

My Radeon 9800 Pro works rather nicely on my gentoo box, although not quite as fast as in windows, it still gets the job done at a satisfactory level (enough to play UT2k3 at a more than reasonable framerate).

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

i think you might have missed that he was responding to an AC making fun of the guy who got "such a powerhouse card [radeon 9800] in linux to play tux racer." your parent was only informing him that there are some fairly good games on linux and not just tuxracer as many would believe.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Mwoehahahahaha, really

You are a reallt tough guy.

loooooser

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

oh, and another point: you really should read before you post. if the person you're responding to is replying to somebody else, maybe you should read that post as well. then again, this is slashdot...

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

for someone who advocates reading at -1 in your signature, you obviously don't.

Re:No

[jrockway]

> You need to free up some time brother because I finished all those games before breakfast. Sheesh.

Yes, and he's busy writing free software or working or getting an education. What a shit, huh. Working... psh. (sarcasm)

And he probably doesn't maintain a Linux box just for games. He maintains for working and sometimes feels like fragging something. If you want to get real computer work (typesetting, modeling, programming, etc.) done, you use *nix. (Yeah yeah I know, Windows is great. Whatever.)

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, do you have any hints on what I could have done wrong. I have a gentoo box, with a 9800 Pro card, and X locks hard every time I run glgears, or any opengl/glut program. Any ideas? want my Xfree conf & logs?

Re:No

[Cobron]

Really?

Because ehm...
I kinda finished most of 'em (+ a bunchload of Win-only games) :o (didn't want to step on your point m8 ;) )

I was actually wondering:
Games are a tad slower on lin than their win-variant. Is that because of drivers, lack of focus for Linux-Desktop in the past or the whole kernel - xfree - desktop - layering thingie?

Re:No

[LnxAddct]

Not sure about the drivers or lack of focus, but it IS NOT the "layering thingie". A common misconception is that the layers slow things down. Unless your running X over a network there is no lag . Things don't become slow just because its modular and layered (unless your a bad programmer).
Regards,
Steve

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

I just joined this thread, and I wanted everyone to know that I want them to fuck off. Just an FYI...

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Y'know. My only experience with Linux and Windows gaming, where there exists (and I own a) a port for each game is Quake3. In my experience, it runs better on Linux than on Windows, on the same computer.

Just an anecdotal thing, though I see no real reason a game should run slower.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

I have played ET and AA on both linux and windows. linux is always ahead with about 3-4 FPS (this is with all the low latencey patches installed on a 2.4 kernel and an Nvidia GFX card). Maybe you are using ATI cards? They have sucky 3D on linux.

Excellent

[Coryoth]

This is making my transition to 2.6 on my laptop look much more likely. I was wondering when NVidia would get around to doing such a thing. The fact that it has been relatively prompt seems to suggest that they are still somewhat interested in the Linux market.

The next question is when will they release drivers for Keith Packard's/Freedektop.org's Xserver, because to be honest, I'm very interested in seeing what that can do...

Jedidiah

Re:Excellent

[caluml]

The fact that it has been relatively prompt seems to suggest that they are still somewhat interested in the Linux market.

Maybe we should all download it, even if we don't have an NVidia card, just in case they are monitoring the stats of Windows and Linux driver downloads.

Re:Excellent

[happyfrogcow]

not a bad idea, at all.

Re:Excellent

[tunah]

And maybe we should all mod your post down, even if we don't have points, just in case they are monitoring Slashdot.

Nuts, I had points, too.

Re:Excellent

[stor]

My word.

A geek on /. suggesting that we waste bandwidth in order to artifically inflate KPIs.

*Ren voice* What's gotten in to you man?

Cheers
Stor

Debian

[orkysoft]

I tried installing it on a new Debian Woody (stable) installation, but it could not determine the module file name. I tried several options to point it to the kernel source and headers, but it didn't work. Eventually, I installed an older version using http://people.debian.org/~rdonald/index.php.

Does anyone know how to install this new version? I didn't even know it was this new, except for the distinct lack of hints that Google provides so far.

Re:Debian

[elviscious]

You might try hacking up the install script that they provide. About three months ago on my Debian install (2.4.24 debian kernel) I was having trouble getting the install script to run because it kept saying that my kernel version was not compiled with the same version of gcc that I have installed.

Of course, they were the same version. Sniffing around in their script I found they were using some regular expression match to grab the versions, which for some reason didn't work on my kernel this time through. Some quick changes and it installed just fine.

Re:Debian

[franoculator]

You probably need to wait until the drivers are 2 or 3 years old before installing them on debian.

Re:Debian

[smsp]

That's got to be the funniest joke this week.

Re:Debian

[eldacan]

Well I'm sure you meant "debian stable", since these new drivers are already part of the (not so) unstable debian distribution!

Re:Debian

[noda132]

Does anyone know how to install this new version?

Well, not sure how well it would work on stable, but on unstable if you roll your own kernel using make-kpkg it's easy:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-kernel-source
cd /usr/src
tar zxvf nvidia-kernel-source.tar.gz
cd linux-2.6.1
fakeroot make-kpkg modules sudo dpkg -i ../nvidia-kernel*.deb
sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx

Re:Debian

[AKnightCowboy]

Of course, they were the same version. Sniffing around in their script I found they were using some regular expression match to grab the versions, which for some reason didn't work on my kernel this time through. Some quick changes and it installed just fine.

Hmm, I had that problem when I had gcc 3.3 installed and the Nvidia module didn't want to compile and install. I changed the /usr/bin/gcc symlink to point to gcc295 and it worked fine. I use a custom compiled kernel though and not the Debian packaged ones. It didn't seem to like gcc 3.3 very much, but I guess it was just something it wasn't parsing right?

Re:Debian

[forgotmypassword]

I am on Debian Testing

There are only 2 things I ever have to do

1) make a current symbolic link in /usr/src from kernel-headers-XXX to linux

2) run nvidia-installer --update

Answering my own question...link to README

[LouisvilleDebugger]

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.

Re:Answering my own question...link to README

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder everyone thinks LInux is so easy to use!

FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

But when will they update the FreeBSD Drivers to come into line with the linux versions? :[

Re:FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

<b>Fact: *BSD is Dying

Re:FreeBSD

[Seehund]

This is what some people seem to ignore when they say "who cares, if it works nobody needs the source code".

There are more operating systems out there than Linux, and these OSes (as well as Linux) run on many more platforms than x86.

Closed source drivers = if you want an nVIDIA card and 3D support, you're at the mercy of nVIDIA.

PPC/ARM/MIPS/blah Linux? Any other OS? Forget about it.

Re:FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, its not like there is nvidia hardware for most of those non x86 platforms anyways.

Re:FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

AGP slots take AGP cards.

This is great news

[deitel99]

The more the 2.6 kernel is accepted by companies the faster it'll get to that "critical point" where distributions will have to start using it not to feel left behind. And for those trying to sell Linux (with services etc) the 2.6 kernel will be an excellent bonus.

I also hope they'll be more stable than the 2.4 + 2.6patch was... I know a fair few people for whom lack of stable videocard support was the factor stopping them upgrade to 2.6.

Do they still suck?

[adrianbaugh]

The last (2.4) drivers that worked for me were 1.0.4496; the recent ones are a disaster, so hopefully they've taken the time to iron out the bugs and this isn't just the latest version of the driver with the (already existing) 2.6 patch bolted on.

Re:Do they still suck?

[adrianbaugh]

Having said that, if these do work it might just provide the impetus I need to make me install 2.6 on my debian/unstable box. It seems fairly stable by all accounts and I'm sure the developers could do with as many eyes as possible to squash any remaining bugs prior to distributions adopting 2.6.

Re:Do they still suck?

[cortana]

AFAIK Nvidia did incorporate the patches from minion.de. :)

Re:Do they still suck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Running Debian Sid here, own 2.6 kernel, and the latest nvidia driver. No X problems, though there's still the issue of console corruption coming out of X.

Re:Do they still suck?

[Dimensio]

I've been using 2.6 on my Debian testing/unstable box for awhile, and I've not had problems -- at least, none that I didn't have with 2.4 (burning a CD while running motv with the bttv driver still causes a hard-lock) apart from getting wavetable MIDI from the emu10k1 driver (solution: build the driver as a module, not in the kernel -- for some reason /dev/sequencer won't work otherwise). I've also not had noticable problems with the previous driver release (with the patch applied), though I'm not sure what kind of problems I should expect.

Re:Do they still suck?

[Anonymous Coward]

(adrianbaugh, using lynx...)
Right, I've installed 2.6.1 now: the nVidia drivers work fine but no matter what I do X refuses to take any input from my Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer. I'm using devfs: "Protocol" is set to "ExplorerPS/2", "Device" is set to "/dev/usbmouse" and there don't seem to be any errors in XFree86.0.log. Has anybody else run into this and, if so, what is the solution?

Re:Do they still suck?

[adrianbaugh]

My bad: I had forgotten to modprobe hid. It works again now...

at least we get a driver...

[Mark19960]

that is more, or less stable and WORKS.
im quite happy with that.
I understand the IP issues involved probably prohibit a source release.
I would just.. let this one go and thank them for at least supporting the linux driver.

Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now someone could release some apps for linux that actually use these drivers.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

RTCW:ET

Works great.

Re:Good.

[Pluribus]

A Tale in the Desert http://www.atitd.com works well on it :-)

Re:Good.

[sloanster]

You're new to this whole technology thing I see...

The OpenGL screeensavers that ship with linux use them -

The various multimedia players use them -

The OpenGL games use them, for instance ut2003 and the like -

Actually, every app that uses X11 ends up using the nvidia drivers once they are installed, though not all apps utilize the hardware-accelerated OpenGL.

cutting edge technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Now people can watch porn using cutting edge technology once again!

Re:cutting edge technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you get this 3D OpenGL pr0n? All I can ever find is oldfashioned 2D stuff... most of it's even pre-rendered (with something sucky called the "live action" engine). That's like so 20th century.

bugs are still there

[GweeDo]

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 :)

Re:bugs are still there

[Tomah4wk]

I think your wrong there. That was fixed for me the version prior to this. (Framebuffer console, 2.6 kernel so had to use minion patch)

Re:bugs are still there

[MrEd]

I had the same problem when using both the nVidia framebuffer drivers and nVidia X drivers concurrently. Switching to VESA for the framebuffer is a workaround. Works fine for me.

Re:bugs are still there

[Anonymous Coward]

If X is messing up your console, you could try typing "reset" after leaving X to re-initialize the console.

Re:bugs are still there

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he is right. The problem still exists. Just look into the discussion forum to discover a lot of people still having trouble with the console. Just because it works for you doesnt mean the driver is suddenly bugfree.

Re:bugs are still there

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately that doesn't work. There's something very odd going on with the consoles...

Re:bugs are still there

[Anonymous Coward]

X Window System! X Window System! Repeat after me! X Window System!

Re:bugs are still there

[Anonymous Coward]

try this beta driver: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=a a7d21aab01f334843a73ddaf0992ee8&threadid=2184
I have had no console corruption since i started using it, also get better 2d perfomance than with the "stable" driver release. Also work fine on 2.6, if you use the unofficial installer :)

Re:bugs are still there

[Bloody Twit]

I am by no means a Linux hax0r, so please indulge me: How does an apparent X-only driver affect console performance?

I was under the impression that:

whatever nVidia provided affected X only and

the console screen corruption is due to a bug introduced by a kernel contributer

The aformentioned screen corruption exists prior to X being started. I have been compiling my kernel for non-FB consoles to avoid the problem altogether. Is this a problem within nVidia's domain? I thought not, however a number of commentators here seem to think so.

Anyone care to comment?

Re:bugs are still there

[Nimey]

That's a known problem - just don't use the kernel framebuffer.

I was hacked off at first when I discovered that, then I grabbed v1.10 of SVGATextMode, which supports "Riva128" (nvidia) cards. That made it even easier to have high-resolution/high-refresh console modes, once I wrote the modelines for it.

GPL soul?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

For those who've sold their GPL soul to use the binary drivers from NVIDIA (like me) you can get them now.

While I support the GPL and don't particularly like binary-only drivers, I reckon this little phrase has no place in this announcement. To NVidia's credit, they seem to be somewhat serious about supporting Linux in a somewhat timely manner. This sort of allusion won't be a great incentive for other hardware vendors to support Linux at all, they'll just think "whatever we do to be nice to them, those Linux folks will always have something to complain about".

When Linux has 80% marketshare and is a true force to be reckoned with, then perhaps the community will be able to afford sarcasm and get away with it, but in the meantime, there must be other, more constructive ways to entice vendors to embrace open-source.

Re:GPL soul?

[wasabii]

The "Linux community" you speak about doesn't give one whit what you think. I want source. I won't buy another NVidia product again until I get source. End. If you have another opinion, that's fine, but don't expect everyone to agree.

Re:GPL soul?

[Chagrin]

in the meantime, there must be other, more constructive ways to entice vendors to embrace open-source.

It's difficult to have a principle-based movement when you ignore your principles.

Re:GPL soul?

[gottafixthat]

Its not just the Linux people that like to complain. Its everyone these days. It seems that most people just aren't happy unless they're bitching about something or someone.

Kudos to nVidia for releasing 2.6 drivers in any form this soon after the initial release of 2.6.

Re:GPL soul?

[rknop]

When Linux has 80% marketshare and is a true force to be reckoned with, then perhaps the community will be able to afford sarcasm and get away with it, but in the meantime, there must be other, more constructive ways to entice vendors to embrace open-source.

...like, for instance, not buying NVidia at all, and restricting yourself to a Radeon 9200 or lower so that you *can* use open-source drivers. That's very constructive market feedback. Buy what does what you want.

-Rob

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

I get the distinct feeling that kernel developers don't like being blamed for closed source driver problems they can't debug nor fix, hence the "sold their GPL soul"

Re:GPL soul?

[alexpage]

there must be other, more constructive ways to entice vendors to embrace open-source

Yep - don't buy nVidia, and let them know that you're choosing not to buy their products because of their lack of open drivers. If you've got purchasing power over many machines (such as the guy who runs a net cafe or something), this will carry even more clout.

To be fair, I own a GeForce 2 which I inhereted when a friend upgraded. I've never bought nVidia, and I don't plan to until I can get source. Getting old cards second-hand from the bleeding-edger game community is a nice way to get shiny graphics without compromising your principles ;)

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no, call the WAHHHHHHHHmbulance. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Re:GPL soul?

[Delirium Tremens]

It seems that most people just aren't happy unless they're bitching about something or someone.

It's the search for excellence...

Re:GPL soul?

[DenOfEarth]

It's difficult to have a principle-based movement when you ignore your principles.

Easy solution: If you want to stick to your principles, then don't use the NVIDIA drivers, or buy a card that has open drivers. whatever you do, don't use the closed-source NVIDIA drivers and then complain about your principles not being followed, as you wouldn't be doing anybody any favours, and you'd lose your credibility

Note: this isn't directed at you personally, I just have a thing for people who talk the talk, but don't walk the walk. Y'know, kind of like people who say that cars are a great threat to the environment and all, and it's a shame, but then buy and use a car anyways...it's frustrating.

Re:GPL soul?

[mattACK]

It's difficult to have a movement without any movement, or at least momentum. If they were stealing GPL code that would be one thing. If they support you without embracing your dogma, that is entirely another.

Re:GPL soul?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

It's difficult to have a principle-based movement when you ignore your principles.

I don't disagree, I'm just saying that positive advocacy, proposing free GPL and open-source philosophy introductory meetings with company decision-makers, conducted by free-software figureheads, or just plain boycott with (polite and argumented) emails explaining why you prefer not to buy close-source products, would work better than nasty remarks.

I'm sure NVidia thinks they're doing us a great favor here : if we diss them at every turn, they'll just give up on Linux eventually. Different points of view you see.

Re:GPL soul?

[garcia]

you complain when they don't release stuff and you complain when they do. You can't always have your cake and eat it too...

Be happy for the compromise or use a card that was reverse engineered or is somehow open.

Re:GPL soul?

[Soko]

Hunh?

How about introducing our principles in an even handed manner, as well as taking into consideration the needs of others.

"Thank you for the driver, nVidia. We'll use it, but it would be that much better if you open sourced it. Yes, we can help you keep that valuable IP from ATI, too, if that matters."

Soko

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which principles would those be? It seems you are confusing open-source with Free Software.

Re:GPL soul?

[Jellybob]

A Radeon 9200 doesn't do what I want though... my 9600pro on the other hand *does* support dual-head, and run recent games nicely under Windows.

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which video card are you using that has an open source driver?

I find it hard to believe that the card will be any good.

Re:GPL soul?

[X_Bones]

It's difficult to have a principle-based movement when you ignore your principles.

It's difficult to have any movement at all in hardware-related fields without support from major players.

Re:GPL soul?

[Cyno]

To Nvidia is being "nice" because they make their hardware partially functional on my favorite OS?

They don't have to support Linux at all. I have free OSS, but still non-GPL, drivers through XFree86 that work just fine. Its nice of them to consider Linux a viable platform, but I think their support leaves much to be desired.

And if they are unwilling to do it why not open source the driver and give the OSS community a hand at providing FULL support on Linux, eh? What have you got to lose? Some lame IP that will be worthless in a few years anyway, just like the hardware? Or a few upset Linux customers who can't get their hardware to function properly and are forced to download and install a driver that could have just as easily been included with the distro.

As a consumer I love to complain. :)

Re:GPL soul?

[Captain Rotundo]

Its not about market share, its about free software.
When I built a system I use at home a while back I didn't do my research and thought "oh nvidia supports linux" bought an nvidia card. now I use the stock X drivers because the non-free nvidia drivers bother my politics, and they sucked ass.

I tried several versions and X would lock up after a few minutes with each one. finally I gave up. I bet if the drivers were free (or at LEAST open source) they would be much better. Quite frankly bad software sucks, but bad proprietary software is the worst!

Re:GPL soul?

[noda132]

To NVidia's credit, they seem to be somewhat serious about supporting Linux in a somewhat timely manner.

It feels to me like nVidia is a big corporate giant, bending down to let the OSS community eat out of its grubby paws whatever scraps it leaves them.

There's not "always" something to complain about. There's only one thing to complain about, and that's that nVidia does not co-operate with the Linux community. If it did, nVidia drivers would be in the kernel tree and it'd be twice as easy for all of us to get our cards working on a do-it-yourself kernel. Not to mention, we'd have fewer bugs and probably faster framerates.

Linux would benefit. nVidia would benefit.

Drivers are commodities, there's really no good reason to keep them closed. ESR has written plenty of convincing material on the matter, so I won't re-hash it.

Re:GPL soul?

[trout_fish]

OSS is a principle-based movement? I think I'll stick to the free (beer) reason. While a small number may be fundamentally opposed to binaries, I would think the majority are more interested in the many practical advantages currently offered by Open Source Software.

Re:GPL soul?

[Cyno]

But if the Linux market is growing at the rate everyone says it is and they give up on Linux their shareholders might not like it.

So I don't think they can just give up on Linux, no matter how much the Linux community disses them.

Re:GPL soul?

[SpeedBump0619]

It's difficult to have a principle-based movement when you ignore your principles.

It's difficult to have a useful principle-based movement without substantial movement also.

Why does it never occur to zealots that their chosen nemesis can have any valid reasons for their actions.

Does it ever occur to an open source zealot that maybe there are valid reasons a company can't provide non-binary drivers? Take, for instance, trade secrets. If the company publishes code which clearly describes their specialized process then it is no longer a secret. It is particularly important to protect hardware implementation secrets since they are

1) easilly reverse engineered and
2) difficult to recover engineering NREs to begin with.

What you are advocating is having a company like nvidia pay its engineers to develop new technologies so that other companies can benefit from them. Why would this idea ever appeal to a for profit company?

Please at least try to see the other perspective before condemning it as short sighted and evil. If you can't look at the problem and suggest a workable alternative then maybe you shouldn't be complaining about the current solution.

(NRE == Non-Recurring Expense)

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last year I bought new video cards for all the computers in the house. None of them use Nvidia chips.

I don't care if the vendor provides a driver or not. I care about whether the OSS community provides a driver. All I want from the vendor is a piece of hardware, and the hardware docs.

My principles dictate open source, and my money follows my principles. Nvidia can sell me cards again only when the OSS community has enough hardware information to produce its own GPL'd drivers.

Re:GPL soul?

[swordgeek]

Hmm...

I get a bit annoyed (OK, sometimes REALLY annoyed) at people in the Linux world equating the use of Linux and being an OSS zealot.

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass. If Linux does the job I want it to, better or cheaper than someone else, then I'll use it. If I want to use it, I'll use it. I am not, however, going to town banging on doors and windows about GPL, OSS, and the purity of my morals. If someone else wants to, that's fine. Just don't ruin it for the rest of us. (i.e. by discouraging companies who make good hardware from supporting Linux at all.)

Your post doesn't make me think that you're one of these, but it was a good segue to my point.

As for the car analogy, it brings up the question of compromise. To wit: I live in an area where I can't do without a car, so I had to buy one. I did, however, put fuel efficiency and reliability near the top of my 'important features' list, to cut down on the environmental costs. Furthermore - because I can, I take the bus to work.

Re:GPL soul?

[Haeleth]

NVIDIA is a 3D hardware company - they make their money by selling cards to run the latest whizz-bang games.

The part of the Linux market that is growing fast is servers and, to a lesser extent, corporate desktops. This is not the part of the market that is interested in consumer 3D graphics.

NVIDIA could easily give up on Linux. The Linux gamer market is tiny, and it's not growing very fast. NVIDIA's shareholders would not give a damn.

Re:GPL soul?

[DenOfEarth]

Thanks for your post, cuz I think we're in the same boat. I think the GPL is cool and all, it definitely addresses some important issues, and it makes things interesting in the world of software development. I use Linux at school and at home, because it's good enough for me, and I like the philosophy behind it. I also use the NVIDIA drivers because their cards are cheap, and they are supporting my OS. The point of my post wasn't to say this was a good thing or bad thing in itself, as I don't really care about the morals of it or anything like that. I just get bugged when the zealots out there do complain, but then download the drivers anyways. There's really no point in that.

Same with the cars issue, I fully understand how useful a car is, and would like to own one myself, but due to the economics, I can't right now. I don't mind taking the bus either, as it gets me where I need to go (except to the mountains). I'm not too much of an environmental zealot, so it doesn't really matter to me what cars are doing to the environment, but again, it bugs me when there are environmental zealots out there who speak of all the evils of cars, then drive one anyways.

It makes me think of a good quote from Gandhi I read once: "be the change you want to see in the world". Makes a better case then just talking about the change you want to see in the world, IMHO

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

And that damn paper is ALL ESR has written in the past 4-5 years. When is the last time the "Master Hacker" hacked code?

Re:GPL soul?

[schon]

The Linux gamer market is tiny, and it's not growing very fast.

But it is growing.

NVIDIA's shareholders would not give a damn.

You don't know very much about business.

The fact that nVidia currently spends time developing Linux drivers means that there is enough interest in their cards that they are making money off it. If they're making money off it, then it would be a bad business decision to shut it down.

Tell me how a manager would correctly answer the followin question from his boss:

"What do you mean you shut down development of a market segment that's growing and making us money?"

Somehow, I don't think "well, they whined at us" would save your job.

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure NVidia thinks they're doing us a great favor here

No, they are not. They are responding to the market. The market demands supported graphics cards for Linux, *BSD and Solaris. Not just whiz-bang game cards (that's almost exclusively home computers running Windows), but simpler cards with good 2D performance for windowing and 3D performance for visualisation.

Linux and BSD based x86 machines are being increasingly used as workstations. Not corporate offices running Word all day, but engineering and scientific apps. With Solaris, they can make a deal with Sun and bundle the driver. With open platforms, they need to release drivers publically. Not to garner the adoration of Slashdot readers, but to have that all-important "supported on Linux and BSDs" tickbox, which means individuals and companies will choose NVIDIA cards for their next Linux or BSD workstation.

If NVIDIA could make more money and gain more market share by open-sourcing their drivers than they would lose in reducing their competitive advantage, they would do that. Not out of the kindness of their hearts, or to get more mail from swooning fanboys. but to succeed as a company.

Re:GPL soul?

[dubious9]

Which video card are you using that has an open source driver?

I find it hard to believe that the card will be any good.

Since I don't have any mod points, I'll say that I agree with the AC here. What card do you use? AFAIK, there is no major vendor that releases an open source driver, or the specifications of their card so that others may do so. You might say, "oh I use the GNU nv driver", well then why don't you support it?

Instead of saying "Nvidia pretty please OS your driver?", you could say, "Nvidia, i'm working on nv, could you please tell me how the open gl subsystem works so I can implement it myself?". I'm pretty sure the second question will get an answer long before the first.

Re:GPL soul?

[Cyno]

Does Nvidia care if its a 3D gamer or a corporation buying their products? They will make the same profits from them either way and will probably get less tech support calls from the corporate buyers.

If they give up on Linux they lose this potential corporate market, which they currently dominate because of their support. Every computer needs a video card, but very few of them will have $400+ cards.

Re:GPL soul?

[petabyte]

ignore your principles

That implies that they are my principles which they very clearly aren't. I'm not interested in the semantic differences between the BSD license and GPL and I don't care if this driver is propreitary provided it continues to be produced. If it stops being produced, I'll take my money elsewhere and Nvidia knows that. I bought a GF4 explcitly because of Nvidia's linux driver and if I need another card, it would likely be an Nvidia (thought I don't like the massive sink on the newer cards).

Just because they're your principle's doesn't mean everyone else subscribes to them.

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Drivers are commodities, there's really no good reason to keep them closed.

Drivers may be commodities, but the video hardware they control definitely isn't.

The drive gives explicit, step-by-step instructions on how to control said hardware, and what its capabilities are from the end-user viewpoint. Why would *any* company in a heavily competitive market give their competitors *any* early advantage by publishing such detailed information on the inner workings of their products? Yes, competitors will eventually figure all this out - but by then, the newer/faster/shiner products will be out there.

This is all assuming that said company owns all the IP to that hardware; if there are any 3rd party licenses involved, the company may never be able to legally release the info w/o violating NDAs and whatnot with that 3rd company.

Re:GPL soul?

[Watcher]

I really get tired of hearing this same dispute come up every time nVidia and Linux are mentioned. nVidia can not release their drivers as open source due to the licensing for the AGP interface code in their drivers-pure plain and simple. There is not some huge conspiracy within nVidia to keep you from getting their source, they are not sitting here playing games with you, they are trying to support a market as best as they can within the restrictions imposed upon them by a business decision. If you don't believe me, the do a search here on slashdot into the history of this-even Carmack has chimed in on this one.

I sometimes wonder if there is a more thankless group out there than the Linux user market. Yes, it would be great if the nVidia drivers were open source. The truth of the matter is that unless someone wants to reverse engineer everything in these drivers, you're not going to have that anytime soon.

Re:GPL soul?

[DeathPenguin]

Because we all know that running a binary driver under Windows is less of a sin in the OSS Nazi church than running a binary driver under Linux.

BTW--Go here if you want performance under Linux.

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually won't. If NVIDIA was willing to release documentation on their chipsets, they would have done so by now and saved themselves the money of developing Linux drivers themselves.

Sadly, it looks like Linux is going to be locked into binary-only drivers in the 3d video card market for years to come. There's just too much competition in that market right now, and nobody wants to give any hints as to what's going on beneath the hood for fear of revealing some of their secrets to the competition.

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

> ESR has written plenty of convincing material

ESR is talking about simple things like network drivers.

Nvidia's video drivers contain a high-perf OpenGL implementation, and numerous game "optimizations" (aka cheats), as well as certifications for professional apps.

None of that stuff is "commodity", although perhaps the People's Committee for Open Source Drivers would like it to be.

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know "open source zealots" are annoying to practical people, but honestly GPL software is not just about you the user; it's also about the developers. So if the kernel developers don't think it's appropriate, they ARE entilted to bitch and moan about the GPL. They write the code after all. That's what this email was really saying. The people on LKML are the people who are allowed to be GPL zealots, not couch developers on slashdot.

Re:GPL soul?

[veg_all]

To NVidia's credit, they seem to be somewhat serious about supporting Linux in a somewhat timely manner.

Unless we're talking about motherboard chipset drivers. I've gotten NForce's on-board sound working , but the I've given up on the ethernet until they release an official driver. Fortunately I have spare NIC's out the wazoo, but it drives me nuts to have non-working hardware in there!

Re:GPL soul?

[chromatic]

nVidia can not release their drivers as open source due to the licensing for the AGP interface code in their drivers-pure plain and simple.

It's been four years since NVIDIA released beta drivers. If they'd wanted, they likely could have produced their own AGP code in that time. One of their product managers hinted they'd be releasing open source 2D drivers several years ago too.

Re:GPL soul?

[gottafixthat]

If people bitching is searching for excellence, then I can assure them that they are not going to find it where they are looking.

The search for excellence should be sought by asking questions and searching for answers, then sharing those answers, not by complaining. Trust me on this one.

[begin mini-rant]

Working in a service industry (as the owner of an ISP), I am much more likely to spend time and give extensive support to someone who asks questions about a problem they are having. Most people would rather bitch for 5 minutes about how everything sucks because it doesn't do this, or it does this but not they way they want it to. Oh, and while they're bitching about it, they will of course tell you that whatever it is they are having problems with is somehow your fault. Even if its not your fault, its someone elses, thats for sure.

Its like they feel they are entitled to something and love the sound of their own voice and want to blame everything they don't understand or don't know on everyone else. Quite frankly, they need to get over themselves and realize they're not as entitled as they think they are.

[end mini-rant]

Back to the topic at hand. nVidia is under no obligation to provide drivers at all, let alone open source drivers. Granted, it is in their best interests to provide drivers since it means more potential platforms that their cards will work on. This means more sales -- the goal of any company. Compared to many other companies, nVidia is doing pretty well with their releases. They stay more current than most companies do and actually address bugs and problems in their drivers.

For the record, I don't have an nVidia card. I have Matrox cards in all of my systems. I still support nVidia's efforts and release of this driver.

Re:GPL soul?

[atrus]

You're forgetting the professional 3d market. 3d modeling and design used to be done on IRIX machines. Thats been moving to Linux slowly (and some Windows, but many shops who used IRIX seem to find Linux more up their alley)

Re:GPL soul?

[Delirium Tremens]

See. Your mini-rant is complaining about what pisses you off and you end up giving advice on how to make the system better (i.e. "they need to get over themselves and realize they're not as entitled as they think they are.")

So, you are trying to make the system better by bitching. This is a proof that bitching is a search for excellence, no?

Re:GPL soul?

[gottafixthat]

Not quite. I admit, I too am a victim of the mob mentality, a side effect of being constantly bombarded with it, I'm sure. The blame for it doesn't lie with those doing the bombarding, though, it lies within myself for succumbing to it. That is where the search for excellence lies.

Re:GPL soul?

[Watcher]

This depends on the terms of the licensing agreement for the AGP code. nVidia may be barred from writing something to replace that code (I doubt that). Or they may have to do a "clean room" reverse engineering of it, without allowing anyone who has seen the old code base (any part of the driver, no matter how small) to work on the new code. That's a huge investment on their part for what is, in all fairness, a small market. That means that everyone who has worked on the video drivers from at least the TNT card could not be allowed to work on the new driver code at any time for fear of "contamination". That's a very real concern in the litigious world we live in.

Re:GPL soul?

[Jellybob]

I have done, and play several games under Linux, but when it comes to supporting games, I need a Windows install around.

Re:GPL soul?

[kelnos]

and the amusing fact is, although there are some GPL zealots on the lkml, linus torvalds himself is not one of them. i've seem him quoted to the effect that the GPL worked for him at the time to further his goals as an OS developer, and that's why he used it - not because he felt an overwhelming desire to preach about how software should be free. hell, he even uses bitkeeper, a proprietary SCM, to manage the kernel. why? because it does what he needs it to, simple as that.

Re:GPL soul?

[forgotmypassword]

?agpgart?

Then why can't Nvidia open large majority of the driver that doesn't use "NVIDIA's internal AGP support"? The drivers already have agpgart support, why couldn't they make an OS driver based off of that alone?

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't XFree86 have an ATI driver that supports 3D for everything up to the Radeon 9000?

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

I complain that they refuse to document the interface to their products. The proprietary IA32-only driver they released doesn't change that.

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

We can handle OpenGL (I'm pretty sure that's already available). All we need from NVIDIA is how to feed commands to their rendering hardware.

Re:GPL soul?

[be-fan]

I bet if the drivers were free (or at LEAST open source)
---
Like all those other high-quality free OpenGL drivers? There is not a single decent free OpenGL driver out there. NVIDIAs at least support 100% of the features of the card, and are as fast as the Windows version. They are also very stable, though they have problems with certain configurations. I've used them on three different machines on numerous different Linux distros, and they've worked flawlessly on all of them. They are certainly stable enough that SGI ships them with their Linux workstations, and that ILM uses them for their graphics workstations!

Re:GPL soul?

[be-fan]

Its not just that. Not all drivers are commodities. Its not like a network card driver where most things are the same with different register locations. An OpenGL driver is an *entire* OpenGL implementation. Its everything from the interrupt handler in the kernel to the shared library loaded by the application. From the minute you make a glFoo() call, you're in the OpenGL driver. There is a lot of code in there that is entirely hardware independent. There is code to optimize display lists, optimize drawing order, etc. ATI could use that code very easily, but its really not hardware-dependent.

Re:GPL soul?

[nathanh]

I sometimes wonder if there is a more thankless group out there than the Linux user market.

It seems to me that whenever there's this ongoing (and fruitless) nVidia flamewar that the overwhelming majority of Slashdotters support nVidia. Far from being thankless, I think nVidia has more cheerleaders than detractors.

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem being that nVidia isn't supporting its hardware on Linux, it's supporting its hardware on a few limited versions of Linux. If Linux 2.7 comes around, and nVidia folds by then (remember 3dfx?) there will not be any way to use these cards effectively. Really supporting Linux means releasing drivers that the world can continue to keep current and improve.

Re:GPL soul?

[stor]

Hey nothing's perfect, even Linux itself but we still use it.

You can criticise a product that you use: that's not hypocritical.

For instance I don't like the amount of pollution car's cause but I can't do without one: there's no compelling alternative available. That's why I bought a 1.6L 4cyl small car. I don't think it's hypocritical of me to not approve of the emissions coming out of my car: as soon as an affordable alternative (hydrogen/elec engine, anyone) I'll switch.

Cheers
Stor

Re:GPL soul?

[Chagrin]

Hey, I'm cool with that too. But if you're just looking for usable hardware drivers, you'll have a much easier time with Windows or MacOS though.

Linux WOULD NOT BE WHERE IT IS TODAY if it was not open. I'm not suggesting that we all spit in the face of Nvidia, I'm just saying that we need to back up a bit and think about what happens when this type of "binary only" behaviour becomes commonplace with Linux drivers.

Re:GPL soul?

[sloanster]

I'm just saying that we need to back up a bit and think about what happens when this type of "binary only" behaviour becomes commonplace with Linux drivers.

Well, if the nvidia stuff is any indication, it means we'll have some great drivers ;)

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

To hell with their source code. I just want documentation on the register interface. Why won't they release that? Do they have something nasty to hide?

Re:GPL soul?

[KeithManning]

I'm running Xandros 2 on an Nforce motherboard with no problems. Onboard sound and network both work fine and were detected automatically. The only other distro I've tried in with was PCLinuxOS (live cd) and it worked fine with that too.

Keith

Re:GPL soul?

[swordgeek]

Thanks--this post answered my questions about Linux philosophy fairly nicely. If Linus himself isn't that much of a zealot, then I can continue using Linux with a clear conscience.

Re:GPL soul?

[veg_all]

But the NIC was $15, and Xandros is $89.

Seriously, though, that's interesting, because I've got Sarge right here and Xandros is based on that, right? Hmmm. Is it an NForce2? What's the ethernet controller chipset?

Re:GPL soul?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between keeping your conscience clear and avoiding any arguments that may cause you to develop a conscience.

Re:GPL soul?

[KeithManning]

I'm at work at the moment and I can't remember exactly what it is off the top of my head. ABIT I think.

I do know that it is an Nforce2 with dolby decoder (and little SPDIF output). I'll reply back with the exact specs when I get home.

Keith

Who gives a rats ass..

[Anonymous Coward]

It works, aren't you happy enough?

It's not like you need to tweak the driver for specific tasks now is it?

Old news...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is old news for those of us that use the great services provided over at minion. This guy has been providing patches for quite sometime and the work great! Hats off to the open source contributors.

and still...

[rogabean]

and still no support for video mirroring output on the s-vid port of my geforce 2 mx400 :(

which means my VOD server for the house still has to run windows... bah!

Re:and still...

[Anonymous Coward]

yah, it really sucks having to use something that works for what you want it to. really bad situation you're in there pal. fucking tool you are.

Re:and still...

[NiteHaqr]

Then I think you are doing something wrong in your XF-Config file

I got this working on my Ti4200 with no problems (well no problems after I RTFM'd.

Send me an email (raven@chaoscrypt.net) with the phrase "XF86-Config" in the subject if you want a copy of my config file which provides "clone" mode output to VGA & TV via Svideo. Failing to add the "XF86-Config" will probably mean that the email will be filtered to trash - the account is pretty spammed out at the moment.

I would have posted it here but the tabulation of the file caused a

"Lameness filter encountered.
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted." error.

Re:and still...

[twistedcubic]

You must have a killer anti-spam setup.

Re:and still...

[NiteHaqr]

Yep - but of an unorthodox nature.

Using Thunderbirds adaptive filters to bounce stuff to a junk folder - friends who still use that account ( and none of them should - its been unusable due to spam (100+messages/day) for a while.

I just go into Thunderbird and do a search for XF86 in the subject field and then manually move anything that matches back to my inbox.

I only anticipate recieveing mails on this subject for the next day or two - so no point in setting up auto-filters.

My answer to spam is simple - I use a tiered address system.

I have one account that I give to Family and close friends.

I have another account that I give to less close friends - this is a disposable account

I have another account that I use to sign up on websites etc - this is a known spam magnet and so not that important - usually an account that I used for less close friends that has started to attract spam and so has been relegated to that function.

Over all I have about 13 accountsa for various ppurposes - I am currently considering setting up new accounts for each and every site I subscribe to that calims it wont send on my details. That way if I get anything that didn't come from them only I have the grounds to go after them with a big stick

SK

Re:and still...

[Anonymous Coward]

shadango.com gives really easy disposable addresses, easy to check multiple accounts through a web interface etc... i have a set up similiar to yours.

Re:and still...

[justMichael]

A simple solution is to use procmail. This can be adapted to other filtering methods as well. It's easy, painless and I don't have to go setup a new alias whenever I need to signup someplace.

I use address in the following format:
me-website_id@example.com

then just do something like:

:0
* ^TO.*me-.*@example.com
! my_main_address

and if they start spamming that address

:0
* ^TO.*me-website_id@example.com
/dev/null

Or using qmail and the badrcptto patch, you can reject the mail before it gets in. Hope it helps.

Mods: I know it's OT, that's why I posted it without a Karma bonus ;-)

Re:and still...

[WWWWolf]

Take a look at the readme, particularly the sections concerning the TwinView options. I could get the svideo/composite output to work beautifully for both GF2MX and GF4...

how about forcedeth?

[otis wildflower]

The opensource nforce ethernet driver.. The patched nvnet driver didn't work too well but I've been having lots of success with forcedeth.. Can't wait for it to be pulled into the Linus kernel..

Re:how about forcedeth?

[finse]

Sweet! I had no idea this was being worked on!
And there was much rejoicing!

Re:how about forcedeth?

[RKloti]

It has been integrated into the kernel and will be available in 2.6.2. Source (search for "forcedeth").

Re:how about forcedeth?

[otis wildflower]

Indeed, after patching to 2.6.2-rc2-mm1 I was deligted to find forcedeth already in the tree..

And the new nvidia driver works pretty well, even with the installer..

Now to take a stab at the Mandrake 10.0 beta...

Well done Linux!!

Stuck in nvidia hell

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Stuck in nvidia hell

[13Echo]

I've configured nForce systems for friends, and it is *not* pretty. nVidia's nForce binary drivers are terrible. The nVnet driver for the Realtek chips is unstable and slow, and often causes brief system hangs. The audio driver is terrible, uses OSS, and indicated that the hardware doesn't support hardware mixing in any fashion. There is ALSA support, but it isn't much better. Everything seems to indicate that that the "powerful" nForce APU is just an clone of the i810 spec with uber-souped-up drivers.

Some may disagree, but I'd suggest that most people stay away from nForce on Linux unstil 2.6.x gets better support for the nVidia hardware. I heard that they were going to add open GART support for the nForce hardware, but I am not sure how it panned out. Instead, I opted to go for a VIA KT600, though marginally slower than the nForce 2, has seemed to work well for me with even the 2.4.22 kernel and my Radeon 9500 PRO. The ATI drivers have their own GART driver within the fglrx module that can support the KT600 with a minor change to the driver's source. On the other hand, the included C-Media and Realtek audio/LAN chips aren't any better than anything I've seen on the nForce, so I've disabled them and use well-supported PCI cards instead.

Though some may have had a lot of luck with nForce, I've only found the hardware to be a cause of headaches under Linux. Even though support for the hardware has dripped into the open-source portions of the kernel and ALSA, nVidia hasn't exatly shown a lot of interest in updating their own drivers. I think that the nForce software for Linux last received an update in July of 2003. And don't ever count on hardware mixing, which seems to be a limitation of the nForce hardware.

Re:Stuck in nvidia hell

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see any problem with the nForce hardware in Linux, except for APIC on the Ultra chipsets. AGP support is great, ethernet always worked. There's no driver for the APU, but the sound works in the same way that all other onboard sound hardware.

BTW, the APU exists, it's an actual hardware device that process the sound before sending it to the AC97 host hardware (intel compatible) that produces the sound itself.

Oh, and you can have a setup free of closed source drivers. I have a nForce2 mb, I'm using the forcedeth (RE'd) driver for ethernet, ALSA sound drivers and a Radeon 8500 with the DRI drivers patched to support ST3C compressed textures. Much better than any closed source driver you can point me to.

Re:Stuck in nvidia hell

[10Ghz]

Does any other vid-card company do it better? Ati's driver are even worse!

And how long until nvidia makes my board obsolete?

I remember using those NV-drivers on Riva TNT. And if they do obsolete your card, you can always use the drivers that come with Xfree. What's the problem?

Re:Stuck in nvidia hell

[Anonymous Coward]

"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?"

I've been very happy with Fedora on nforce2. It's been stable and the proprietary drivers were not that hard to set up. I understand this hasn't always been true. As far as price/performance, the nforce2-ultra chipset is still one of the best buys out there. True, the driver support is better under Windows. Can anyone name a (consumer) hardware vendor whose Linux driver support is better than their Windows driver support?

Re:Stuck in nvidia hell

[The_Dougster]

I've been using an nForce2 board for about a year now with first a Geforce4MX and now a FX 5900, and I have have totally excellent results. I agree that getting it set up would be somewhat of a daunting challenge for the linux gnubie, and even for a lot of intermediate level users. Familiarity with compiling your own kernel is essential for success.

As for your black screen when switching to VC's, compile your kernel with vesafb support and boot it with a vga=... parameter. That should resolve that pesky problem (I figured that one out about 2 years ago after some carefull searching through forums on the web).

Your hardware can be made to work great, but you are going to have to get your hands dirty and do some researching for answers. My Asus A7N8X Deluxe nForce2 board is easily the fastest and most stable Linux system that I have ever had the pleasure to use. I think everything except possibly the IEEE1394 firewire is functional, and that because I don't own any firewire devices so haven't bothered with it.

Not going to happen

[DigiShaman]

It's not going to happen. Forget it! nVidia has too much time and "innovation" tied up in the development of the drivers to risk competition benefiting from them being open sourced. I'm sure ATI feels the same way about their drivers too. Hence, ATI also will not release its source code.

PowerPC not yet

[leandrod]

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

Re:PowerPC not yet

[Sloppy]

Perhaps non-x86 folks should band together and pay somebody to reverse-engineer the driver. Heck, some x86 users would support that, too. Who knows, maybe the video card in my next machine could be NVIDIA instead of Matrox.

Re:PowerPC not yet

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

Minor problem: I think the card works differently on non-x86...different firmware (to support that OpenBoot standard or whatever Macs use)

Re:PowerPC not yet

[putzin]

I know it's still really new, but I would love to see some token support from ATI or Nvidia for X86_64! The X driver for ATI is a little flaky in FC1 for X86_64, and I would love to have a native driver from ATI or Nvidia. My next Vid card is the one supported best for this platform running Linux.

Re:PowerPC not yet

[rsmith-mac]

They do. Look up the Nvidia driver for Linux AMD64(aka x86-64); it was updated on the 21st.

Re:PowerPC not yet

[bogie]

PPC people who actually run Linux, are gamers, and have a computer fast enough to even warrant a GF 4, has to be dwarfed by both Amiga and Beos users. I don't think you should hold your breath. Using a Mac for gaming is a dicey proposition, using a Mac and then not running OS X for gaming is just ensuring you'll never play any games again.
My advice which you probably don't want to hear anyway is to buy a console or an x86 PC.

Re:PowerPC not yet

[leandrod]

> PPC people who actually run Linux, are gamers

I am not a gamer, I have Power Macs and I run GNU/Linux. It is not about not having a specific driver, it is about not having any driver nor the techspecs.

Re:PowerPC not yet

[This is outrageous!]

PPC people who actually run Linux, are gamers. My advice which you probably don't want to hear anyway is to buy a console or an x86 PC.

Well maybe, if you consider Mac OS X a game ;-)

Seriously, I think you're way off. On ATI-equipped Macs, Mac-on-Linux is a great way to have both OS X and Linux available, so you can run those not so few applications that haven't yet been compiled natively -- without rebooting, and not so incidentally, get good access to HFS+ from ext2 and vice versa. But no dice on the 12" Powerbook, thanks to nVidia not compiling their drivers for the PowerPC.

Why?

Until they do, or until the tables are turned with Linux-on-Mac, we can't do this because essential laptop functions like sleep, video acceleration and dual display are poorly supported... I encourage people to bring up the issue at every opportunity with Apple, with nVidia, and maybe here.

Re:PowerPC not yet

[fmileto]

This is why I returned my PB G4 12". Oh well I love my T41 and thats that ;-)

Re:PowerPC not yet

[This is outrageous!]

Did you tell Apple? nVidia? I think they should be made acutely aware of this. When I asked at an Applestore the other day, explaining that I had some work I *need* to do in Linux, they had absolutely no clue that there might be a problem.

Right there in the store I popped a few benh messages from debian-powerpc (just search the list at gmane for nVidia, you get a lot of cursing). Seeing those well-reasoned complaints shook them a bit, it flies in the face of their line that "powerbooks are all you see at open source conventions now".

This is hardware we are buying, not just cool iApps. So sell supported hardware like the competition, dammit!

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that nVidia did have an open-source driver for linux. Of course it was obscured beyond recognition and sucked (unstable as hell, and slow).

So? Fix it then. It's Open Source!

Holding me back

[wed128]

That was seriously the only thing holding me back from going all 2.6...hmmm...off to compile!

Mandrake pulling microsoft

[onyxruby]

Wonder if Mandrake will pull another microsoft on this one? 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. Anyone else suffer someone elses self righteousness like this lately?

Re:Mandrake pulling microsoft

[77Punker]

I used to use Mandrake 9.1 and never had such a problem. If you don't want more Mandrake but still want an easy to use distro, however, I highly recommend MEPIS. It automagically configures your NVidia card and keeps it up to date with apt-get.

Re:Mandrake pulling microsoft

[iapetus]

No problem at all running NVidia drivers under Mandrake 9.2 (other than the brokenness of some versions of the drivers, that is...) Haven't tried the new release (took me long enough to fix the damage the last set caused) but I'll be taking a look soonish.

Re:Mandrake pulling microsoft

[Eivind]

Can you be a bit more spesific ? Your claim sounds more than a little dubious given the fact that Mandrake even *includes* proprietary drivers in its boxed sets. (and they're in "contrib" for those who use the download-edition.)

Re:Mandrake pulling microsoft

[damballah]

You either have a dependancy problem or you're trolling. urpmi is a tool solely converned about installing stuff, it doesn't have "opinions" about polluting (whatever that may mean) your OS

Re:Mandrake pulling microsoft

[onyxruby]

I believe this is what your looking for.

"Warning: loading will taint
the kernel: no license."

Re:Mandrake pulling microsoft

[Cyph]

As far as I know, it's not a Mandrake thing, it's a kernel thing. If you load a binary-only module into the kernel that uses a non-standard license, it "taints" the kernel.

Re:Mandrake pulling microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Works fine for me.

Re:Mandrake pulling microsoft

[Eivind]

That is nice. But that has got precisely nothing with Mandrake to do. The "Tainting" and "MODULE_LICENCE(char *)" function for declaring a modules license was introduced by the kernel-hackers as a method for sifting out the stream of useless bug-reports from people running proprietary (mostly Nvidia) kernel-modules.

It is perhaps a LITTLE unfair of accusing Mandrake of "pulling a Microsoft" when all that they did was include a function from the standard Linux kernel... Not that the claim makes any sense anyways as the main problem with Microsoft is their abuse of a dominant market-position, a position which no Linux-vendor has, and thus can't abuse.

You think this is being constructive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Being constructive involves not accepting NVIDIA's sop to the whiny fanboys, and not buying NVIDIA hardware until they actually release open source drivers. This "oh, we love you NVIDIA, we'll buy your products even though you don't support Free Software at all" is counter-constructive to our ends.

People didn't write Linux just to switch to another closed source, binary only solution without Microsoft's name on it. They wrote Linux to get the freedom that free and open source software provides.

Re:You think this is being constructive?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

This "oh, we love you NVIDIA, we'll buy your products even though you don't support Free Software at all" is counter-constructive to our ends.

But you don't understand : there's no question we don't like their binary-only releases, but they did make a step in our direction. To them, they think readable code gives away their hardware secrets. No need to be nasty to them (and given the level of OSS support for hi-perf video boards out there, we probably ought not to), I'm just saying it's more constructive to try to work *with* them rather than go against them.

They already show an interest for the Linux platform. We just need to lobby them and work out how they could understand that it's possible to make proprietary hardware full of secrets with open-source drivers. If we antagonize them, that won't do any good at all.

Re:You think this is being constructive?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, source code does not give away hardware secrets. It might reveal that they are doing things in software that they claim are being done in hardware. It might reveal that they are cheating on benchmark tests. It might reveal that they are stealing someones IP. But it will not reveal any hardware in the GPU, EVER.

Regards, your local area ASIC designer.

Rome wasn't built in a day

[DG]

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

It's open source...

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source software refusing to cooperate? :) Well, there is an easy way around that. Given that you know how to program, of course...

Ummm..

[caino59]

You can go make a comment, why be lazy and assume someone else will do your bidding?

If you want something, you gotta go after it.

Proprietary, yes...

[Kjella]

But does the IP belong to you, or to God? (or Allah or whatever. I assume that since you believe to have a soul, you also believe in some form of God) I think you got a time-limited lease on it. A run-time licence perhaps? And I don't want to get into the physics of it, being a derivative work of your parents and all...

Kjella

Re:Proprietary, yes...

[Phillup]

I don't really care who the IP belongs to... as long as I'm allowed to redistribute it freely.

'Cause I have!

;-)

Re:Proprietary, yes...

[DeltaSigma]

I know it's nitpicking, but if God can be referred to by so many names, why can't the soul? Many different Native American beliefs include a spirit within us that fits the description of a soul rather well. Many pagans, as well, believe there to be something within us which exceeds physical boundries, and moves elsewhere after death.

Nonetheless, your inquery is still just as valid. Supported, even, by some/most Native American beliefs. Your spirit is definately on lease from the planet.

And I believe it's very logical to believe as such. It's so easy to believe that there's a little piece of infinity in all of us. Easier still to believe that it does not belong to us.

Re:Proprietary, yes...

[Kru)(fen]

Are you kidding? Of course his soul's IP belongs to SCO!!!

Re:Proprietary, yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

so, what you are saying on slashdot is that you acually was near a person of the opposite sex?

Re:Proprietary, yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's saying he's done cloning research.

Opposite sex! Ha!

Re:Proprietary, yes...

[Snoopy77]

I think you got a time-limited lease on it.

Actually the soul originally had no time limit but a daemon corrupted the original soul and all derivative souls. The original creator of the soul sent a bug fix but only a few people have applied the patch.

Re:Proprietary, yes...

[zoloto]

I'll bite.

derrivitive work frmo your parents for a physical body. origional work form god for the spirit. the soul = body + flesh.

so what are we saying? using old works with a new operating system? sounds like taking that old tell and putting linux on it. i haven't crashed in a while, what about yourself?

Re:Proprietary, yes...

[simcop2387]

so SCO has been causing problems by corrupting the original soul and then claiming all derivative souls from the begining of time? i only hope they don't begin to try to claim ownership and charge a licesnse fee or they come and cease your use of their soul

Same problem - this does not work with 2.6.1

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Same problem - this does not work with 2.6.1

[0xB00F]

From my syslog:

Jan 29 22:18:06 [kernel] nvidia: no version magic, tainting kernel.
Jan 29 22:18:06 [kernel] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel.
Jan 29 22:18:06 [kernel] 0: nvidia: loading NVIDIA Linux x86 nvidia.o Kernel Module 1.0-4496 Wed Jul 16 19:03:09 PDT 2003
Jan 29 22:18:07 [kernel] agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.

No problems here, I am using gentoo with kernel 2.6.1 with nvidia-kernel-1.0.4496-r3 (comes with the minion.de patches). My mobo is a Via P4M266.

It's probably in your kernel config. Why are you using spinlocks? Are you on an SMP machine? If you are, it is probably the fault of the driver not playing nice with your SMP setup and in that case, you're probably out of luck. You could of course try using a non-SMP kernel.

Just to stay on topic, I can't seem to find the need to upgrade my drivers since they are working fine.

Re:Same problem - this does not work with 2.6.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for your reply..

A quick check of my config confirms that spinlocks and SMP are both off. I had to do a bit of research on a couple of the new confusing config options (like CONFIG_BROKEN_ON_SMP !!). They are in the config file but do not seem to be in xconfig.

I changed my main AGP support from module to built-in and am going to give it another go.

tool>cd linux-2.6.1
tool>grep -i spin .config
# CONFIG_DEBUG_SPINLOCK_SLEEP is not set
tool>grep -i smp .config
CONFIG_BROKEN_ON_SMP=y
# CONFIG_X86_BIGSMP is not set
# CONFIG_SMP is not set
CONFIG_X86_FIND_SMP_CONFIG=y

Anyone know if the AMD64 ones also work?

[Dimensio]

I'm about to assemble a new machine with an Athlon 64 CPU. I know that I could use the 32-bit drivers and have them work, but I'd rather go with the ones designed specifically for my CPU -- unless someone has compared them and found them either identical or nearly so.

Re:Anyone know if the AMD64 ones also work?

[Anonymous Coward]

32 bit apps like OpenOffice.org will show up on the X Desktop with the nvidia driver on 64 bit Linux.

But The nvidia driver for 64 bit Linux supports only 64 bit apps, if you want to use the nvidia OpenGL implementation.

So games like NWN on 64 Bit can only use mesa.

Well, if you had some games compiled to 64 bit, though... ;-)

Re:Anyone know if the AMD64 ones also work?

[putzin]

I could be wrong, but I believe that if you are running a 64 bit compiled kernel, you _can't_ use the 32bit drivers. While the CPU would support running 32bit applications, the kernel would be running in 64 bit mode, and you won't be able to load the driver. If you're running a normal distro (32 bit), then yeah, you could use the driver. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong though, as I'd love to hear that. Then I could load the ATI driver into FC1 for X86_64.

Re:Anyone know if the AMD64 ones also work?

[Dimensio]

Looks like I can't play 32bit games with the 64bit drivers, either. Apparently NVidia is working on that, so until then I'll stick with the 32bit drivers and a 32bit kernel.

Ahwell. I hear that the performance boost between 32-bit optimized and 64-bit optimized isn't that great anyway thanks in part to the Athlon 64's excellent handling of 32-bit data.

Re:Anyone know if the AMD64 ones also work?

[Linegod]

Just use the AMD64 NVidia drivers: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_amd64_1 .0-5332.html

.

Patents

[DreadSpoon]

Don't forget patents. NVidia can't release code for things like S3TC and other patented algorithms, but several games/apps require these to work properly.

Sure, one could blame the game developers for requiring patented code, but when you get to the people who want to just use their computers (like me), it all comes down to "does the damn thing work or not?"

On a completely different note, it's a bit sad how (some) kernel developers want to purposefully hard for binary only drivers. Even if drivers have source available, that's *still* a pain for users. What happens when the API changes? (Like it manages to do even in stable series.) Sure, the vendor GPL'd the driver, the driver is probably in some future kernel version the user doesn't have, and the driver on the disk/CD that came with the hardware doesn't work with the user's kernel. Upgrading kernels can be a nightmare (especially when you end up with an update that breaks something which previously worked; also a bit too common).

API and ABI compatibility has many more benefits than just allowing proprietary drivers. Too many developers don't seem to see them tho. :(

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

"On a completely different note, it's a bit sad how (some) kernel developers want to purposefully hard for binary only drivers. Even if drivers have source available, that's *still* a pain for users. What happens when the API changes? (Like it manages to do even in stable series.) Sure, the vendor GPL'd the driver, the driver is probably in some future kernel version the user doesn't have, and the driver on the disk/CD that came with the hardware doesn't work with the user's kernel. Upgrading kernels can be a nightmare (especially when you end up with an update that breaks something which previously worked; also a bit too common)."

All the more reason for the average user to stick with Windows.

Reality check

[ColonelPanic]

In today's world of video drivers for Linux, I'll take a binary driver with superb documentation over open-source with little or none.

I'd prefer open source with good docs, of course. I'd also like a pony.

Re:Reality check

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you don't run linux on a powerpc or alpha or sparc. Good for you.

Re:Reality check

[Anonymous Coward]

No one does. No one that does any real work, anyway.

Re:Reality check

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, Nvidia cards don't even work in Sparc or Alpha machines.

Re:Reality check

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? How can a video card tell what kind of CPU(s) is at the end of the bus?

Obsolete?

[autechre]

I would say a very long time. Until last year, I was using a TNT with the unified NVidia drivers, and I only switched because I managed to pick up a TNT2 for $10 or $20 (the TNT 1 was Asus's excellent model, but it wasn't good at doing 1600 x 1200).

If they're supporting a card that old, I don't think you're going to have to worry anytime soon. I'm impressed that they're supporting their entire post-Riva lineup with a single driver.

Personally, the Free drivers never worked for me; X just looked mangled. I installed NVidia's binary driver by following the directions (gasp!) and everything Just Worked, and has continued to Just Work. Recently, I used the patches from minion.de to upgrade to Linux 2.6, and yet again it's working fine. I've never heard of the console corruption or X locking problems until reading the comments on this article.

The monolithic installer certainly does make things easier. You don't have to separately install the GL libraries and the kernel module anymore. It's just one file for whatever post-Riva card you have.

I've been able to run OpenGL demos, and the power in my area is less stable than X11 (out when I left for work this morning).

Am I a big proponent of Free as in libre? Yes, certainly. But NVidia released good software which works with the hardware I had already. Same reason I still use my MP3 discman; I don't know of a company that has an Ogg-compatible CD-ROM player (my music collection is too big to constantly fiddle with hardware players, sorry). Broadcast radio in Baltimore sucks and I need music. I prefer the Free alternative when it's practical, but sometimes it's not. You definitely find that out working for a physical plant (specialized software needs).

Lousy IDE performance after 2.4 - 2.6

[Anonymous Coward]

My IDE performance (hdparm -t) dropped from 40+ MB/sec to 28 MB/sec after moving to 2.6 with this proprietary POS nForce2.

A lot of people have had this problem.

Applying this latest patch did not help.

Any suggestions?

Re:Lousy IDE performance after 2.4 - 2.6

[Anonymous Coward]

Any suggestions?

DON'T BUY a graphic card with propietary software.

You can buy a graphic card with open source software but propietary hardware-firmware on chip.

Re:Lousy IDE performance after 2.4 - 2.6

[sik0fewl]

First off, this is a display driver that was just released, not the nForce drivers.

Secondly, I moved to 2.6.1 a few weeks ago and my hard drive speeds are fine:

$ hdparm -tT /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 792 MB in 2.07 seconds = 382.30 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 130 MB in 3.07 seconds = 42.38 MB/sec

Here's my hdparm settings. Perhaps yours got messed up somehow?

I'm not sure what they all mean, but I'll past them all anyway. I think the first four are the ones you want to take a look at:

$ hdparm -abcdkMmnQru /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
HDIO_GET_QDMA failed: Invalid argument
keepsettings = 0 (off)
nowerr = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
busstate = 1 (on)
acoustic = 0 (128=quiet ... 254=fast)

Re:Lousy IDE performance after 2.4 - 2.6

[Anonymous Coward]

using_dma = 1 (on)

HDIO_GET_QDMA failed: Invalid argument

That looks like it. Check (and change) the DMA options for your chipset and recompile the kernel.

Cheers

Simon

Unlikely.

[autechre]

Red Hat's CEO seems to think that Linux isn't for the desktop, so I doubt they'll be making a big investment in anything related to the higher end of consumer video cards.

Re:Unlikely.

[mattdm]

Like I said, we're screwed.

Sign the PPC Petition!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just discovered the nVidia PPC-Linux drivers petition. All you Linux/PPC users out there should consider signing it! The language is a little rough, but the message should be clear enough to nVidia.

That's not framebuffer support

[truthsearch]

That doesn't provide framebuffer support. That provides NVidia driver support for XFree86. The 2.6 kernel doesn't seem to have a fully functional framebuffer driver for nvidia cards (I couldn't get it to work either, but it works for me in 2.4). I don't know how to get XFree86 to try to use the framebuffer driver from the kernel, but I've heard there's no performance gain over using NVidia's drivers directly.

Re:That's not framebuffer support

[MS_is_the_best]

I have used the rivafb with kernel 2.5.6x. Unfortunately I forgot the details (and slashdot doesn't remember enough of my comments), but I did some kernel-src hacks for it.

The trick was (not 100% sure), that although the documentation didn't say so, you had to use the unified interface/configuration for framebuffer drivers. Good luck!

Question for the OSS folks...

[swordgeek]

Please understand: This is a serious question.

I have a PC containing an nVidia card, running Linux. Does anyone have any objections if I use these drivers for myself?

Put another way, am I causing any apparent harm by using these drivers, and implicitly supporting nVidia's efforts?

Re:Question for the OSS folks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you have any objections if I baked some pot into my brownies?

Now, would you have any objections if I baked some pot into those brownies I sold at the bake sale last week?

Big difference. In one case, you really want to know what the ingredients were. :-P

Re:Question for the OSS folks...

[twistedcubic]

Here's a question for you: do you need to use the nvidia driver? If so, why?

Re:Question for the OSS folks...

[swordgeek]

I'm not sure. This will be my first non-headless (headful?!) Linux box. What alternatives do I have, and what are the tradeoffs?

Re:Question for the OSS folks...

[twistedcubic]

Use the "nv" driver that comes with X (NVidia's driver is called "nvidia"). You might as well, since you won't have to do anything special to get it going (except writing "nv" in your XF86Config file). If it doeesn't work for you (I think it may not do the extremely high resolutions) then install NVidia's drivers, and pray that they're bug free (they weren't when I tried).

Re:Question for the OSS folks...

[sloanster]

I'm sorry, I don't understand your meaning. nvidia makes great video cards, and provides well written, up-to-date linux drivers.

Exactly what is your point?

Re:Question for the OSS folks...

[jaxdahl]

Do you mean the binary drivers? Some people, such as Linus have issues with using binary-only drivers with the kernel as this 'taints' the GPL kernel. Nvidia is not releasing the source b/c this would make it extremely easy to cheat in games, ie, turn on wireframe mode, etc.

Parent is absurd

[phoxix]

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

Re:Parent is absurd

[onyxruby]

Couple of things here. First, I have been playing off and on with Linux since Red Hat 6.2, I have not however been using it consistently since then. My skill with Linux is rudimentary, I don't claim otherwise. What I do know is that I went through several nic's trying to get one that was stable, hawking, linksys, dlink and finally settled on netgear. Could it be be kernel error? Possible, again I am by no means a skilled user of Linux.

I am in the learning stages, and this was what I encountered. I am by no means anti-linux, if anything I am beginning to become anti-mandrake. I also ran into problems where if certain options were selected during install, there was no way to go back or cancel. Selecting advanced networking does this as I recall. I have used Mandrake 9.0 before this and didn't have as many problems.

I do generaly try looking for hardware compatibility when buying hardware, but no one ever seems to mention Linux compatible, even when I know they are. For example I recently tried looing for an 802.11 pcmcia cards with Linux compatibility. Most hardware manufacture sites claim only ms or ms + apple compatibility, even when groups over at google shows some of these cards working just fine - dependant on the chipset though.

Re:Parent is absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

First, I have been playing off and on with Linux since Red Hat 6.2

6.2 eh, what's that IP address again?

Re:Parent is absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Red Hat 6.2?!?!?! You must be a billion years old like those people who still use Windows 98.

Re:Parent is absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean... Redhat eh, what's the IP address again?

Same with Mandrake.

Either use a real distro such as Slackware or use a real UNIX system such as FreeBSD or OpenBSD.

Re: good sanction to Nvidia

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe can put a sanction to NVidia because of his monopoly or because he doesn't publish the API's specifications of the graphics cards (I/O of registers, commands and data) or because he sells all-propietary cards without responsibility of crashes or because of false publication to the people and to the resellers.

open4free

one down, two to go

[sc00p18]

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.

Re:one down, two to go

[MicroBerto]

lirc support for NVidia (???) or for 2.6? lirc is working fine in my 2.6.2pre setup right now. Have it hooked up to XMMS (and soon mythtv) and i can't live without it now.

BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if the could update for the BeOS version ...

Re:BeOS

[McCall]

NVIDIA never wrote the BeOS drivers anyway. They released some, although I beleive not all, specifications to Be, Inc. engineers who wrote the first driver, then some dedicated ex-Be engineers updated them using details from the XFree86 driver.

http://www.bebits.com/app/1622

There is a driver based off of the Matrox open source driver for in the OpenBeOS CVS that supports more cards. I haven't used this myself, but you might have more luck with your specific chipset.

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/be-hold/BeOS/NVdri ve r/

Good luck!

Andrew McCall

Count me

[truthsearch]

Waiting for this driver was one reason I haven't yet upgraded. The patch didn't work for me either. But the other big problem I've had is getting apps to use the new sound API. Almost everything seems to still be written with the older API, and for some reason I can't get the kernel option for the new driver to expose the old compatible API to work. Maybe I just need to try the latest kernel version...

Re:Count me

[Anonymous Coward]

modprobe snd-pcm-oss
modprobe snd-mixer-oss

You are being doubly redundant, twice over.

[dwalsh]

"Allah or whatever."

Allah means "the God".

"I assume that since you believe to have a soul, you also believe in some form of God."

Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups, or in this case the grandmother on the fathers side of ignoring religions of millions of people in Asia.

Re:You are being doubly redundant, twice over.

[Anonymous Coward]

the grandmother on the fathers side of ignoring religions of millions of people in Asia.

Which religions are you referring to?

Buddhism? Nope, maybe the Westernised intellectual Buddhism you hear about doesn't believe in gods, but the way the Buddhas are worshipped in the east makes it quite plain that to your average Buddhist, a Buddha == a god.

Shinto? Nope, they believe in plenty of gods.

Some sort of animism? Well... except that practically every animist alive today also subscribes to Buddhism, or Hinduism, or Shinto, or even Christianity, as well as their animism.

So what religion? I don't know much about Confuciamism or Tao, so maybe you meant one of those...?

Re:You are being doubly redundant, twice over.

[Anonymous Coward]

Religion is a virus.

Re:You are being doubly redundant, twice over.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventhough this is way OT now, let me correct a thing or two:

Buddhism, whereever it is placed in the world, are not the believe in any Gods, but only that you can become a God-like being (but never refered as a God, more like a really enlighten person, a master, creating a new mantra) when you reach Nirvana. Some Asian cultures believe in Gods, simply because of their local _traditions_. But many "real" buddists in Tibet and India really dislikes those traditions, as they are not seen as a path of enlightenment, but then again, its every people's own choice of reaching Nirvana. The western buddism as you are refering to, comes from typically three sources: Zen (US), Tibet (Europe) and India (where Buddha came from originally). And again, Buddism is _NOT_ a religion, it is a believe (there is a difference), even divided in many mantras.

Re:You are being doubly redundant, twice over.

[Anonymous Coward]

since you're nitpicking, let's put it straight: a god != God

next (partly redundant, I know):

1. there are no gods in buddhism - just various levels of enlightment.
   
   
2. shinto has gods (again, mark the distinction, it's NOT monotheistic, so no God), spirits and whatnot. whom would one owe one's soul to?
   
   
3. animism - it's 'spirits' there. no gods, no God.
   
   
4. hinduism - you have gods there, allright - but you'd be in trouble assigning the 'soul responsability' to one. especially since there's not one supreme god - rather three of them ;-)
   
   
5. confucianism is not a religion
   
   
6. tao has no gods. only the tao.
   
   
7. you left out judaism, whose God would obviously own copyrights and all on you, your soul and the kitchen sink.
   

then again, nevermind that, it's only /. here

Re:You are being doubly redundant, twice over.

[UserGoogol]

Some Buddhists believe in gods. Carryover from Hinduism, ya know. But they're deemed to be not very enlightened or important.

Re:Stuck in nvidia heck

[Anonymous Coward]

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!).

That's not an nforce problem. A generic GeForce 440SE will do the same thing and I never could get the card to reset without a reboot.

OTOH at least with Linux we get to choose when we wish to reboot. I ain't complaining.

Not self-righteous, but rigorous

[Gothmolly]

Linux has a coherent design philosophy, which you must understand before attempting to change it. One cannot randomly load modules built vs. different kernels, and you can't load proprietary modules w/o tainting the kernel, and it tells you as such. You sound like the type of complains about those RIAA "whiners" as you download gigs of MP3s.

Re:Not self-righteous, but rigorous

[77Punker]

Actually, the NVidia shell script installer will build its own kernel modules if it can't download binaries for your version. It's really great.

INSTABILITY

[kkonrad]

Using nvidia drivers my system (duron 1300, mb kt133a, geforce 2 mx 200) has no more than 7-9 days of utime, then it hangs. Im now using the "nv" driver that comes with xfree, without opengl support, because to me stability is more important than opengl. Am i the only one with hang problems?

Re:INSTABILITY

[sloanster]

I have nvidia cards and their 3D accelerated drivers in every linux workstation I use.

I can't remember any of them ever crashing with the nvidia cards. I have seen kernel messages from time to time about sleeping in illegal context etc, but no crash. (On the other hand, I see severe instability with the ATI cards I've tried, such that I just turn off DRI if using an ATI card, so that the machine will reliably stay up)

My main desktop at work has a riva tnt2, and it's mainly mozilla and vnc all day every day, with 3D screensavers when I'm away, while my home workstation has a geforce 2, and that's where I do a lot of q3a, ut2003, movies & music, and of course 3D screensavers when I'm away.

Uptimes on both boxes are basically as long as I feel like waiting before upgrading the kernel, usually 60-90 days at a stretch, but bottom line is they reboot when I reboot them, period.

One thing I tend to do is use intel chipsets and CPUs, that might be a factor. Also, I use in-kernel agp, rather than nvidia agp. The nvidia readme mentions several known issues with certain hardware or BIOS settings, be sure and double check those.

fuzzy math

[uberjoe]

Nvidia drivers make the center of my screen fuzzy, (3d is fab though) I'm wondering if they are worth it, if I have to move all of my small text to the periphery of the screen to be able to read it.

Re:fuzzy math

[twistedcubic]

Yeah, I used the nvidia driver for a few months, and recently switched back to the nv driver. Text has much better clarity with the nv driver. Also, I have to disable CTL-ALT-Fn with the nvidia driver because it screwed up everything. I guess there's no point in using the nvidia driver unless you're playing some of those "FPS" games people talk about. Video playback is perfect with the nv driver, and so are all the other features of X. I really don't know why I switched to nvidia in the first place.

Re:fuzzy math

[Anonymous Coward]

Fireman_sam posting as AC (at work)

Could it be that the 2D is driving your monitor at a higher refresh rate than the 3D. At home I have a "decent" monitor that can do up to 120 Vertical, but if I run it above 80, the middle of the screen begins to blur, at 120 the whole screen is blurred.

Try dropping your vertical refresh down a bit and see what happens.

Hmm...

[Greyfox]

Would a similar copyright question come up if you write a genetic algorithm to evolve a piece of code? Technically you didn't write the code that evolved...

That'll be an interesting problem once Gentic Programming gets to be a bigger part of the industry. But I digress...

mod parent down

[fluxrad]

Karma whoring at it's laziest.

Re:mod parent down

[elviscious]

Bah, I have karma to burn, mod down all you want.

I do get a laugh out of the dumbass above that posted anonymously though... at least you earn some points for honesty

Re:mod parent down

[Abjifyicious]

This is slightly off-topic, but could someone please enlighten me as to what's wrong with so-called "karma whoring"? I'm sure I must be missing something here, but as far as I can figure out, a Karma Whore is someone who posts helpful, informative comments. Why should they be modded down for that?

Re:mod parent down

[leifm]

Because they're usually posting information that is available if you RTFA.

Re:mod parent down

[JanneM]

On the third hand, a lot of people dive directly into the comments and really do find short summaries like that very useful. And people don't skip the article just because they're lazy either; you might want to go directly to the comments on this story to see comments from people actually trying the drivers, for example, rather than read a pre-chewed press release that will not really tell you how well it actually works.

So no, I don't think most karma-whoring is a bad thing either.

Re:mod parent down

[Crazy Eight]

Because they're usually posting information that is available if you RTFA.

Which means the mods aren't RTFA-ing if "whoring" "works".

Great! But where's NPTL!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now my video card won't be the bottle neck to moving to 2.6.0. Instead, I have no idea how to get NPTL (as shipped in Redhat 9, and used by some threaded apps I've built) working on 2.6.0.

Re:Great! But where's NPTL!?!?

[sloanster]

2.6 kernel includes nptl - redhat's nptl is merelay a backport of what's in the 2.6 kernel

OT? WTF?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I agree with the guy, I can imagine someone who didn't could think that he was trolling. So, I could justify "Flamebait" (but not "Overrated", because that's for bitch mods), but "Offtopic"? How the fuck is a post about NVidia binary driver modules offtopic in a discussion about NVidia binary driver modules?

Grow a pair, mods, or just ignore some of the stuff you don't like.

Odd...

[Dimensio]

I don't have this problem. I can exit X gracefully and still do anything that I want, including restarting X. Occasionally I have a problem where the console doesn't show anything that I type (I get the bash prompt, any stdout output, but nothing that I type -- including carriage returns -- show up on screen), but this is rare, may have a different cause, does not carry over to other virtual terminals and goes away if I merely log out of the session. Perhaps I'm not enabling a certain feature that leads to this problem?

Another set of drivers to crash my computer!

[Anonymous Coward]

woohoo!

To all the Open Source Whiners

[Adnans]

The Linux drivers NVIDIA released are actually newer than the Windows 2000/XP ones! I call that pretty darn good support!
I'm all for Open Source, but there are probably far too few 3D/OpenGL engineers who have the time to work on and release quality Open Source 3D/OpenGL drivers. NVIDIA has practically their whole driver engineering team working for us. I consider the closed part just an extended piece of 'firmware' for the (closed source) video hardware. The 'loader' and glue code are open source.

It would take a couple of man years to produce quality drivers that even come close to what we have now, and by that time the current crop of 3D hardware cards will be thrice obsoleted (hi Matrox!)

Better to spend our resources improving other things (like GNOME, D-BUS, whatnot) than to duplicate driver magic, just for the sake of being open source.

Now, if you're a PowerPC user, I take everything I said back *grin*

-adnans

Re:To all the Open Source Whiners

[latroM]

NVIDIA doesn't support GNU/Linux. They only use community as a market. Does 3com support windows by giving away binary drivers?

Re:To all the Open Source Whiners

[Anonymous Coward]

The more software for linux the better, free or otherwise!.

Re:To all the Open Source Whiners

[kelnos]

oh please. if you think _any_ company supports linux for reasons other than that they think it will make them money, you are sadly deluded.

Re:To all the Open Source Whiners

[nathanh]

Better to spend our resources improving other things (like GNOME, D-BUS, whatnot) than to duplicate driver magic, just for the sake of being open source.

Yeah. While we're at it, why are we wasting our time with this "free" Linux kernel. I mean, it's not really free unless your time is worth nothing, right? We should just focus on free applications running on Windows XP. That's already got a decent set of drivers and a good kernel.

I think you have missed the point.

Re:To all the Open Source Whiners

[Adnans]

While we're at it, why are we wasting our time with this "free" Linux kernel.

Because it actually makes sense (not that coding Linux is wasting time)? We've been developing Linux for almost 13 years now. It's mature! It works! It rocks! I dare you, find a group of skilled engineers who will work for free on OpenGL/3D Linux hardware drivers. Hint: the biggest concentration are probably working at TungstenGraphics and I don't think they work for free either.

-adnans

Re:To all the Open Source Whiners

[nathanh]

While we're at it, why are we wasting our time with this "free" Linux kernel.

Because it actually makes sense (not that coding Linux is wasting time)?

You merks really have trouble with sarcasm.

We've been developing Linux for almost 13 years now. It's mature! It works! It rocks!

Do you think XFree86 and Mesa were written last week? They're very old projects. They're very mature. The DRI is a big piece but it's by no means the bulk of the graphics subsystem on your Linux-based desktop.

I dare you, find a group of skilled engineers who will work for free on OpenGL/3D Linux hardware drivers. Hint: the biggest concentration are probably working at TungstenGraphics [tungstengraphics.com] and I don't think they work for free either.

I don't need the hint. I know full well the history of the DRI.

The same argument could be said for kernels. It's not a convincing argument.

Nvidia vs the competition

[sloanster]

Good to see that nvidia is still working hard for my money. I'm glad to keep paying them.

From my experience with different video cards and 3D FPS in linux, nvidia is head and shoulders above the rest, and they have been very responsive to the community.

Is nvidia perfect? well, no, they could do a better job of playing nice with the vendors package management schemes, but their cards and drivers are rock solid and give the best bang for the buck.

Re:Nvidia vs the competition

[pleasetryanotherchoi]

Good to see that nvidia is still working hard for my money. I'm glad to keep paying them.

I second that. I am on my third Nvidia card (GeForce MX/400) having retired the first two simply because they were obsolete (though working fine) and a new one is so cheap.

I can't speak for other card manufacturers (because I don't use them. Note to companies building crappy products.) but Nvidia is always releasing new drivers and/or software packages which actually extend the capabilities of their older cards. A perfect example is the Riva TNT/TNT2, an acceptable unit that gained greatly in capabilities with just a few mouseclicks at the Nvidia site.

And after experiencing crappy refresh rates in KDE under Fedora Core 1, a quick visit for an updated linux driver solved the problem nice and painlessly. It just doesn't get better than that.

Re:Nvidia vs the competition

[The_Dougster]

From my experience with different video cards and 3D FPS in linux, nvidia is head and shoulders above the rest, and they have been very responsive to the community.

I agree. Ever since I yanked out my Voodoo Banshee and plopped in my first Geforce2MX I've been very pleased not only with the performance but also with the stability. Sometimes it takes a bit of tinkering to find the magic kernel and XF86Config recipes, but once you do you are pretty much golden.

NVidia's hardware support for linux is a lot better than 99% of the other hardware manufacturers out there (compare with say Lucent). NVidia has made a Linux box into one heck of a powerfull OpenGL development platform, a poor-man's SGI workstation if you will.

Of course I spend all my time playing Neverwinter Nights online now because of it :-)

Why is this really news?

[mindstrm]

The NVIDIA drivers worked fine in 2.6 before with a simple patch (changing the location of an include or two).

This barely even requied work from nvidia... just an ifdef or two.

I was using nvidia's drivers on 2.6 weeks ago.

Re:Why is this really news?

[DeathPenguin]

The article was probably submitted by someone who didn't know about the patch (minion.de). And that's not uncommon, a lot of people were waiting for *official* support or just didn't scour the web for the Minion patches, like this guy, perhaps.

Turn off your frame buffer

[brunes69]

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.

Re:Stuck in nvidia heck

[AKnightCowboy]

That's not an nforce problem. A generic GeForce 440SE will do the same thing and I never could get the card to reset without a reboot.

Is this a big issue? I've never encountered this problem with any of my machines so far. I can exit X and go back in, etc. No problem.

Huh?

[aonaran]

I've been using 2.6 with and Nvidia card and Nvidia GLX drivers for a while now. (since 2.6test10)

I haven't been able to get framebuffer working though. X and OpenGL under X worked like a charm all along. Now someone else posted that there was a 3rd party patch, so I'm assuming that's how Gentoo gets it to work, but fact remains Nvidia cards have worked with 2.6 for a while now.

Though if this somehow fixes framebuffer (somehow I don't think that's what's wrong) I'll be a wee bit happier. In reality though, I could care less whether framebuffer worked as long as X works ok.

kernel

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any hope that we will see this patches integrated in the kernel, so that I don't need to turn off X, after I do `make modules_install`

Speaking of the 2.6 Kernel...

[Bobulusman]

Now that NVIDIA display drivers are there for 2.6, there's only one thing holding me back. I've got a Nforce2 motherboard. Somewhere around 2.4.23 (or was it 2.4.22?) support was added to the kernel for my onboard 3com card.

I know that the initial 2.6 didn't have this support, and I want to know if it's been added yet or not. I know I can go to kernel.org and see the changelog for the latest version of 2.6, but where can I get a changelog of ALL the changes since 2.6 started?

Re:Speaking of the 2.6 Kernel...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you talking about the 3com 3CSOHO100B-TX the PCI id was added to the tulip driver in 2.4.23 and seems to have made it into 2.6.0-test4:

http://linuxtoday.com/developer/2003082300626NWK ND V

OMG

[fluxrad]

funniest...post...evar!

I'd rather pursue software freedom.

[jbn-o]

To NVidia's credit, they seem to be somewhat serious about supporting Linux in a somewhat timely manner.

I'm reminded of the following FSF essay when I read your popularity-based definition of "support":

At a trade show in late 1998, dedicated to the operating system often referred to as `` Linux'', the featured speaker was an executive from a prominent software company. He was probably invited on account of his company's decision to ``support'' that system. Unfortunately, their form of ``support'' consists of releasing non-free software that works with the system--in other words, using our community as a market but not contributing to it.

This sort of allusion won't be a great incentive for other hardware vendors to support Linux at all, they'll just think "whatever we do to be nice to them, those Linux folks will always have something to complain about".

No they won't, they'll recognize that we're willing to stand up for ourselves and not capitulate to someone offering the latest temptation away from freedom. You don't bargain with someone by giving them everything they want on their terms. Since when is it our job to welcome any proprietor that comes down the block? When nVidia is willing to deal with me in terms of software freedom, I'll be happy to recommend their hardware. I'm sure lots of other free software users would too. We can have popularity too, but it's better to have popularity on the basis of software freedom.

Freedom-talk won't dissuade nVidia or any other proprietor. Software proprietors want your money and they want to control how you can use your computer. As long as you are willing to surrender these things you will be quite popular with them.

When Linux has 80% marketshare and is a true force to be reckoned with, then perhaps the community will be able to afford sarcasm and get away with it, but in the meantime, there must be other, more constructive ways to entice vendors to embrace open-source.

This is the real problem--you have hit the nail on the head here: you are chasing mere popularity. The GNU system was started in the pursuit of freedom. When you placate proprietors you might become more popular but you will never get freedom.

I could not care less if nVidia "embrace[s] open-source" because I want software freedom, something the open source movement doesn't value. Reading the next few paragraphs of that same FSF essay is instructive.

He said, ``There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it `internal' open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service.'' (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.)

People in the audience afterward told me, ``He just doesn't get the point.'' But is that so? Which point did he not get?

He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company.

The point that he missed is the point that ``open source'' was designed not to raise: the point that users deserve freedom.

nVidia offers less than you recognize.

[jbn-o]

Your comment is hardly insightful. There was plenty of free software available (including support for high-end video cards) before nVidia distributed their non-free software. There will be plenty if they leave. We owe nVidia nothing and we should reject their offer to push us into dependency.

Re:nVidia offers less than you recognize.

[Anonymous Coward]

The more software for linux the better, free or otherwise.

Re:nVidia offers less than you recognize.

[sloanster]

Dude, why couch your licensing concerns in such apocalyptic fashion? nvidia makes great cards, and they supply good, solid, up to date linux drivers.

If you don't want nvidia, nobody's twisting your arm - find an old voodoo 3, or use an onboard intel i8x0 video chipset, which are supported in hardware accelerated 3D mode by linux out of the box.

As for me, it is clear that nvidia is working hard for my business and they have earned it - open source or not, they make good stuff and they support Linux, and that's the bottom line for me.

Re:nVidia offers less than you recognize.

[mattACK]

My point exactly. Thank you.

Re:nVidia offers less than you recognize.

[Anonymous Coward]

More proprietary software isn't "better", no matter which platform it requires.

You have the wrong kernel header files

[spitzak]

First: to fix it you have to download the correct kernel source *from Mandrake*. I will have to locate the URL for this, I found it in a web search looking for help in getting the driver to work. Try googling for "Nvidea mandrake 9.2 kernel source"

The message is not from Mandrake, but from the kernel. And I think it is misleading.

I have Mandrake 9.2 and I ran into the same problem. The 9.2 install did not come with the source or header files for the Kernel.

If you download the Nvidea compile & install shell script, it complains about the missing ones. I then downloaded what appeared to be the correct version from kernel.org and put the header files in. The Nvidea driver then compiled but the installer complained that it failed. It said to look in some log file, that file contained module load complaining about a lot of missing symbols, and then adding the misleading (and IMHO somewhat nasty) message about this not being a GPL component. I think it always adds this when there are missing symbols.

I wasted a good deal of time actually compiling the kernel source I downloaded. I discovered the the Nvidea driver works perfectly with that, but I lost a lot of Mandrake stuff, in particular Superdrive, and my network interface refused to work.

Then further searches on the web revealed lots of people who figured this out and said where to download the correct kernel source. I got that, and simply stuck the header files in the correct /usr/src/linux location (did not compile the kernel at all) and this time the nvidea driver compiled and installed flawlessly.

Re:You have the wrong kernel header files

[spitzak]

Just wanted to say that in my opinion this is a PITA. Can somebody explain why apparently equal kernel version numbers have different header files? Did Mandrake do this?

Also here is the URL for getting the correct Kernel source:

ftp://mirror.sit.wisc.edu/mirrors/linux/distribu ti ons/mandrake/9.2/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/kernel-source- 2.4.22-10mdk.i586.rpm

Re:You have the wrong kernel header files

[onyxruby]

Thanks

Re:Not jut games

[DarkMan]

If your doing 3D visulisation of data, that can be a lot of polygons.

I have tools that are available for both windows, and Linux.

If I load a protein molecule into them, Windows burps a little, and then smoothes out.

Linux doens't burp at all, and give a consistant 0.001 fps, if using software renderes.

Hell, I've seen some people consider a GeForce FX 5700 just to get something that will allow them to rotate big [0] molecules in nearly real time.

Who said it was games? Some people use this stuff for work. When you pay through the nose for enough CPU to work out the gemoetries in near real time, it bites a lot of ass that your display sub system can't keep up.

[0] Ok, obscenly big - something like 30 000 amino acids, so 350 000 atoms, each being a sphere. A lot of vertices.

I don't have and NVIDIA card but

[niko9]

I am going to download the drivers anyways.

Why? I'm sure they keep count of the linux driver downloads. If they see a boost in the numbers, maybe we will get quicker updates.

I have an ATI card, but that won't stop me from buying an NVIDIA card in the future if they provide some serious 3d support ala Windows.

Does this sound dumb? I know it's fudging the numbers, but with computers and software there is always that chicken and egg problem we have seen so many times before.

Discuss.

--

Microsoft won't let them

[Anonymous Coward]

NVidia won't Open Source their drivers because their deal with Microsoft won't allow it.

Microsoft knows they can't stop Linux, so they intend to control it instead. But that doesn't mean controlling all of Linux, only the distribution(s) used by the majority of corporate users, as one step toward Microsoft control of Internet protocols.

And since they can't control Open Source code, the only way for Microsoft to control Linux users is to make them dependent on closed source and proprietary components. Then, when the time is right, a new version of those components will only work with Microsoft's own distribution of Linux.

This strategy almost certainly involves NVidia and ATI. Other possible candidates, in my opinion, are Crossover Office, and the proprietary edition of Qt.

Note the timing of NVidia's and ATI's actions. First, Microsoft partnered with NVidia for the XBox, then NVidia hired the developers of the Open Source Linux NVidia drivers, stopped their work on those drivers, and released closed source drivers. Next, Microsoft partnered with ATI for the XBox, and ATI cut back on their support for Open Source Linux drivers, and released closed source drivers.

The way to thwart Microsoft's strategy is to never compromise on matters of freedom. That doesn't mean that your must avoid all propriatary software, for example, closed source end user applications are probably fine in most cases. But it does mean that all of your drivers and middleware should be under an Open Source license.

Support organizations that support us.

[jbn-o]

NVIDIA is a 3D hardware company - they make their money by selling cards to run the latest whizz-bang games.

So does ATI but ATI apparently works with the free software community. Unlike nVidia, ATI chose to put themselves in a position where they could provide real support to the free software community; you can find drivers for some very impressive ATI cards in XFree86. Other manufacturers work with the free software community too by shipping specs or software we can use. I'd much rather buy from them and recommend that others buy from them.

NVIDIA could easily give up on Linux.

Considering that I don't think they're actually helping me at all right now, I won't miss them if they take their non-free software away. If they delivered free software drivers, this whole conversation would change. I'd not only thank them for supporting our community but I'd buy nVidia hardware and I would recommend nVidia hardware to my friends and clients. And then if nVidia stopped supporting the hardware I wouldn't be left with software I couldn't inspect or improve. I'd be left with software I could improve either by doing the work myself or hiring someone to do it for me. If my particular nVidia card was popular, there's a good chance someone else will improve the software and I could run their improved version if it was still free software.

Re:Support organizations that support us.

[be-fan]

So does ATI but ATI apparently works with the free software community.
---
No they don't. With ATI, Linux users are second-class citizens. They don't offer open specs for their latest cards --- only binary drivers. And those are much lower in quality than their Windows ones. NVIDIA consistently has binary drivers that are as good as their Windows ones, and delivers them within weeks of their Windows releases. Couple that with the fact that an OSS release of their drivers would mean giving a competitive advantage to ATI (OpenGL drivers aren't just simple register-bangers like a network driver, they contain a great deal of high-level code implementing the OpenGL API), and I can support their decision to keep their drivers closed.

I won't miss them if they take their non-free software away.
---
You wouldn't, but anyone who actually uses 3D on Linux would. There are no good free OpenGL drivers. Not a single one! They are all half the speed, and missing many of the features. NVIDIA's drivers are the *only* good OpenGL drivers available for Linux, and losing them would be disasterous.

Re:Support organizations that support us.

[Anonymous Coward]

Half-speed is still more than people were paying top dollar for just a couple of years ago. And we don't need NVIDIA's OpenGL implementation--the register-banging to start their pipeline is all we don't know how to do.

Re:Support organizations that support us.

[be-fan]

That's not the point. Nobody wants to pay top dollar today to get what they paid top dollar for a couple of years ago.

And apparently, you do need NVIDIA's OpenGL implementation. Certainly, none of the cards for which there are register-level specs have drivers as good as the native ones!

Re:Support organizations that support us.

[jbn-o]

I have seen 3D OpenGL screensavers on GNU/Linux work really well on an ATI Radeon 9000. XFree86 lists support for this card and I don't believe that depends on proprietary software. 3D on this card with XFree86 appears to me to work quite well. But that still doesn't address the issue of software freedom; you're essentially arguing that it's okay to push freedom aside for some jobs. This means you're prioritizing practical function over freedom.

I agree with you that we must have a system that works well for us, doing all the jobs we want the system to do. But I'm willing to delay gratification until we can do it in freedom.

Re:Support organizations that support us.

[be-fan]

Hah. 3D OpenGL screensavers don't push graphics hardware at all. The open DRI drivers for the Radeon 9000 are far inferior to the ATI Linux binary drivers for the same card, which are inferior still to the ATI Windows binary drivers for the card.

And yes, I am arguing that its okay to push freedom aside for some jobs. First, I don't equate software freedom with personal freedom. I make compromises with personal freedom (the US Constitution is one giant compromise of personal freedom, as is the very concept of government) and I'm willing to make even more compromises with software freedom. But that's beside the point. Using NVIDIA's binary drivers doesn't diminish my software freedom. If they became a hinderance to me, I could switch to something else in the amount of time it took me to buy a new card. I'm not tied to them like I am to a proprietory platform.

I'm a big fan of free software. I use a free platform, and have on numerous occasions changed to code to suit my purposes. Hell, I'm working on something for KDE right now! However, I don't think that all software has to be free. I don't believe that Free Software is about forcing other developers to believe what you believe, but rather, building a free platform yourself. We should welcome donations of Free programs, but not demand them. Most of all, we shouldn't restrict ourselves and our use of our computers just because there is no Free Software that does what we need it to do.

Newer modutils

[anarxia]

2.6 needs new modutils. The package is called module-init-tools and it is in testing. Maybe someone has backported the package for woody. Google for that.

XF86Config allowing TV-out on Nvidia Cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is my XF86Config which allows for cloning a 1024x768 display (for example) onto a TV. Works fine for me but I have not figured out how to allow ctrl-alt-(plus|minus) resolution selection yet.

Get it XF86Config here

Hollar to the chap who originally wrote it sorry misplaced your site URL.

Trashing freedom for popularity is not a win.

[jbn-o]

If you comment to this guy, make sure that you emphasize the need for a Linux port of ForceWare. This is (IMHO) the closest thing to a TiVo competitor for the PC world. Right now, it is Windows-only.

If you're like the current pool of moderators and some of the posters on this thread, perhaps you'll give nVidia your money in the hopes that they'll do the right thing with it. Why not? It's just a small hop from giving your money to become dependent on them. Treating corporations like charities is a sure-fire way to make you their friend.

If it weren't for the GPL and the non-binary rule [...]

In other words, if the preeminent license of the free software community were rewritten to flush all our software freedom down the toilet, we would gain...what? What could possibly be so compelling that we should be willing to trash 20 years of giving all computer users software freedom?

Re:Not jut games

[Anonymous Coward]

When you pay through the nose for enough CPU to work out the gemoetries in near real time

Bah! Real men rotate molecules in their head. *Visualize* the vectors, man!

bad code

[Anonymous Coward]

#include "stdio.h"
Standard headers should be included using < and >.

main()
Constraint violation in C99, bad style in C89.

}
You don't return a value. In C99 there's an implicit 0 in case of main but in C89 this will return an indeterminate value to the system with possibly disasterous results.

So how is this better than the stock kernel?

[TekPolitik]

How is this better than RIVA frame buffer driver in the standard kernel? What benefits will I get from using the NVIDIA driver?

With the 2.4 kernel I couldn't get the NVIDIA driver to work if the kernel was himem enabled - will this work with the 2.6 kernel?

Re:So how is this better than the stock kernel?

[sloanster]

How is this better than RIVA frame buffer driver in the standard kernel? What benefits will I get from using the NVIDIA driver?

You get fast, hardware accelerated 3D - on a server it's really not important, but on your gaming desktop, it's crucial.

because of it's LAME dependency

[sonamchauhan]

The problem with MythTV and Freevo is they require you to install LAME (which encodes the audio stream to MP3). There are patent issues with MP3 encoding.

A MythTV developer recently talked about either making the LAME dependency optional by either using Vorbis, or simply not compressing audio. The latter option is quite feasible - sound is much less of a disk hog than video - only about 500 MB/hour.