Slashdot Mirror
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.
Does Nvidia not know there are literally dozens of Linux users out there clamoring for a stable, high-end gaming environment?
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Is nVidia turning into an "also-ran"? I'm not stating, I'm asking. The reason they are "protecting" their drivers is because it "contains" proprietary secrets. If I'm not mistaken Ati is kicking their ass right now so is their strategy paying off for them? nVidia spent a lot of money promoting themselves in game title screens while arguably Ati just went out and built better hardware. Perhaps nVidia needs to refocus on "technical" advances instead of "marketing" ones.
Shh.
Try playing Quake 4 on an Intel Video card. Let us know how you get on.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
It looks as good as on an ATI/Nvidia card so far...
Hang on.. frame 2 is coming up.. yup still looks good.
Let's not forget that nVidia sued, then purchased at a discount, then killed 3Dfx, the first company to create a fully Open Source stack for 3D hardware. You can still find their "Glide" stack, there's a Debian package for it, but the hardware isn't produced any longer.
Intel and ATI find this a worthwhile market, especially because the technical workstation market is insisting on Linux and supportable (meaning Open Source) full-performance drivers for all hardware. Gamers are a useful market but not the only market that 3D vendors play to these days.
If you asked me what was the reason for this, I'd guess it was collusion.
Bruce Perens.
The big deal is in how it's handled.
ATI way:
They collaborate actively with the 3rd party open-source driver guys (RadeonHD project, etc.)
They publish specs to help them, and take efforts to make subsequent hardware more opensource friendly.
On the day they drop support for some old hardware from their official driver, they point to the opensource project which is mature enough by now for the old hardware.
Nvidia way:
Actively ignore that a 3rd party open-source driver effort exist (Nouveau).
Don't make the slightest effort to help them and don't release anything (well, on the other hand, they don't send Cease and Desist letters at least).
On the day they drop support for the own official opensource driver, they point to some other limited functionality driver (VESA BIOS based) so users have a GUI to download their official closed source driver.
They pretend Nouveau doesn't exist at all, despite the fact that it's gaining widespread usage: Specially since inclusion in Kernel, virtually all distributions are starting to use it, either in the current or the next iteration.
I mean that Nouveau is very probably what the 2.6.34 / 2.6.35 kernel-based distros are going to offer to Fermi owner (although very probably 2D only support).
They could at least acknowledge its existence, even if only with the proper "Not supported by Nvidia" warnings.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They don't have to support an open source driver. If they would just publish specs the community could take care of implementing them.
1) You assume that there's a ready set of PDFs that could be uploaded somewhere. There's not, there's actually a mess of various documentation mixed in with tons of internal notes, foreign IP, trade secrets and stuff that was fixed in the driver and commented there but isn't really in a separate document at all. AMD has put a helluva lot of effort in creating a process to produce the documentation and get formal signoff from lawyers, technical experts and executives that this information is safe to release. Often they've given up on documentation and found it's easier to produce a clean code snippet and get that through the review - it's far from a trivial process.
2) Since it's normally a one-to-one hardware-driver combination, things get redone. A lot. Many things are simply removed and replaced by software, kind of like winmodems. It's not like you build a OpenGL 2.0 driver and next generation you have a working 2.0 driver on 3.0 hardware, you have to keep up with the changes to get any hardware support at all. It wouldn't be entirely impossible to do it from specs alone, but it would be difficult. In practice you need people in the project or available to the project to answer questions, correct documentation and work with the internal driver/hardware team. And/or possibly have some sort of NDA program in addition to the public specs, but all of this takes time and effort which equals money.
3) The community is quite frankly not that big. At last headcount there was about a dozen working on the AMD source drivers, of which three are AMD employees. I've heard Bridgman say they use 2-3% of the effort on Linux despite accounting for 1% of the sales, so a back-of-the-napkin calculation says the internal driver team is something like 100 people. With complete access to all the documentation including on unreleased products, the hardware designers, hardware simulators, early engineering samples and so on. So on top of all their other disadvantages, the community is vastly outnumbered. Not to dispute that they could do a lot more specs than without, just that there's a lot more missing than specs.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Microsoft has a history of trying to sell Linux-relevant patents to trolls and of using third-party proxies to attack Linux.
Microsoft has not changed its hostility towards Linux or open formats. Mono MAY be safe, but don't use it for infrastructure projects. Don't encourage the use of Microsoft-sponsored formats or protocols.
Mono is best used as a solely Windows compatibility tool.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."