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Open Source 3D Nvidia Driver Is Ready For Fedora 13
An anonymous reader writes "Red Hat has already been using the Nouveau X.Org driver in Fedora for providing display and 2D support, but with their next release (Fedora 13) they will be making open-source 3D acceleration readily available to those using Nvidia graphics cards. Red Hat has packaged the Nouveau 3D driver in Fedora 13 and what makes it interesting — besides being an open source 3D driver that was written by the community by reverse engineering Nvidia's closed-source driver — is that it's one of the first drivers to use the Gallium3D driver interface. Phoronix has tested out this Gallium3D driver for Nvidia GPUs in a Fedora 13 daily build and found it to run with a variety of OpenGL games, with benchmarks being included that compare it to Nvidia's official driver. The performance is far from being on the same stage as Nvidia's official Unix driver."
I know it's not a professional project, nor built on any real technical documentation, but I hardly think that an OS should be distributed with a driver that gets 32fps running Quake 3 on a Geforce 9. Can anyone tell me: better or worse performance than using a 3dfx card under Linux?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Suppose I wanted to get into writing drivers -
1) What are the things I'd need to know? Languages, Theory, Techniques
2) What are the things I'd require? Testing environment, IDE if applicable, Development kits, etc
3) Any Reading material? A beginners guide, reference material, that kind of stuff.
Step 1: Figure things out.
Step 2: Make them work (correctly)
Step 3: Make them work (fast)
its all a part of the process and step 2 is a HUGE achievement especially when most of the information about the chips was reverse engineered.
Because NVIDIA has access to the docs and these guys don't? It's hard work to reverse engineer a video card and build a driver.
I remember at Intel those silly locked up books detailing the trade secrets. We have constrained bits flying through constrained hardware to make a game. Anyone looking in from the outside will wonder what game we are all playing for this state of affairs!
I don't think we'll get either religion or IP out of the way before the Singularity hits anyway.
Is it better than using a software 3D stack? Because I have a feeling that nothing is really accelerated.
Just for fun:
Take a look on "Configure Konqueror" option in Konqueror-the default browser for KDE. All those options and not a single NoScript or AdBlock, the shit that counts.
Konqueror comes, out of the box, with an adblocker which is compatible with (and defaults to) AdBlockPlus' list.
The rest of it is a matter of mostly uninformed opinion, like this:
As most of you know KDE uses both Konqueror and Dolphin for file navigation.
Konqueror is a web browser, it just happens to support Dolphin as a plugin. So nope, no change here. It's other browsers, like Firefox, which insist on making local file browsing look like an autogenerated Apache index.
In Konqueror if you save password for some website, this 'wallet' password pops up and in order to save the password you have to type another password in the wallet.
Yes, once per session. Gnome has an equivalent wallet, and you're not required to have a password for it. It's just helpful if you do -- it's this neat little feature called "encryption". Hell, even Firefox supports a Master Password.
Not really worth going into detail about how wrong you are, since you're already pretty much a troll, but really, you can do better. There are enough things to dislike about KDE that you could effectively troll it without spreading things which are actually wrong.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
As a PC owner with a polarized projector setup, I'm mush more interested in ATI's Catalyst 10.3 coming out in March that will have 3D support in the stereoscopic sense. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/catalyst-eyefinity-radeon,2559-2.html (Yes, I know it's offtopic. It still makes me giddy and I don't have anyone else to tell.)
Reverse engineering of hardware interfaces involves running usb, i2c, pci monitoring software to watch to see what hardware memory and registers are being changed. From this, it is possible to write an equivalent driver.
Doesn't Nvidia do some memory mapping voodoo with virtual memory mapping to speed up context switching?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Because they'd love to be able to work on improving the existing wheel instead, but, unfortunately, they can't.
...what the f&(£ is wrong with the one that selected the quotes to be put at the end of the page?
"It's today!" said Piglet. "My favorite day," said Pooh.
Oh god. Captcha: forest. FML. I think I'm gonna go drown myself in a pot of honey. Thx CowboyNeal.
Because the existing wheel is only a temporary wheel that will be taken away the minute NVIDIA wants to sell new cards.
I bet you already knew that though.
Yes, people do and freedom is not seen as silly by all people.
When NVIDIA drops support for these cards people will use this driver or go without.
*whoosh*
Toaster is the classic sample code used when learning the Windows Driver Model (WDM). The vast majority of Windows drivers were probably built on top of the Toaster sample. My comment is supposed to be silly because you can't use a WDM in Linux.
:(){
Remember that not everyone has an "OSS at any cost!" mentality. Some people use Linux for pragmatic reasons, not for ideological ones.
They are still early into Step 2. Checking the site and status details out, I can't understand how this is ready for Prime Time. Most cards don't work, many essential features are just plain not implemented...
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
you have no guarantee that nvidia blob will support current cards in 2015, chances are that in such scenario users of older hardware will be forced to use open source drivers. Same thing with amd/ati - their drivers don't support older radeons, i am sure owners of such video adapters would love to get ANY 3d acceleration.
Do some people really use markedly inferior software simply because it is open source, even if a better competitor is available at no cost?
Nvidia's driver may not necessarily be "better," depending on how you define it. Nvidia's driver is clearly better in terms of 3D acceleration, but Nouveau wins in many other areas (largely as an extension of it's F/OSS'ness). There's much less legal worry when distributing it, it doesn't have to be recompiled against the kernel updates, it supports KMS (which is more important than 3D acceleration with many, such as myself), it can be fix/changed/updated without dependence on Nvidia, it's also more likely to have continued support on older hardware - the list gets pretty long. Maybe these things don't matter to you as much as 3D acceleration, but for many they do.
I use linux because it works perfectly well for me.
F/OSS isn't just blind idealism - there's practical benefits which result. I expect at least part of the reason why Linux "works perfectly well" for you is a result of the fact it's F/OSS. This carries over to the video drivers, too.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Friends don't let friends release bots drunk.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
So I don't have to waste my time going and hunting down nvidia drivers when I install a new machine....that alone is a good enough reason.
Got Code?
Because they do some of stuff in software that card is actually able to accelerate in hardware?
Because unlike wifi and such cards which do most of calculations on host; here they need to make hardware 'do it'?
Because they don't know how to use architecture for which they don't have full specs or programming guides?
They are almost doing mission impossible. Many more man-hours are needed to reverse engineer proper ways to use the hardware. With so many millions of transistors on board, it does not sound promising.
Does Nouveau support the graphics chip in the Xbox yet? I'd really love to be able to run XBMC on Linux on Xbox rather than running it on the Xbox OS on the Xbox.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not a problem on operating system with stable driver ABIs.
Excuse me for not being an expert on drivers for hardware I don't own,
You're excused.
but does this mean the new driver is better than the official driver, or not nearly as good?
It's not new, it's been around for a while. But it's not nearly as good in most respects; no VDPAU, poor performance.
If it is not "on the same stage," meaning not nearly as good, why is Red Hat using it,
Because it is freely redistributable.
and why is this news?
Because it just happened.
Do some people really use markedly inferior software simply because it is open source, even if a better competitor is available at no cost?
No, some people use markedly inferior software simply because it is Free Software, which is totally and completely different (The OSI's attempts to convince you to the contrary notwithstanding.)
This seems silly to me.
Nobody cares.
I use linux because it works perfectly well for me.
Me too. But nobody cares why either of us use Linux. Well, that's not true. I've put some people on to it. Nobody cares why you use Linux.
If it were a pile of crap in comparison to Windows, I'd use Windows
In many respects, it is, for example if you are a gamer.
even though I have a casual dislike for Microsoft.
So you're wearing slacks?
(please no Macintosh osx comments here, I don't care)
Nobody cares if you care, didn't we cover that?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And what happens if tomorrow Nvidia decides it doesn't want to provide those drivers any more and removes all but the latest cards drivers? You can't distribute their binary drivers without their permission (and they don't give it btw). The problem with not using FOSS software is that if the commercial vendor decides to stop selling it there is nothing you can do about it other than offer them lots of money and hope they change their mind. Take windows XP, the day Microsoft decides to stop selling it you won't be able to purchase a new version of it (once existing stock already purchased is exhausted) and then your only option is to buy the newest version with X bad feature.
There is nothing at all stupid and irrational about being prepared for the inevitable with commercial software. Although there are likely very few people still using 3dfx cards you can't get drivers for them anymore. Companies go out of business, change management or simply decide it's in their interest to stop providing legacy drivers all the time. The past is no predictor of the future, as the first rule of stock investing applies almost universally and is "Past performance is not an indicator of future performance".
In fact assuming that nothing will ever change is actually the irrational, stupid and childish behavior.
>I can't understand how this is ready for Prime Time
Because this is Fedora. New stuff always appears and/or is turned on by default in Fedora first:
Gallium3d
Radeon/RadeonHD
kms
btrfs
packagekit
consolekit
policykit
devicekit
empathy/telepathy
Also, I think some parts of the Gnome port to dbus appeared there well before they did in other distros
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
So haw many desktop operating systems support 10 year old binary drivers?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Unless a bug is found in the old driver, and now can't be fixed.
Which OS new is using 5 year old drivers, windows 7 does not like XP drivers.
As of today: just one! (Yesterday the answer would be none.)
Windows 7 still supports the driver interfaces that came with Windows 2000.
Most Windows 2000/XP drivers work in Windows 7. This is how non-Aero capable graphics drivers work in Windows Vista and Windows 7; they use the same driver interface as in Windows XP.
this is only half true.
64bit windows has deprecated a lot of the driver interfaces (out of necessity) so good luck getting your old hardware to work with 10 year old binary drivers.
If you need to use ten year old hardware, do you need to use x86-64?
With IOMMUs, you can just run a virtualized guest and pass the device to it - be it Windows 7 or something older. (Of course, you can still run recent software on 10 year old versions of Windows...)
I'm actually pretty impressed, I didn't expect they'd be this successful getting a development community and a working driver going. I'm curious as to the stability, I noticed there was one issue with the fonts in the review. Personally stability would be the big selling point for me, I've had issues with the proprietary drivers in the past and it would be great if there was a highly dependable open source driver I could count on.
On a related topic does anyone know the state of the open source ATI driver? I saw a phoronix article claiming it was more popular than the proprietary one but other than that I don't know what it has for performance or features. It would be interesting to compare since the ATI made the specs available.
I stole this Sig
HP windows drivers. They just killed a bunch of home printers by refusing to make drivers that scan or do any other "fancy" stuff for windows 7.
ATI does not support my backup laptop with their binary driver, the machine is about 8 years old.
Try that in Windows 7 64bit and get back to me.
That is the version all the OEMs are having pushed on them.
How many people need to use old hardware and x86-64?
OEMs can install any OS version they like, as can users... especially the users who care about using five year old drivers.
In theory. In practice I've had Windows 2000 drivers fail on XP.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Microsoft broke binary compatibility for many SCSI/HBA drivers between SP1 and SP2 for Windows 2003.
That was in a "stable" series.
Some people found this out the hard way when they saw the bluescreen at boot.
actually you can get copies of every MS product right back to DOS 3 via technet.
Technet is not a retail channel for typical consumers to get a single product. Also, the older products aren't supported and generally don't work on the new hardware around today.
because some FOSS project is FAR FAR more likely to stop producing updates and go offline (because they got a life/job/girlfriend) then a company like MS or nvidia which has actual funding
NVIDIA has already shown they are willing to drop driver support for their products when they aren't interested anymore. And it's not just about the risk of if they will stop support, you also need to factor in the damage done - we don't have the option to fix the proprietary stuff ourselves even if we wanted to, but we could fix the abandoned FOSS stuff if we considered it worthwhile.
so you'll need use a better example
So you'll need [to] use a better excuse.
If you need to use ten year old hardware, do you need to use x86-64?
If you are using something like the DEC Alpha or the early Itaniums, then you will need 64bit support (albeit not x86-64). Then again, you won't be running Windows 2000.
Not really. A lot of newer programs support only XP or newer, so you would have to at least upgrade to XP to get a lot of modern software to run. I'm pretty sure a lot of the major stuff still works, like firefox, and I can't think of any real examples, but there are certainly apps out there that need newer interfaces. I don't believe you can install the .net framework version 3 for instance and a lot of apps have been coded against those libraries. I don't know how much more life support XP has, but I think that within a couple more years the mainstream will have finally moved on to something more modern. I mean there are still windows 2000 holdouts, but the sun set on win2000 quite some time ago.
zosxavius photography
I have as well. Graphics drivers are not the greatest, for example, because XP brought DirectX 9. Finding binary drivers for ancient hardware can be quite a chore, especially with all the good driver repositories trying to nickel and dime you for some ancient S3 driver they still have sitting on there servers. Nothing is more supremely frustrating than really needing to complete an install and the only copies you can find still out there on the net are sitting behind some pay wall.
zosxavius photography
From what I've seen, it I've only seen Home Premium x86 on most new installs. Especially laptops. I don't see a big push for x64 unless I'm mistaken or something.
zosxavius photography
Soooo, I don't care if the Free driver is slower. I'd be happy if it works and doesn't crash. Presently I'm forced to use the VESA driver.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
as a fedora user since the redhat days, I can honestly say one of the only retarded things they've done is replace pidgin with empathy, empathy is nowhere near as mature and feature complete and it was only even suggested because of the lack of webcam in pidgin which has now been resolved anyway.
With that said, the news was not that they were going to make the nvidia driver fail, but that they would include the nouveau driver.
fedora has had nouveau for at least two release cycles now (over a year) don't think you get just how bleeding edge it is (always works for me though at least), the news is that they are enabling 3d support as opposed to just 2d in the driver.
Technet subscriptions allow for testing not use. Personal or commercial use (outside as I said testing) of MSDOS from technet is a violation of your license agreement with Microsoft. Not only that but you obviously don't have a technet subscription (I do) as you would know that MSDOS 6.22 is the only DOS available via technet, in addition windows 95 and 98 aren't available via technet. Regardless of being able to acquire it you can't legally run it unless you can purchase a retail used copy. Those sources rapidly dwindle. In fact many commercial software packages have completely disappeared and software drivers for newer versions of software like windows are frequently not available. HP and Creative are prime examples of companies that simply don't provide drivers and force you to purchase newer hardware. It's not unreasonable to assume that at some future date Nvidia may decide to do the same, in fact something as simple as a change in management could cause it.
Your belief and assertion that the Linux kernel (after all the entire article is about FOSS drivers for Nvidia cards for the Linux Kernel) is more likely to be abandoned than Nvidia's production of drivers for Legacy hardware is laughably stupid. Such a statement is the height of folly and irrationality and frankly makes you look like an idiot in need of professional help. The Linux Kernel is supported by far more companies with far more resources (apparently the basis of your argument) and in fact was developed even without those resources. It's use in everything from MP3 players to televisions to large mainframe computers and it's nearly 25% market share in all computers guarantees it will survive far longer than Nvidia ever will. Working to develop FOSS drivers for nVidia hardware so future Linux kernels can use such hardware is only logical.
There is no doubt in my mind that at some point in the future nvidia will abandon production of drivers for legacy hardware. It will likely come in a few short years as then current hardware begins to differ so substantially from the legacy hardware as to make driver production excessively costly. Up until the Fermi architecture, even 10 year old hardware still functioned substantially similar to legacy hardware. That advantage will fade very rapidly as the processors nvidia produces move towards general use and likely in a few short years they will abandon legacy hardware as driver production costs escalate. To do otherwise would likely elicit a shareholder lawsuit.
I don't expect any of this to convince you of course, in fact I expect a reply with more silly childish aggressiveness probably with some name calling. With that in mind lets deal with the only premise here is your original assertion and give you an avenue to everyone you know anything at all. You premise was that someone is irrational and stupid to believe that Nvidia could some day stop providing drivers. Rather than asking me to prove a negative why don't you simply present evidence that Nvidia drivers will always be available thereby proving your statement.
So have at it, prove that Nvidia will always provide drivers for every product they have ever made. While your at, show me where I can get (full) 3dfx drivers for windows 7, after all Nvidia owns 3dfx and 3dfx's former products are Nvidias products now. After you prove Nvidia will always produce legacy hardware drivers for the rest of eternity I will happily admit you are right and that there is nothing at all to worry about. Don't worry, I'm not holding my breath. Cheers!
There are lots of reasons to want good F/OSS graphics drivers. For example: the binary ATI graphics driver doesn't work with on kernels with the realtime-preempt patches, which seem to help JACK-related stuff considerably. I don't think Nvidia's binary drivers do either. F/OSS drivers can be a lot more flexible in this regard. Intel's graphics driver works, for example.
another is not getting hit by your card no longer supported when you've just done an upgrade so having to switch to the legacy drivers the hard way yet again... been hit by nvidea blob problems too often when upgrading.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I have a desktop with 8gb ram, and a dec tulip 10/100 network card (designed for use in 64bit alpha systems)...
Windows has no 64bit drivers for this card at all, and the 32bit version won't let me use all of the memory in the system.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I think you are likely mistaken. I haven't seen any installations personally, but the Steam survey showed twice as many x86-64 installs than of Windows 7 than there were i386.
Of course, Steam is will have a severe sampling bias against laptops, so it's possible your observations fits the data. Here are the survey results: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
With multi-core ARM SoC chips on the horizon, have we FOSS drivers for X?
Were nvidia to use similar interfaces to their desktop cousins, they could steal the jump on the competition via nouveau.
Do some people really use markedly inferior software simply because it is open source, even if a better competitor is available at no cost?
The NVIDIA driver has a huge cost: you know the day NVIDIA wants your card to be obsolete and replaced, they'll stop shipping the driver. They did it in the past and will continue to do it because they think it makes them more profitable. Plus, you don't know what's in their driver, no one can make it work with your custom kernel if there's a problem.
Only if your don't value your freedom, the NVIDIA driver has no cost (but then you're better with MacOS or Windows).
actually you can get copies of every MS product right back to DOS 3 via technet. so you'll need use a better example.
Try to get that DOS version to run on a modern SATA setup. No drivers? Really?
Put identity in the browser.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A few reasons:
1) nVidia's drivers are not implemented like standard X.org drivers: the binary drivers replace most stuff.
2) Not optimised yet.
3) It's a Gallium3D architecture driver, which is slower (for now) than classic Mesa.
Gallium3D is a new driver architecture where the driver itself is splitted into three parts:
1) The Kernel part. Providing memmorty management and kernels based modesetting instead of user mode setting. Every driver could use it so this part is not needed to be implemented into every driver out there to reduce the amount of coding work.
2) The Gallium3D itself, like this nVidia driver that only needs to expose the bare metal functionality of the graphics card in the form of an API.
3) Features (called State Trackers) like OpenGL, video acceleration, OpenCL, Direct3D, vector graphics acceleration, etc... This is also something that is the same for all Gallium3D driver supported graphics cards. This also doesn't need to be coded for every Gallium3D driven card like the nVidia cards. BTW these State Trackers are implemented on top of the 'standard' Gallium3D API that is surficed by this nVidia Nouveau driver...
So the speed of the nVidia cards when driven by this Gallium3D driver is not solely Nouveau's 'fault'. If the Linux kernel and the State Trackers speed up then the nVidia cards will also leverage more FPS.
These Gallium3D drivers are still young. The entire architecture has not long ago passed the state of rocket science. There is no real world experience and so the fact that the Nouveau developpers could reverse engineer, convert to Gallium3D and make a GeForce 9 run Quake 3 is a realy, realy big achievement.
Things will speed up soon and the future of graphic card driver is bright for Linux!
Here be signatures
The binary nVidia drivers had a remotely exploitable kernel-privilege vulnerability that nVidia knew about for two years before fixing. When they did fix it, the fix was only for the latest revision of the driver, which didn't support all of the affected cards. Sure, you could run the old version, but then any web page you visited could inject arbitrary code into your kernel.
Now, remind me, what was your point?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Huh? I'm using Gnome all the time, and I cannot remember it crashing a single time.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Of essential and completely unimplemented features only Power Saving is left. Otherwise, it's fixing bugs, enhancing existing features and speeding up the driver.
Yes, reverse-engineering a driver *is* expensive, but when you compare it to the man-years of labor Red Hat has spent due to the binary blob writing random crap all over physical memory causing weird crashes, or merely investigating the possibility of the binary blob writing random crap all over physical memory for any given crash, it suddenly makes a lot of sense. Sure, the Nvidia driver is fast, but it's written with the philosophy that it's more important to be fast than correct, to the point where they actually patent their bugs. And that driver is running inside the kernel, with the ability to corrupt anything and everything on the system. Usually it doesn't, but it has the capability, and it has demonstrated the inclination on occasion. Tracking down memory corruption bugs is a fantastic pain in the ass even when you have the source code, let alone when you don't.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
it supports KMS (which is more important than 3D acceleration with many, such as myself)
Off-topic, but: why is KMS more important? Not (to my knowledge) being affected by any of the problems that it solves, I never understood why it was all that special. What does it do for you?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Here's the deal:
Free software is about giving people freedom. Proprietary software is about denying people freedom. Are you for or against freedom?
(disclaimer: I have proprietary drivers in use, so I suck satans cock to some extent too, figuratively speaking, but that doesn't change the above stated.)
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
really? because they still support hardware from 10 years ago.
you know what isn't supported by ANYONE anymore? the linux kernel from 10 years ago.
Maybe not, but pretty much everything a 10 year old Linux kernel supported is STILL supported in the current kernel, which is actually a much more accurate comparison than what you are using. Kernel support is not the same as hardware support...in fact, it is the exact opposite, since it is what supports hardware. I dare you to find something outside the free software world that supports as much hardware as the Linux kernel...hell, there are things it supports that are in use by less than 0.003% of computers that Linus refuses to abandon support for. Try getting that sort of commitment from a commercial vendor.
RTFA is Known to the State of California to cause cancer.
I'm not sure how true that is... ATI sure took away support for my card at some point, and not even all features worked before that (S-Video)...
I guess the argument is more about having a nice, open-source driver that anyone can work on and which has potential to actually become better than the prop driver at some point.
I am not devoid of humor.
find me a xorg 7.4 diver for a geforce3? or for that matter that a 5000/6000 card?
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
False. The advisory that claimed that was mistaken because they didn't contact NVIDIA first and confused it with an earlier X server bug (which was also remotely exploitable, thank you very much). The actual problem only existed in two beta driver releases and never existed in the legacy drivers.
See the NVIDIA response for more details: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvidia.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1971
Most Windows 2000/XP drivers work in Windows 7. This is how non-Aero capable graphics drivers work in Windows Vista and Windows 7; they use the same driver interface as in Windows XP.
I'm pretty sure all Video and Sound drivers will from WinXP SP3 and earlier will not work with Windows Vista and later. Why? Because Microsoft redesigned those systems for Windows Vista - they now operate primarily in user-space, and Windows 7 uses the same architecture being based on the same kernel as Vista. (Yes, Microsoft is using a similar architecture now to X for the Video Drivers.)
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
No. XPDM (Windows XP Driver Model) graphics drivers work on Vista and 7. This is how non-Aero capable graphics cards work on NT6 (such as the Intel GMA 900 and virtual graphics devices other than the latest VMware and Parallels versions). The same is true for audio. The old driver interfaces are still present, but you don't get the new features.
Blame the Gnome guys. Fedora picks up the Gnome desktop from Gnome, and they're the ones that decide the "default" IM manager had to change.
Commenting for tracking (how do I save, fave or mark the submissions I want to track?)
Then they have a compatibility set somehow as the older drivers would not be able to operate in Kernel Mode as they would expect, which was part of XPDM. The Win2k driver model won't work, nor will NT4's. So the point still stands.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
The Windows XP Display Driver Model (XPDM) is the display driver model used in the Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating systems.
stash guns in the attic and keep a hord of canned food
Yeah, that's totally stupid and irrational.