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Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Goes Stable On Linux
An anonymous reader writes "The open source Nouveau driver, a reverse-engineered incarnation of NVIDIA's official proprietary driver for Linux, has reached its biggest milestone. The Nouveau driver is now being considered stable within the Linux kernel and leaving the staging area, with the pledge of a stable ABI. Phoronix has summarized the state of the Nouveau driver, which works fine if you don't care about performance or are fine with running hardware that's a few generations old."
Sorry, this is kind of off, but still interesting and related as this was work done by reverse engineering. How do you reverse engineer on Linux, or other UNIX systems like OS X and BSD? Windows has many great software like IDA and OllyDBG, but seems there's just no such things available for Linux or UNIX. The problem isn't even about using console programs, it's about showing the debugging process and being able to put breakpoints.
Way to go guys.. you've now given Nvidia massive disincentive to continue to do more work with their MODERN drivers.
Crappy half implemented acceleration support. No multiple monitor support. No thermal control.
In short: Good job guys! Not!
Stable but still crappy is the definition of anything Google considers production quality.
The latest version on Ubuntu 12.04 beta2 doesn't cut it on my hardware. I am thankful for Nvidia's support of Linux.
Which I do, but I also care about performance. I've found myself having to switch back and forth between it and the propreitary Nvidia driver on some machines.
Surely, the news of a video driver that "works fine if you don't care about performance or are fine with running hardware that's a few generations old" is the awesome secret magic that the masses have been waiting for. And it's free as in beer! As long as you don't care about your mug of beer being poured from 20 mugs of swill. The only thing holding my nana back from ditching windows is lack of an apk-approved HOSTS file for the ooboontooo.
It avenges the wrongful death of Trayvon! He was such a good boy, cut down in his prime by a dirty cracker just because he used Ubuntu on his desktop computer! Zimmerman is probably smiling right now and rubbing one out at the thought of Trayvon lying there in the grass, bleeding out! And the courts will probably let him go free! This is a Zionist, Communist, and Freemason conspiracy!
The world will not tolerate this injustice!
Write to your politicians and tell them not to use Noveau unless Zimmerman and his Jewish conspirationists are punished!
Sometimes causes me headaches when trying to develop CUDA projects... but all in all a wonderful thing for 95% of the Linus user base. Spock would approve.
I only wish Ubuntu didn't ram it down my throat.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It's amazing to me that there is so much flame out there for this. None of you could do this, Not a single one of you have tried, and yet, this small group of dedicated people have actually figured out a piece of proprietary hardware to the point of having their code included in the Linux kernel? Way to go guys.
"On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle." -Linus Torvalds
fact there won't jesus Up The
Software freedom is important for its own sake. You're better off with a less functional free implementation than a more powerful and reliable proprietary implementation in numerous practical ways programmers and users have known for decades.
If the proprietor stops supporting something and they're all you've got to depend on, you're out of luck left with an ugly choice to run increasingly obsolete code or (apparently needlessly) do without that functionality at all. Proprietors control your computer and tell you what you can do with it. Free software gives you the freedom to control your own computer. One can learn to program and understand the Nouveau source code: maintain the code to work on more OSes and work with more hardware, free from the fear of DRM (digital restrictions management). If you're not a programmer, like most computer users aren't, you can still help the effort by giving programmers what they need to help you in return. Often that's money, equipment, good bug reports, documentation translations, and writing documentation for the software.
We're better off relying on each other in freedom than we are depending on a proprietor. Socially, we can't build a better future for ourselves by relying on secret software. We should be allowed to fully own and control our computers and we'll get there with software freedom.
Nvidia should have told their customers how to fully use the equipment they sold. Nouveau hackers are remedying that deficiency. I'm grateful for the valuable work Nouveau hackers are doing for all of us.
Digital Citizen
2) buy someone elses (likely)
And this is what NVIDIA has done. NVIDIA bought a license for ARM's CPU and built the Tegra SoC around it.
is design a time machine to go back three years and peddle this afterthought to the linux community, just as theyre putting the finishing touches on a workable desktop video driver for AMD cards that supports HDMI.
then nvidia can hop back in and take a trip 5 years back, and fix the problem with faulty chips they just decided to ship and apologize for as an afterthought.
while we're fidgeting with the knobs in our video card tardis of sorts, we can shuffle on back to the point in nvidia history when despite overwhelming support by AMD for 64 bit linux, nvidia decided 32 bit was all they were getting.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Seriously guys why all the hate? Sure it doesn't work for everyone, it works on old hardware. But here's the deal, it works and is sufficient for day to day use. Here's the amazing and nerdy part of it too, they REVERSE ENGINEERED IT. Something as complicated as a video card. That's no small feat and they should be congratulated for their efforts to make linux just that much better. Start hating when you contribute something with any significance at all. BTW I'm not a kernel developer, just a nerd that appreciates a feat such as this.
They realize their top notch drivers are a big selling point of their hardware. You'll find more than a couple people who have the opinion that AMD has good graphics hardware, crippled by poor drivers.
nVidia will only discontinue Linux drivers if the market shrinks to such a size that it is no longer worth it. If Linux becomes an "embedded only" OS or something they'll stop. However so long as it is being used a reasonable amount, they'll keep making drivers for it (they also have FreeBSD and Solaris drivers to give you an idea).
Particularly since it is a big market for their GPGPU stuff. When people get a big multi-card Tesla system, they sometimes want to run Linux on it. That is only doable with first flight drivers that have all the features supported, work with the latest hardware, and give up nothing in terms of speed.
Jesus titty-fucking christ, it is about god damn time.
Is it the same reason I couldn't sit through a Twilight movie or honestly vote for a Tea Party Republican?
Or the same reason I couldn't drink a gallon of water with an eyedropper?
Namely a lack of tolerance for doing things in a harder way than necessary?
I'm using this driver (well, probably a slightly older version of it) with my desktop now, and so far I've been pleasently surprised. I don't need blazing fast performance on 3D for most things. FlightGear/OpenArena level games are about as far as I'm likely to push, since I'm not into the latest and greatest FPS anymore. Given that, the prospect of an integrated driver that "just works" without having to do anything extra is awesome.
My last Gentoo re-install I ended up trying the Nouveau driver after my attempt at enabling the binary NVIDIA driver didn't go well - had to flip on a couple kernel options to get acceleration, but after doing so and for my uses the results are "fast enough." I'll be sticking with Nouveau from now on unless I hit a major show-stopper. Well done, Nouveau team!
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
One thing which you cannot do with the official NVIDIA driver for GNU/Linux is have mixed rotation monitors. (I would like to be proven wrong - have even tried to prove myself wrong, but given up).
I currently have one monitor in portrait and one monitor in landscape and one monitor in landscape, with the ability to drag windows from one to the other. I have some acceleration, which allows me to see through terminal windows.
Nouveau works, official one does not work. Simple choice.
kers at the wrong moment What happens when you catch stock tic
...and it would seem to be a rather persistent thing, at that.
Personally, I think it's great to hear some simple news about a non-trivial thing relating to a driver that also affects the overall performance of my own computer. That it's an article not written in marketspeak covered with a 20 gallon drum full of marketsauce, then, I guess that may also serve to comment to the technological integrity of the open source developer domain.
But sure sure, we can troll, we can. Cheers.
Please NVIDIA do everyone a favor and stop putting out your crappy binary blob drivers.
So true. I had a problem with my onboard network card a while ago. I dug up an old 3COM PCI 10/100 card, those cards were awesome and would survive god striking them. I put it in, boot Windows 64 bit and... obviously no driver. It's an old card and no one bothered to create a driver for Windows 7 64 bit. Then I reboot under Kubuntu also running 64 bit and hey, it's working.
Contrails just don't linger like that, especially in complex patterns that litter the sky for hours -- only to eventually dissipate and form a layer of clouds. Weather manipulation? Behavior alteration agents? Big Pharma spraying us with new diseses to make a fat buck? It is a little bit of all of those, IMO.
There's no question about it, our skies have been sprayed heavily over the past decade, when these chemtrails first emerged. True, commercial aviation is a huge phenomenon now and new propulsion technologies are always emerging. But there are times where one can look at the sky, as a free human being, and just know that something isn't right. Especially when you see 5-10 of these thick trails just sitting in the sky, only to see a commercial airliner flying at the same altitude leaving no such "contrail" behind.
The planet is overheating thanks to holes in the atmosphere from man's greed. Now the tundra at the north pole is being hosed with, and if it explodes -- this is thousands of cubic miles of tundra, mind you -- then everything on earth dies from the toxic gases that will be released. Many ppl believe the metals particles discovered in these trails is to deflect the sun just for long enough until we develop atmospheric healing technology. Others are not so convinced and beleave that there is a sinister depopulation agenda being played out -- releasing bioagents that are just strong enough to kill off the useless eaters that don't eat right (85% of America), but also just weak enough to cause no damage to ppl who are in goodd health and will be of use in the future.
Of course, with all the connections and $$$ that the pharma industry has, it's not so far fetched with how hosed up the world is already anyway for them to get in bed with the right folks and rig airliners with these aerosol disperseant technologies right under their noses. By contaimating the country, if not world with newly engineered diseases and mental disorders like crohns, autism, and diabedes, that's billions of dollars in profits that could help pay off national debt under the table.
Do the research. Lift the blinders. Ever been told something that sounds so rediculous, you automatically shutoff and dismiss it as nonsense? Thats just your sheeple programming throwing you back into the realm of ignorance, to further be manipulated & controlled. For those who are to lazy to do their own research, heres a very compelling video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Ma408zSVc#t=20s
WHERE ARE OBAMA'S GIRLFRIENDS?
Think about this....
I hadn't thought about this - but where are Obama's past girlfriends - surely he had at least one? No past girlfriends popping up anywhere? Strange - strange to the point of being downright weird!
OK, this is just plain old common sense, no political agendas for either side. Just common knowledge for citizens of a country, especially American citizens, who know every little tidbit about every other president (and their wives) that even know that Andrew Jackson's wife smoked a corn cob pipe and was accused of adultery, or that Lincoln never went to school or Kennedy wore a back brace, or Truman played the piano.
We are Americans! Our media vets these things out! We are known for our humanitarian interests and caring for our 'fellow man.' We care, but none of us know one single humanizing fact about the history of our own president.
Honestly, and this is a personal thing... but it's bugged me for years that no one who ever dated him ever showed up. Taken his charisma, which caused the women to be drawn to him so obviously during his campaign, looks like some lady would not have missed the opportunity.
We all know about JFK's magnetism, McCain was no monk, Palin's courtship and even her athletic prowess were probed. Biden's aneurisms are no secret. Look at Cheney and Clinton-we all know about their heart problems. How could I have left out Wild Bill before or during the White House?
Nope... not one lady has stepped up and said, "He was soooo shy," or "What a great dancer!" Now look at the rest of what we know... no classmates, not even the recorder for the Columbia class notes ever heard of him.
Who was the best man at his wedding? Start there. Check for groomsmen. Then get the footage of the graduation ceremony.
Has anyone talked to the professors? Isn't it odd that no one is bragging that they knew him or taught him or lived with him.
When did he meet Michele and how? Are there photos? Every president provides the public with all their photos, etc. for their library. What has he released? Nada - other than what was in this so-called biography! And experts who study writing styles etc. claim it was not O's own words or typical of his speech patterns, etc.
Does this make any of you wonder?
Ever wonder why no one ever came forward from Obama's past, saying they knew him, attended school with him, was his friend, etc? Not one person has ever come forward from his past.
This should really be a cause for great concern. Did you see the movie titled, The Manchurian Candidate?
Let's face it. As insignificant as we all are... someone whom we went to school with remembers our name or face... someone remembers we were the clown or the dork or the brain or the quiet one or the bully or something about us.
George Stephanopoulos, ABC News said the same thing during the 2008 campaign. Even George questions why no one has acknowledged that the president was in their classroom or ate in the same cafeteria or made impromptu speeches on campus. Stephanopoulos was a classmate of Obama at Columbia-class of 1984. He says he never had a single class with him. Since he is such a great orator, why doesn't anyone in Obama's college class remember him? And, why won't he allow Columbia to release his records? Do you like millions of others, simply assume all this is explainable - even though no one can?
NOBODY REMEMBERS OBAMA AT COLUMBIA
Looking for evidence of Obama's past, Fox News contacted 400 ColumbiaUniversity students from the period when Obama claims to have been there, but not one remembers him For example,Wayne Allyn Root was (like Obama) a political science major at Columbia , who graduated in 1983. In 2008, Root says of Obama, "I don't know a single person at Columbia that knew him, and they all know me. I don't have a single classmate who ever knew Barack Obama at Columbia ... EVER!
Nobody recalls him.
Root adds that he was, "Class of '83 political scien
The comments on this story really do illustrate how the readership of Slashdot really has changed over the past few years.
This is a real "News for Nerds" story, a story about open source development and how we're still not really past the bad old days of winmodems when it comes to (real, not binary blob) hardware support by manufacturers.
A full half of the comments I can see above seem to be troll posts along the lines of "LOL M8 DOESNT RUN UNREAL TOURNAMENT 27".
Oh dear.
If i didnt care about performance why would I bother to install something aside from whatever the system boots with on install?
I hope the great work continues and I'll be able to run Steam games with it, too.
I try it out every six months, but until such time I'm thankful nVidia still support their products on Linux at all.
The drives are not the problem: the nouveau drivers are reasonably stable. It's the proprietary, modified OpenGL libraries, the ones that NVidia's installer replaces on your local system and breaks your Xorg upgrades with, and which they're too stupid to figure out how to uninstall safely when doing upgrades. (I sent them the solution to this problem for 3 different Linux versions, especially for that utter dogpile SuSE committed on top of the NVidia installer in that skunk's afterbirth known as YaST.
I was polite when I submitted the patches, but no longer. The Nvidia installers were written by monkeys who couldn't find their own ass with a K-9 unit and a a GPS lowered down their intestines on a string.
In addition, and this is a big one for me, you don't have to reinstall the open source driver with every kernel upgrade.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I hereby pledge to only install software that "seems to work."
...and it would seem to be a rather persistent thing, at that.
Personally, I think it's great to hear some simple news about a non-trivial thing relating to a driver that also affects the overall performance of my own computer. That it's an article not written in marketspeak covered with a 20 gallon drum full of marketsauce, then, I guess that may also serve to comment to the technological integrity of the open source developer domain.
But sure sure, we can troll, we can. Cheers.
Having read your post I realize that I used my last mod point unworthily.
Somebody mod this up please.
After fighting with the nVidia installers for years I'm happy with any X solution. Thanks for the hard work.
NVIDIA would be doing everyone a favor by getting rid of their binary blob crap drivers.
Point being: this shit is hard, and the current milestone represents a huge achievement. If everybody had the attitude that "well it sucks compared to [something else] right now, why bother", nothing hard would ever be attempted.
Absolutely fantastic, provided you haven't bought a video card made in the last 3 or 4 years...
Hell, I can't even boot the latest Mint or Fedora live-CDs without derping around nouveau, and I'm not exactly bleeding edge here.
Older cards don't even necessary have a binary driver that will work with them. Something like Nouveau will keep older systems ticking along, while also filling the gap for those that don't need the full support of the binary driver
It's a software patent thing that Nvidia are very sensitive about since they have some ex-SGI guys that have already been dragged through the courts once by patent trolls. I can't see them opening their drivers any time soon and I don't blame them for it.
Your comment really makes sense, made me think twice about what I wrote.
Maybe, it would have been better to make this announcement as a solid promise of a good driver, a work in progress with a bright future instead of saying that it went stable with the "exceptions" mentioned.
> If the proprietor stops supporting something and they're all you've got to depend on, you're out of luck left with an ugly choice to run increasingly obsolete code or (apparently needlessly) do without that functionality at all.
And nVidia does exactly this, they drop old models from their drivers (it isn't that bad, the last time it happened to me, it was really old, and the machine stopped being relevant for desktop usage a long time before). Still, I like the tranquility of mind; that's why I switched to ATI cards everywhere. It's good to have choice again. The work of Nouveau developers is impressive, considering the competing open source ati drivers got a lot of help from AMD.
Kill all hipsters.
I applaud your efforts, but unless we get wirespeed performance on our nVidia hardware in both 2D and 3D modes, thanks anyway, but no thanks until nVidia assists the Noveau folks for real.
Kriston
Great news ! Linux rocks. A great addition to the platform for all the gamers who have to switch to windows for playing games (include me . .:P)
Thank you Nouveau team for your dedication and hard work!
I think, for at least some people, it's an economic choice. I've spoken to a lot of people who realise that Free Software exists, but also know that it has its rough patches. These people would rather take the risk of having a vendor disappear or discontinue support, but provide them with just about everything they need, than invest the time required to learn and to help out the open source initiative (which, from experience, I know to be quite the time investment). For these people - and this probably extends to most people - it's easier just to buy some new hardware if their vendor goes AWOL.
There are good nVidia drivers available for Linux. Why in the world would a sane person cripple their system with some makeshift drivers? They could buy AMD if they wanted problems.
"You're better off with a less functional free implementation than a more powerful and reliable proprietary implementation in numerous practical ways programmers and users have known for decades."
Not to downplay the release of the driver, but this is nonsense. As a user, in what way am I "better off" with a less functional implementation just because it's "free" (as in speech, one assumes), when I could be using the full power of my computer with a proprietry driver? It's an absurd argument.
Bear in mind I'm a *user*, who wants to *use* his equipment, rather than an idealogue who wants to feel all smug and proud. So banging on about freedom isn't going to cut it when you're openly recommending deliberately hamstringing it.
That's not a summary, it's a whorebag. Why in fuck is slashdot still taking Moronix links?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The comments "if only you don't care about performance..." came from the anonymous submitter of the slashdot summary, not from the original article.
The original article is talking about how the nouveau driver is becoming part of the stable kernel, and benchmarks it against the proprietary Nvidia driver. The benchmarks show that for some applications the nouveau driver has quite acceptable performance, and for others it is significantly slower.
Becoming stable is not a claim that it is finished, just that the ABI is stable. Those people who don't care about licences are going to continue to use the proprietary driver for the foreseeable future; the announcement is primarily relevant to those of us who do care about licences and appreciate the effort and intelligence that has gone into the nouveau driver.
There are lots of other type of users. People designing embedded systems, people maintaining long term projects etc.
The thing we probably don't care about you, since you will just go install the binary driver from nvidia site. Most users probably just want their desktop/laptop to work out of the box.
All absolutely true, but it doesn't address my point. I'm not saying the developers *should* care about people like me, since I *will* just go and install the binary driver from nvidia, at least until nouveau is fully supported. I was more wandering off-topic, because he made a blanket statement, covering everyone. I definitely am NOT better off with an implementation I've deliberately hamstrung, just because it's "free". Fuck free, I want it to work. If it can do both I'm very happy, if it's a choice of one or the other I've nothing against binary blobs.
I'd like to emphasise I'm not having a dig at the developers, what they've achieved, with zero documentation, is extremely impressive and I hope they carry on development. Some day nvidia will cut support for every graphics card they currently make, and on that day we'd be a lot happier with a solid open source driver - all of us with nvidia cards, no matter what they're plugged into and for what purpose.
But claiming that I'll always be better off with an incomplete free implementation is the attitude that's turned open source from a worthwhile endeavour into something edging a religion.
Stable doesn't mean implements all features or supports all versions, it means it won't crash your computer.
What I want is to be able to play video with default drivers that install with the system. A card a few generations old will do this and playing video hasn't been cutting edge performance for a long time.
My needs can be met by intel and ATI cards, now nvidia has joined them. So from my perspective, there is now more competition. For someone whose needs would not be met by these drivers, I can see why they might not be very impressed, but it has changed my buying criteria for my next box, and I am considering getting two more low end boxes soon.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Because this driver will continue to be supported for as long as there is interest in it, not just until nVidia decides that it's time for you to buy a new GPU. A few years ago, nVidia released a driver with a remotely exploitable (kernel mode arbitrary code execution) vulnerability. When this was publicly disclosed (about a year after being reported to nVidia), they released a driver update that fixed it, but which didn't provide support for all of the cards that were vulnerable. You had two choices then if you had slightly older hardware: you could run a driver with a known vulnerability, or you could use the VESA driver and have no hardware acceleration at all. Now you'd have a third choice: run a slower driver that is maintained and constantly improving.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
They might go under, they might decide to charge for upgrades or new versions.
A free (AIS) implementation is a defence against those things happening.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Still, I like the tranquility of mind; that's why I switched to ATI cards everywhere.
Weird. I have an AMD CentOS machine with ATI on-board graphics and it's becoming increasingly difficult to use since AMD dropped support for that chip; a Linux security fix broke the driver a few months back and I had to manually patch the code to make it work.
So I keep meaning to buy a cheap Nvidia card to drop in there to replace it.
And then there are those that use the least amount of closed source software they can, while still accomplishing the task at hand.
We will re-evaluate if there are some situations that the open source driver may be usable now where it wasn't just a few months ago.
I would expect the days of compiling the nvidia kernel module to be coming to a close in the next couple of years, the driver looks like it might actually be faster than the binary blob when the clock setting issues are figured out.
Work bio at MMWD
I don't think it's only about license, I do care a lot about licenses and I'm a big fan of the GPL.
However, I believe it's about technology too, sooner or later the blob is going to stop to work.
For example, we are moving to Wayland now (Linux).
Wayland will require KMS and nvidia can't support it for legal reasons, so I believe Nouveau will win there.
What struck me odd was that even the IPW2200 chips have no more official Windows 7 support. Well, the Vista driver works.
I have no problem with the performance of the nouveau drivers, but compared to the proprietary drivers my card (8500 GT) runs quite a bit hotter. So I tend to stick with the proprietary drivers.
If the nouveau devs can address this point, I'd be very content to stick with nouveau.
Subject line says it all.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
I get the need for free for some things, but if you have to pay $50-100 for a video card anyway, why not pay $5 for a licensed, debugged, modern graphics card driver that is only ONE generation behind and LINUX compatible? I mean really, for end user applications free is a good start but adding some things at low cost is perfectly reasonable. You have to pay something for a cable, or for some used memory, or insert your own example. I can see why you would want actually free for installs across hundreds or thousands of instances, but how many of those need heads and advanced graphics anyway? And if you do you have to pay for a monitor, why not a trivial amount for a working graphics driver, even if that is the only software you actually pay for, making your install somehow "impure", it's worth it.
JJ
Having them as the default nvidia driver is simply unacceptable because they are not fully functional. They dont work in 3d properly
and they are not CUDA compliant. Nouveau actually get in the way of installing the real nvidia drivers.
This isn't about pride, it REALLY makes a difference when people defend free as in freedom stuff. That is why is so much better for you.
But it will always be people who would rather defend its short-term convenience over freedoms. A fact that a lot of (comercial) empires are built over. And it will always be people who justify in their minds these facts stating that otherwise its only "ideological pride shit".
And that is how things go over time. Now guess from what kind of user has FOSS gotten the strength do endure and evolve after all these years.
you don't have to reinstall the open source driver with every kernel upgrade.
You don't have to reinstall the Nvidia driver, at least on Fedora with rpmfusion enabled, which is the "easy button" way:
sudo yum install akmod-nvidia
You mean the 3C90x? The situation is even more twisted than what you described. You will find no 32 bit or 64 bit driver for download anywhere for it... BUT, that's not the whole story because there is a driver and you can get it over Microsofts online driver search.... I'm not kidding, in order to get this driver you need to be online already. In my journal I have documented this alongside my ramblings about the fanbois saying 7 has drivers for everything out of the box. Well the 3C90x definitely doesn't, at least not out of the box.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Years ago I got tired of all the hassle trying to get FOSS drivers to work reliably with Nvidia cards. It was a nobrainer to go with the proprietary drivers and still is. Current example : FlightGear flight simulator : Segmentation fault. I switched to Linux for reliability and security reasons rather than for any moral/ethical/economic reason, and my criteria are still : would I trust this OS with a mission-critical application. And to me, I can't really trust code that is put together as a workaround without direct access to all relevant technical information, and/or without cooperation of the hardware designers or even with the opposition of same, no matter the brilliance and dedication of the developers. The sad reality is that Nvidia, AMD etc are in a far better position to deliver drivers I can trust critical applications to.
If this is the X server exploit you seem to be trying to describe, then this plain false. The bug affected only two beta drivers and never affected the legacy drivers, and was fixed maybe a week after being disclosed, not a year.
Yes, I'd agree with that too. I have some older machines where the blob already does not work because it has not been maintained by Nvidia. Yes, those machines are ready for retirement, but I'll retire them when I'm ready, not when Nvidia decides they are obsolete.
I agree completely, I couldn't have said that better.
I don't see any issue here. Obviously people with the know-how can develop their own tools regardless of Nvidia offering up source code, just like people who don't understand programming wouldn't be able to make full use of open-source tools even when they're available.
This is about Nvidia not choosing to allocate resources to maintain open-source software. Having third party modifications of open-source drivers can cause confusion, and in the wrong developers hands, could also damage and/or impact the stability of the video card or system. It's a support avenue that Nvidia is not prepared to take, and I completely understand that decision.
Phoronix.com just published an article called "AMD To Drop Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 Catalyst Support and never mentions software freedom in their article. The proprietor changes but the freedom issues remain the same.
Digital Citizen