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Nvidia Drops Support For Its Open Source Driver
An anonymous reader writes "While Nvidia is not open-source friendly (despite public outcries over the years), they have traditionally supported the xf86-video-nv driver to provide basic mode setting support and other basic functionality. However, with the 'Fermi' and future products, even that open source support will cease to exist. Nvidia has announced they are dropping this open source support for future GPUs and really ending it altogether. Nvidia's recommendation is to just use the generic X.Org VESA driver to navigate their way to nvidia.com so that they can install the proprietary driver. Fortunately there is the Nouveau project that provides a 2D and 3D video driver for Nvidia's hardware, but Nvidia fails to acknowledge it nor support their efforts in any form."
David Gerard points out that Nouveau is going into Linux 2.6.33.
I'm on an up-to-date Fedora 12 system, and the proprietary driver seg faults. It compiles fine, and it loads ... but X just crashes and leaves me with a black screen. Now I'm using the 'nv' driver in all it's crappiness. Being a work computer (with a geforce 6000 series card), I can't really justify fiddling with it all day, when I have more important stuff to work on. I love linux, and feel crippled in a Windows or Mac machine, but c'mon ... when will Linux be ready for the average user? Maybe some day when work is slow, I can try it again, but right now it seems like a time-sucking black hole, and I miss my wobbly windows.