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NVidia Releases Linux Drivers Supporting 4K Stacks
Supermathie writes "NVidia has finally released drivers for their chipsets and the 2.6 kernel that support 4K stacks. That means compatability with Fedora Core 2 kernels, people! View the README, visit their driver page, or download the package."
The real story is when they open the source to the drivers.
thisnukes4u.net
The "zealots" just want to control their own computers. That's what Open Source is about. If you have an nVidia video card in your linux system, and you want full functionality, you have to let nVidia control your computer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't know about you guys, but I think having the source code to recompile it manually would help out immensely.
That's funny, I don't.
First, fixing this stack size problem is not a simple re-compile of the same code. Depending on how the driver is written this is certainly a non-trivial task.
Second, even if you had the source that does not mean that you could distribute a fixed version. Open source != Free Software.
Third, they may be closed source drivers but they are miles ahead of the current FOSS drivers. The Zealots can run their "pure" systems and suffer graphics glitches and poor 3d performance. I'd rather just use something that works. If that meant sticking with by old kernel a bit longer then so be it.
they just don't want to fork it over because somehow you may "magically" make the component up yourself out of basement and not have to buy it.
Not you - their competition. ATI has always been plauged by crap drivers. If ATI had a peak into how NVidia does it you can be sure they'd take something away from it. NVidia would lose a competitive advantage. The GPU war is nasty. The competition is killer - they'll take any advantage they can get.
Okay, I'll take a stab at it. The bedrock of capitalism is simply a market system based on private ownership. Now, most people want to extend that into monopolistic control to maximize their own profit in self-serving interest, but at the same time consumers generally tend to want a lot of competitors that can offer substitutes that give them greater value.
But, the fact is that if IBM hadn't "goofed" and created a mostly open system, it's likely that either another more open system would have succeeded even though it had a lot of obvious fault or no system would have succeeded and the information age wouldn't be near the point it is. Why? Because a more open system allows for programmers, both hobbyist and capitalist, to more easily develop software for the system. This barrier to entry would mean less software overall which would directly decrease the demand for computers. At the same time, monopolistic control would keep prices high, fixing the quality sold at a smaller rate than it is today thanks to the vast number of clones.
So, it's unlikely IBM would have a better market share or sell more products. They might, still, be making more profit due to monopolistic pricing. It does seem unlikely for this to be the case, however, when various other architectures would have likely succeeded in IBM's place and relegated IBM computers into dinosaurs like the Amiga (no offense to the Amiga intended).
As for NVidia, there's at least two principle reasons why they might wish their drivers closed. The first is by closing the drivers they have stronger control over rebranding cards at different price points without modifying hardware which might increase sales without hurting sales on the higher priced cards. The second is NVidia has cross-licensed a variety of patents which probably puts them in the position of not having the authority to license said patentable idea under the GPL.
Without number two, number one could be fixed with creative hardware locking mechanisms. The total cost of such hardware locking would be minimal in comparison to the boosted sales of all the likely free porting and driver work done by volunteers on the NVidia driver. The fact is, NVidia is a hardware company so it is in their best interest to commoditize all software for their hardware to be run on. Open sourcing their driver, if possible, would very likely have this effect (it's hard to argue that it could have the reverse effect, at least).
The claim that trade secrets would somehow be revealed by open sourcing their driver is possible, but I would guess is unlikely as the majority of NVidia's actual trade secrets would be in *hardware*. All a driver is supposed to be is a standard interface for the OS, and if there are tasks beyond this in the driver NVidia would almost certainly advantage by sticking it in hardware as well. It's for this reason I assume NVidia's driver license policy is the main fault for them not open sourcing their driver.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
It's not like nobody can do it...
Thank you.
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Yeah, this is why I use the term zealot. I like Linux (anyone bringing up GNU/Linux can bite me. I know the history and respect GNU. It's unweildy), in fact I prefer it. But I call BS on the altruism of the philosophy behind much of the movement.
If you wanna say "here's our stand, and we stick by it", I respect that. If you say "any stand but ours is unholy and wrong", then you are attempting to control and I have no use fer ya.
I wouldn't violate the GPL, as a programmer I respect other coder's work and time. But I also don't buy into the demand that EVERYTHING be GPL's, or whatever license you prefer.
The world ain't black and white kiddies, time to realize the intelligent people have differing opinions most of the time...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Except that place is not hardware drivers - all the pain and suffering getting 3D working on Linux when most hardware is a breeze is proof of that.
Methinks the only real reason you'd want to keep your drivers closed off is because you're artificially handicapping your hardware
Um, no.
0) nVidia might not own all the code they compile into their drivers. The license they have the code under might permit binary distribution, but not source.
1) nVidia's drivers contain large amounts of software that is better than any of their competition. They spent money developing this, and they want to milk the competitive edge it gives them. And that is okay.
2) nVidia has more control this way. The Firefox guys are holding control over their cool icons, because they don't want the cool icons slapped onto broken code; only Mozilla-official builds of Firefox get the cool icons. nVidia might want to be sure that no one runs with broken drivers, then thinks nVidia cards are all junk, when in reality some guy made a few "improvements" that broke things, and distributed the changed version anyway.
3) Other reasons are possible. "the only real reason" my left foot.
Personally, I would much much rather have FOSS drivers. But even more than that, I want drivers that work. I switched from a GeForce 4600 to a Radeon 9600 XT, and even though the Radeon is a much better card, it runs slower under Linux than the older GeForce. It's the drivers. ATI's Linux drivers for the 9600 XT are lame. I actually boot into Windows to play Unreal Tournament 2004, because the performance is so much better under Windows. When I had an nVidia card, my Linux 3D gaming performance was just fine.
If nVidia would make a programmable-shaders card that doesn't double as a space heater, I would probably buy it and replace the Radeon. I know that the Unreal Tournament guys check the server stats, and I want to be "voting" for Linux gaming, so I want them to see me running Linux when the check stats on the servers I have been visiting.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Also, releasing the source would allow the drivers to be compiled on the systems with your gcc optimizations instead of being forced to use binaries, which has nothing to do with whether you're going to modify the source or not. One of the biggest things about my Gentoo box was that you build everything optimized for your hardware, whereas these binaries have to be much more general. Sure, there may not really be a terribly significant difference, but it's just one more reason why it should be open source.
Finally, to get back to your first point (am I going in reverse?) You really can't revise the nv drivers because they're compiled binaries. Nothing is stopping you from modifying them except the little thing that it's not accessible code to modify, since if it was this thread wouldn't have started. As for getting another company's video card, the options are ATi, and Matrox, neither of which are any better in this regard, and in fact ATi is much worse, so while you are right that nothing is preventing me from buying someone else's video card, it's not the point since no one is playing nice with OSS (AFAIK, Matrox might actually be nicer about it all, but they're not really accessible to the public the way the other two companies are,) leaving penguin worshipers with no options. nVidia is the lesser of two evils to be sure, so they get my money (that and the awful ATi driver issues with Windows XP, but that's a different story) for now, but really only because no one is better. Saying nothing is preventing us from going elsewhere really seems to sidestep the actual issue by blaming the users for something we really can't avoid because the best solution is a partial one. Well, anyway, that's just my $0.02
I'm always right and I can prove it, because to the best of my knowledge, I've never been wrong.
"Unfettered, unrestricted capitalism is a fantasy" - only because any time it shows up, regulation follows along behind. (Similar dilution happens with other "pure" implementations of economic theories.)
"only in the last couple of decades"? what about the great big monopolistic empires of the late 19th Century? Standard Oil? United Steel? J P Morgan and Carnegie? The railroads? These are the reasons the original anti-trust laws were passed. (And before that, go back to the East India Company and the other government-licensed charter companies.)
Corporatism is a political system which is not at all at odds with "pure" or even regulated capitalism (an economic system).
People are always going to label people or arguments they dislike with names for other things they dislike, whether it's "you poopoo-head!" on the playground, "communist" or "Nazi" (or "capitalist") for adults. Are you hoping that's a "sign of the end days of this world view"? Keep hoping, 'cause people have been dismissing (or attacking) other people as "socialist" or "communist" pretty much since those terms were coined.
I agree with you! Closed source software has its places, just as open source software does.
I have been arguing this for years. Part of "Freedom" is choice, and having the choice to release your source code or not, just as I have the choice to use open or closed source applications. Abuse of a monopoly is not the same thing as closed source.
It is ironic that some (but not most) of the advocates of Open Source rail against anything that is not Free. This intolorance is why they get compared to "commies" and socialists, taking a position that "either software is Free or it should not exist". Fortunately, most of us who are Free software fans don't share their intolorant views.
If a company wants to keep their source closed and try to actually make money SELLING it, fine. If someone wants to make a Free version that does basically the same thing, even better, because then we have a choice, and the MARKETPLACE decides.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS