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NVIDIA Responds To Linus Torvalds
jones_supa writes "NVIDIA's PR department has issued a statement following the harsh comments by Linus Torvalds last week where he referred to the graphics company as the single worst company he's ever dealt with, called them out on not supporting Optimus, and other issues. Basically the company replied they're committed to Linux using their proprietary driver that is largely common across platforms, and this allows for same-day Linux support with full OpenGL implementation. They also say that they're active in ARM Linux for Tegra and support a wide range of hardware under Linux. Despite having not made any commitment to better support Optimus under Linux nor providing technical assistance to the Nouveau community, NVIDIA assures us that 'at the end of the day, providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms for all of our customers continues to be one of our key goals.'"
Basically the company replied they're committed to Linux using their proprietary driver that is largely common across platforms, and this allows for same-day Linux support with full OpenGL implementation. They also say that they're active in ARM Linux for Tegra and support a wide range of hardware under Linux. Despite having not made any commitment to better support Optimus under Linux nor providing technical assistance to the Nouveau community, NVIDIA assures us that 'at the end of the day, providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms for all of our customers continues to be one of our key goals.
Posting anonymously because some people are _incredibly_ opinionated on this subject, but not everybody has the opinion that everything linux related must be open source. Linus Torvalds, while a visionary and certainly one of the most technologically-minded people of our age, disagrees with this, and that's too bad. Just because Linus Torvalds thinks you're doing it wrong doesn't necessarily mean you are.
Cheers.
Most common excuse for don't open the source for drivers is IP. But most part of times, the real reason is users will see there is no difference in hardware between standard and platinum cards.
I think Torvalds less critical of closed source drivers and more critical of closed specs. Nouveau would be improved greatly if Nvidia provided more transparency on the hardware.
They should have blasted him for not having a consistent set of APIs and changing things, often for little benefit, which break binary compatibility and make supporting Linux in all it's variants a mighty task.
Sure, Linus made Linux and uses it to push his agenda (i.e. that of FOSS), but when Commercial software houses struggle to keep up with the changes, I don't think he should be blaming them. Instead he should look more at what Linux can do to help non-FOSS software exist on the platform without needing a full time 10 man team just to keep up with the ports.
1. We are not going make any changes.
2. Fuck Linux, fuck being open.
This story starts more than a decade ago. There was a hugely popular software vendor concerned that maybe one day people might choose to not use their software. They had vast sums of money and controlled access to the immediate future for software and hardware vendors alike. Foreseeing a potential difficult future they chose to defend themselves in a particular way. They formed subsidiaries they controlled and gave them patents, and filled them with developers skilled in the finer (and secret) nuances of how to interact with their software, and they kept them informed with advance knowledge of how it would work in the future. These subsidiaries approached hardware designers with a simple message: they would accept the patented technologies and use them; they would let the subsidiaries write the drivers that had special hooks into the software; they would do this under non-disclosure and never tell - or they wouldn't. If they accepted they would not be able to publish open specifications about how their own hardware worked because that would be exclusively cross-licensed with the subsidiaries in exchange for access to the patents. The hardware makers who wouldn't play along wouldn't get as good compatibility with the big company's software, nor inclusion in their distribution CD and OEM images. The refusers would be plagued with difficult installation, buggy drivers and unhappy customers and fail in the market. The software would change in ways the refusers could not predict, but the accepters could. Some accepted, and some refused. Those who accepted survived, those who refused mostly died. This has continued to the present day and as the hardware has evolved the agreements persist in ways that are now not removable. Nobody involved in Linux wants hardware manufacturers to write the device drivers for them. They only want open and clear specifications for how the hardware works so they can make their own drivers. They aren't going to get that from NVidia, nor ATI, nor any others whose technology is intertwined with this compromise from yesteryear. This boon is now beyond their ability to grant without starting again from the beginning. Source
This is a tough call. We want/need this hardware, and the software is tightly coupled with it.
I've installed nVidia's driver on many Linux architectures and haven't had any problem with their
certified drivers. I think nVidia will benefit by open-sourcing their driver, and eventually they will,
but they've no complaints from me.
I can understand how releasing the source could expose them at the hardware level and be copied by somebody.
But, their properitary driver works very well and I'm not sure with just the source, I could improve on it.
They're saying "providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms for all of our customers continues to be one of our key goals".
So, my interpretation of that is:
"If we released the drivers as open source, then people might figure out how to optimize and tune the Linux drivers. This could result in a better GPU experience on Linux than under Windows. That would embarrass us. To ensure a consistent experience across platforms, we therefore must prevent others from tinkering with the drivers, which mandates closed source."
Does anyone else read it that way?
It is positive sign that they care enough about the Linux community to bother to have their PR department give the usual empty corporate zero content response.
Linus should be sending Nvidia chocolates and flowers on the anniversary of Nvidia first Linux driver release. 3D / hardware acceleration on Linux was in a terrible state for a very long time. Open source drivers were going almost nowhere, and there was a very small number of cards on the market with "proper" support. Even if Nvidia opened up their full design so people could design open soruce drivers, those drivers would still be way behind where Nvidia is. Nvidia closed source drivers are certainly much easier to use and far more effective than the alternative for people that *gasp* want to use their PC and not make a statement about open source issues. I know a few people who only switched over to Linux (for good) after they got an Nvidia card and would be properly supported.
"@#%& you NVIDIA!"
"Nvidia compatible hardware accelerator detected. Enable Nouveau?" Yes No
90% of the code used in the Linux driver is shared with the Windows driver, that was a claim made by one of their developers on their forums I read a year or so ago. Open sourcing the code is out of the question as all of that code isn't just from internal employees, as getting everyone who has written lines of code to agree to their code being available under a open source licence would be a huge task. Documentation would be great, there's the issue of IP though there. To be fair to Nvidia, they actively support Linux, I've used their cards for years and have never had much of an issue, in the old days, it was just a matter of shutting X11 and running their installer, it built the kernel module and you were good to go. Nowadays every distro I've used has the packages ready out of the box. I think Linus pain comes simply from running pre release kernels and expecting them to be supported before their even released! Nvidia normally provide patches in these situations anyway so I don't understand what Linus really wants them to do.
This is why Linux will never be taken seriously.... The open source community as a whole lacks professionalism. The rant, which basically says that nVidia driver support was a pain and in the end result the drivers are not to par with Windows AND they are BLOBS. It is a childish rant coming from an old man in a professional environment.
People only buy nVidia GPUs to play games on them and it just so happens that 99% of the PC games are run off Windows, hence nVidia would happily support that platform. As for Linux... gaming on it is still in its infancy. nVidia has to spend real money (because time = money) to develop those drivers, of course they are going to release them as BLOBs, which is the root of the rant is coming from.
Hence the linux community lacks professionalism. Obviously nVidia and Linux developers can coordinate, but it's like having a down syndrom kid work with someone with aspergers - problems in communication will be abound.
Basically they're confirming Linus' words, not denying them. Linus never said that they don't make good drivers. He said that they suck at doing open source, which is an objective truth. Their response is that they do that because they don't want to invest resources to specifically support Linux. Which is exactly what Linus was upset about.
Let's take a user interface designed for music players and cell phones and inflict it on Desktop and Tablet users!
The reason why you don't see a lot of android devices is that driver updates from nvidia is really bad. A lot of andriod phones are stuck at 2.2/2.3 because the old drivers won't run on the new kernel. Nvidia isn't really interested in releasing updated drivers for these old chips. If you want ICS drivers, get tegra3.
If Nvidia wants their drivers to work with Wayland, they'll have to cooperate, since Wayland requires KMS to work. If Nvidia choose not to support Wayland, they'll lose customers.
I haven't had an NVIDIA driver work the same in Linux as it does in windows. Ever. Random screen blanking (nouveau driver), weird X errors (poly request too large or internal Xlib length error) and re-compiles every time there is a system kernel update. In comparison, all you need to do in Windows to get the NVIDIA driver working is hold down the enter key with a stapler while it's installing. Accept all the defaults. reboot. it's working.
At "the end of the day" this is not consistency, it's crapsistency.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
These days I have a GTX460 and I get tearing all the damn time. I have turned off compositing, I have turned it on, I have switched to xfce I have tried gnome3.
I hear the Open driver would fix this. If you can't even stop the tearing, then let someone else write your drivers.
Nvidia has surely wronged here, the angry hippie want's them to give THEIR source code for FREE. Nothing wrong with that eh?
I don't get it. It's their code, let them do whatever they wish with it, they paid money for making it.
Vote with your wallet and go by Amd chips, stop griefing over stupid things.
Open source software in general has (among others) some practical advantages:
With a closed source driver, those 2 options are thrown in the trash. This is especially important for hardware drivers, if there's no way to patch drivers to work with newer versions of an OS (or another OS), then no further driver releases basically means: "throw away your graphics card".
The net result may work fine for many people, but it tells me NVIDIA puts their roadmap before their user's roadmap(s). I read that as marketing, not user support.
ATI/AMD are the pathetic ones with the perpetually broken drivers, nVidia, with it's common platform and easy update (1 ring to rule them all) are not the worst by any means. Support nVidia.
So, maybe we could get Bay State voters interested in open other things?
Openly bashing NVIDIA for doing things their way is wrong, because it's their product, and, therefore, their decision.
I'd really love to see NVIDIA open their specs, but if they don't want to, they're not going to because they don't need to.
And I completely agree with this from a business perspective. It's easy to rant or cheer from the sidelines when you don't have a business to run. NVIDIA produces some of the best GPU architectures on the market, arguably the best in their industry, and I can understand that they would like to do everything they can to not lose their trade secrets. Especially with AMD not doing so great against Intel in the CPU market..
Since the purchase has been made, then NVidia has made their money. Since NVidia has already decided to write drivers for Linux, it only stands to reason that that NVidia is getting paid by another OS manufacturer to NOT open the API's or source code for optimizations, which is what I think several other posters have stated in so many words. And if I remember correctly, what is good for the goose, is good for the gander, so I would imagine that AMD/ATI is also getting paid, hence the same deal from both companies. Money talks, bullshit gets 2D.
Since I am a FreeBSD user this problem also occurs with...gasp...linux! As in companies and developers only support Linux versions of their software. I still build it myself when I can anyway. For instance I had to jump in with my own custom changes and make Bitcoin-QT build in qtcreator under FreeBSD 9.0 because it didn't "just work". So did I yell at the BitCoin devs for this or Nokia claiming they make the single worst IDE in the planet? Not really- in fact how I felt was that with all the advances with Linux its just so fragmented and the efforts behind it are so aloof and out for profit that they are now worse than microsoft and almost as bad as apple. Old age has made Linus very ornery and when it comes down to it kids its all about money. I would rather be able to "actually" compile everything from source than get linux binaries when a project is unable to be cross-compatible due to the "unholy mess" Linus has created. Time to get a new spokesman- when I read this I could have mistaken Linus for Ballmer there.
it's common for perfect chips to be marketed lower than what they can actually do.
You do realize that the whatsit where the defect is doesn't actually work, right?
For one thing, perfect chips get marked as defective if there aren't enough defective chips to meet the demand for low-end hardware. For another, there are probably only a small number of bins of numbers of defects. If there are models with 48, 64, and 96 working whatsits, and 63 of them work, it'll be sold as a 48, and drivers won't be able to use 15 of the working whatsits.
So ATi opens up, and the community COMPLETELY failed to deliver a usable solution. WTH should Nvidia care? The FOSS community has already shown that they can't do it. Mod me down if you want, but I speak the truth. We failed. As long as Nvidia continues to provide a driver that works, and works well (which it does), then I will always use Nvidia cards.
I have nothing clever to put here...
Yeah, sure, I guess they're right on that. Nvidia drivers have crashed my (now long gone) install of Vista and forced me to reinstall Linux Mint two times because both available proprietary drivers crashed the GUI, leaving me no access to my OS. Oh well, at least I didn't have much on there anyways.
Also, its the user choice to buy their cards or not.
What other choice is there for 3D graphics on a laptop, apart from Intel whose performance is perpetually 6 to 10 years behind?
Umm...What?
I haven't had any issues* with nouveau. If you need a compatitbility list, I've used it with a GT210, GT240, 9800GT, 6200, 7150, Quadro FX 1800, and currently a GTX 460 (can't recall if I ever used it with a Geforce 3). Usually I use Red Hat or Fedora, but I've not had issues with my cards when I've used Gentoo, Ubuntu, Debian or Slackware either.
*I preferred the nvidia driver when gaming under Linux, it provided much better 3D preformance. But, that was several years ago I must admit (Neverwinter Nights was the main game I was playing at the time).
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Apart from the video card issue, I hate auto makers for playing this game. Good for MA. They catch a lot of crap but this is good legislation. I hope other states follow their lead.
... is a access to the power-saving features. All he wants is access to the API, and how it runs, so his laptop won't suck. Even the closed source driver doesn't provide it on Linux.
Because, unless I have this "manufacturer" business thing all cockeyed, NVidia *sell* their hardware. He doesn't *sell* his bank account.
PS my PIN is 5014.
How much has that helped you?
I would buy a completely open computer. Open BIOS, open chip design, everything. Could someone explain to me why it doesn't exist yet? Let China manufacture it, and the F/OSS community provides the code. Is it simply because no free design exists?
The video card binary blobs are only half the concerns he voiced. The other problem is NVIDIA selling of massive numbers of undocumented Tegra chips to the Android market. Their refusal to provide documentation force the devices to get stuck on older releases such as 2.2 Froyo causing fragmentation. Just look at the Tegra 2 Harmony boards that are still only supported up to 2.2 through official channels even only months after their release. The official response from NVIDIA always seemed to be to get a newer by a couple months device with a Ventana board. Hobbyists have gotten most functionality to work all the way up to ICS through writing custom drivers and a lot of hard work. The work can and will be done by the community (saving NVIDIA time, work, and money) but they simply refuse to release important information such as the full VI/CSI interface. Their public TRM document the CSI interface but leave registers missing and doesn't even document all the CSI registers. Most times people request information from them through their forums or other channels the posts are DELETED or simply not answered. If they do not want to spend the money to support and update their product a couple months after release the community would be happy to do it for them with proper documentation. If you want to see and feel the pain of buying a NVIDIA product just look a some of the Notion Ink, GTablet, and other products that unfortunately thought including their board was a good idea.
Does that have any tearing?
I have a GTX460 and am getting terrible tearing. I never had that issue with my old 7600GT.
I haven't noticed any - but I'm generally not doing 3D stuff these days, and I'm not using Compiz (running MATE on Fedora 16, kernels 3.1 - 3.5rc have been fine). Is it constant or only under certain conditions?
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
I don't know.... Right now, I think both AMD and nVidia have pretty good handles on how to produce graphics boards consumers think are worthwhile. They could start copying every single innovation that each other formerly had as "company secrets", to the point where both brands of board performed absolutely identically in benchmark tests -- and STILL, I suspect they'd both sell about the same number of boards as before.
The real problem is, the marketplace has consolidated so much, you really only have these two companies as your choices for a 3D accelerated video chipset. Intel is trying to work their way in as a 3rd. player with accelerated, yet integrated, graphics chipsets -- but truthfully? I doubt they'll seriously chase after the high-performance graphics market in any serious way. For them, it's more lucrative to offer decent/usable levels of performance for the typical user and compete on having a lower price.
Once upon a time, we had choices from companies like Matrox, Diamond, Hercules, Trident .... Not so much anymore.
Everyone is upset NVIDIA doesn't give away all it's secrets. There hard earned property. that they built. Why not go the more open route and create one set of driver standards for video cards. VESA -- everyone knows the standard and its up to the manufacturer to optimize their side and on the consumer side you get what you asked for.
This is actually a battle over special features -- my hardware can do some pretty sweet stuff, but I wanna control how you can access that stuff. the concept from above still applies, but there is no incentive for the hardware designer to devote resources (people and the salaries they have to pay those people) to help you bang out that new framework.
I love open source, but it's built on peoples free time. Companies have to justify how something makes them money. Saying this will build product sales in a 10% market share is not enough. So come halfway and get the framework done and they will optimize their side. This is the best of both world I get a product and they stay behind their doors, but it's a blackbox I can use.
They all think there is secret sauce in their product with some genuine trade secret level information.
In reality, having seen the secret sauce from a 3rd party perspective a few times, it turns out that often times the competitor is doing it basically the same way. So the only people being hurt by not publishing the hardware specifications (as was the normal state of things until the late 1990's) are the hackers and budding engineers trying to make the product better in some way.
In the case of graphics companies, it seems they are somewhat justified for not releasing the source to the proprietary drivers, as that is such a huge part of their performance work (aka sometimes the games aren't faster because the hardware is faster, they are faster because the driver is using a better algorithm, or has more micro optimization). Not releasing the hardware specs is just silly, because at this point, a big portion of the graphics chips are understood well enough that releasing information on mode setting or shader setup is more like filling in the details, rather than giving away any secrets.
The Optimus stuff is a prime example, its basically just going to be information on enabling/disabling parts of the chip or setting power envelops for certain functions. The real secret sauce is how to use that information. I have a similar issue with my little NAS box at home based on a guru plug. Marvell claims to be open source friendly, and gives away specifications that look good until you actually try to do something like power down an unused sata port. Then your SOL without the NDA, because knowing the register which controls the power gating is some kind of secret....
Mostly, what is being hidden is the fact that the emperor has no cloths.
Well, here's my INcompatibility list:
Quadro FX 4500
Quadro FX 4600
Quadro FX 4800
Quadro FX 5800
GeForce 450 GTS
GeForce GTX 480
GeForce 9800 GT (Yes, despite being in your list, every time I've tried this machine with nouveau, it's been a blank screen.)
These are only the cards in the current machines I manage - there were several older ones that have been retired (and the Quadro FX 4500 machines are close to being retired as well) - The nouveau driver has not worked on any of them. The closest to a response is from the Quadro FX 4500, which gets a flickering blue rectangle on the screen. Everything else just shows a blank screen that then goes into power saving mode due to no signal. Swapping out to the bare bones vesa driver gives me working video, and downloading and installing the NVidia drivers gets full working video running. Most of these machines have been through Fedora, though the GTX 480 and the FX 4500s have been set up with Ubuntu and Debian as well, with exactly the same effectiveness from nouveau (ie: none). Every time I'm due for another install cycle I get told "Oh, you should try the nouveau driver - they've really improved it since last time!", and every time it continues to produce blank screens. (Better hardware acceleration for the blankness? Not sure what the improvement is here...)
NVIDIA assures us that 'at the end of the day, providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms
What's good enough for windows users, isn't good enough for linux users...
Linux users enjoy a host of benefits which windows users lack, and the nvidia binary drivers remove or restrict some of those.
Access to source code, to learn from or build upon.
Ability to debug problems with the os.
Ability to use a completely modular system, even so far as using a different type of processor architecture.
Ability to advance the os without being saddled with backwards compatibility baggage that plagues other systems (hence no driver abi as it would soon become limiting and start holding things back, even ms dropped their previous driver abi with vista).
Ability to use old hardware, long after the hardware manufacturer has given up supporting it.
A GUI system which is optional.
Many people choose to use linux specifically because it offers things that windows or macos don't, we don't want a "consistent" experience.
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Pretty much constant. I am not using Compiz either, XFCE on ubuntu. Supposedly I can almost fix it if I turn off compositing, then enable vsync and page flipping in nvidia-settings. Flash videos will still tear.
I am so glad that only one of my computers has an Nvidia card. I used to swear by them, but these days even fairly modern games will run on intel GPUs and I think I might just live with less shiny and convert over to them 100%.
It seems Linus' 2 word complaint was responded to in kind, albeit, in a more professional manner.
Far be it from me to dictate someone else's communication skills.
I'll just take it under advisement before I recommend to my clients that they enter into business relationships with people that throw public temper tantrums.
The year of the Linux desktop has been postponed while we re-evaluate our options. We're talking to Bill right now to confirm our market share figures, and will get back to you shortly.
BTW: if you don't like NVIDIA, feel FREE not to use them.
Linus Torvalds can criticize all he wants. It doesn't make him right, or certainly doesn't enable him to see more clearly.
Let me know when intel starts offering usable levels of performance. They just don't have it yet if you play anything more advanced than solitaire.
I am not sure this marketing spin will save nVidia's beacon on the HPC side, where they're about to get into an axe fight with Intel.
Intel Phi is not even really released, and already works with open drivers. Open high quality drivers are extremely important for long term support and long term flexibility, which are key decision points when acquiring HPC clusters. Phi already does much better than current nVidia and ATI offerings in both hardware *and* software.
I predict nVidia will see its share of the HPC market go down to the low single digits in about two years after Phi is in the market, and they'll be forced to release high quality open drivers for CUDA usage to reduce the damage.
Intel is trying to work their way in as a 3rd. player with accelerated, yet integrated, graphics chipsets -- but truthfully? I doubt they'll seriously chase after the high-performance graphics market in any serious way. For them, it's more lucrative to offer decent/usable levels of performance for the typical user and compete on having a lower price.
I think Intel would like to jump as high up that tree as possible, but it's not as easy as just saying it. You can bet they had bigger plans for Larrabee and whatnot than what became reality. Anyway, for at least another 1.5-2.5 years all games will continue to be designed to run well on 2005-2006 era hardware in the Xbox360/PS3 - the number of PC exclusives is getting slimmer and slimmer. The big question is when the 720/PS4 rolls around, if they set a new "low bar" for gaming performance but until then the more Intel can shrink the discrete graphics market the better for Intel.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Their 3D drivers may deliver superior performance (than nouveau). But their driver is a bad linux driver. It doesn't embrace linux specific technologies enough. Last time I checked it didn't play well with RANDR. Multi-Monitor and Ext Video support was horrible. KMS? Nope. 57 MB (!!!) package for a freaking driver? Check. Breaks suspend/resume? Course.
If that's what they call committment, then, yeah, fuck you nVidia.
Let me know when intel starts offering usable levels of performance. They just don't have it yet if you play anything more advanced than solitaire.
Hyperbole, much? That is so not true. It is (just barely) adequate to play that pinball game that comes with Windows...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
test
First off, Nvidia are buttheads. They are. But they also have a right to make money. Apple, EA games, Sony, Intel, and on an on - they all operate this way, as does 99% of business. Where Nvidia is wrong is, well, where can I go out and pay $5 or $10 for a driver from them that works? You see, part of it is that the companies say that they offer a proprietary driver but I can't actually go out and BUY it from them or obtain it from them.
But this brings up the other side of the dirty coin, as it were. That the Linux (in particular) community seems to have a major issue with paying for anything. I have zero issue with paying small fees. I do it all the time. I pay for my sandwich at lunch, my gas in my car, and well, pretty much everything in life. I just want a solution and to move on to the dozen other things that that I have to do during my day. So there's this great divide. They often don't even deal with issues or fix things at all, because it requires paying "the man" or using their code. ie - if it's not free and 100% open-source, we won't touch it at all.
It's just as bad as Windows. They have effectively decided that you're SOL and stuck with their vision of 100% free or it's impossible to obtain view of their OS (which while open-source, is controlled on most Distros by a group of whingey, anal buttheads that might as well be CEOs at a typical software company, since they control the project with an iron fist) And this filters down to the forums and "help" groups that are as useful as a wet rag most of the time. Yes, the people mean well, but it's always "just install this". Without any explanation or documentation. Instead of mentioning the exact codecs you need to buy, they just will say "there is no package for that". No link - it's this attitude that if it's not 100% free, we don't even mention it or link to it.
This idiocy is most apparent with "projects" like Wine. There has been a long-standing mouse driver issue that never gets discussed, fixed, or worked on. Because the code to make it work, is proprietary and there is no work-around (requires paying Microsoft a small fee, and their code is the only way to make it work properly). Cedega had a version of the driver that worked. Cedega went out of business, and as an end-user, stuff just stopped working a few months ago. The mouse driver(among other things like sound drivers and so on) and is effectively locked away as it's Cedega's proprietary (and legally protected) code. Wine won't release it.(yes, these are the same people) The official response over at Wine is "there is no fix". There is an actual fix, but they refuse to release it or make it available for a small fee.
They whine about everything having to be open-source to the point of acting like it's a holy war, and yet when there's money involved, the same people don't act any different than Nvidia.
Me, I just want to pay my fee and get on with my life.
Intel doesn't need to jump up as high - they already are the primary graphics in the vast majority of computers sold (heck, Apple might actually one of the few keeping Intel-only graphics down by shipping large quantities of computers with discrete GPUs - though,they also do ship plenty of Intel-graphics computers as well).
For Intel to go after the remaining percentage of people, it's going to require a much larger investment in resources just to get a little bit more marketshare.
Intel just needs to maintain marketshare - realizing fewer people play PC games, they concentrate on video so as long as they can do Blu-ray playback and handle Aero with some decency, the vast majority of consumer needs will be satisfied. Consumers looking for a gaming machine would pick up a discrete ATi/nVidia card anyhow.
but not everybody has the opinion that everything linux related must be open source
That's not the main concern about Nvidia. The problem is this part :
Basically the company replied they're committed to Linux using their proprietary driver that is largely common across platforms
When translating from PR-speak to geek-english : basically, they aren't writing specific Linux drivers, they are just recompiling the Windows, while throwing a crappy adaptation layer in the middle and completely ignoring any best practice, standard or newer technology developed for Linux. They are just doing things their own way and not playing nicely with the rest of the kernel, even if this behaviour is problematic. Even if kernel developers step in and try to collaborate. Nvidia prefers doing their own thing alone in their own way, until said way aren't able to work at all, in which case they have to be brought to the new standard while kicking and screaming.
Their driver fail to follow newer standarts like Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) (and thus can barf badly when switch consoles on some hardware configuration), or have finally taken up some other at glaciation-speed (XRandr, and that's after the latest XRandr standard was made so on purpose to make Nvidia's job easier).
Instead of playing nice with all the facilities in the kernel (for memory management, context switching and the like) they just use their own incomptible in-house implementation instead, which don't play nicely with the rest. Same also for their user space which doesn't play nicely with other drivers for other hardware (Intel's driver are written to take advantage of the Mesa (older) and Gallium3D (newer) stacks - but Nvidia's use their own solution which doesn't play along). As a result of this, there are several technologies which aren't supported under Linux, like Optimus (doesn't play nicely with the various facilities to switch GPU on and off, doesn't play nicely with the Intel drivers for the onboard GPU, doesn't play nicely with the facilities to redirect output from the discrete GPU through the onboard GPU to the ouput connected to the onboard only). Sometime this even results in complete failure to display anything (not just the power adjustment not working. But no working display at all).
This is while some of these facilities are even used by several other drivers, enabling even crazier use-cases: for example output 3D on an external USB screen, using the computer's internal GPU card for acceleration (as long as said card has a moden driver following said standard).
Even AMD/ATI is putting in more efforts to follow the Linux trends even though they also try to recycle as much work from their Windows Catalyst as possible (although they have a little bit lesser quality proprietary drivers).
Many developers complain with the "not playing nicely" behaviour of Nvidia regarding their drivers. Linus just happen to be less polite and more vocal about it, probably counting on the publicity stunt to attract attention on a problem which is hindering the kernel developer community.
This is far from "you're forced to open the source to your drivers". This is more "please stop ignoring what everyone else is doing in the kernel". Nvidia is simply refusing to collaborate with kernel developers.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Seriously, I don't see any point in anyone supporting that piece of crap. Every NVidia card I've ever tried it on has resulted in either a blank screen, or a flickering blue screen - this goes from older NVidia cards (which should be supported by now) right up to the latest new $2000+ cards - it works on nothing. Why do distributions even bundle it? All it does is make it difficult for people with NVidia cards to get their distro up and running, because first they have to deliberately disable the nouveau driver, force the system to use bare bones vesa, add the real driver manually, and then re-configure the system to use it. Not exactly "new user friendly" there.
Seriously distro maintainers - nouveau is a chunk of crap, dump it and you'll be making your distro easier to use for a lot of people. Even if you have NVidia cards all get sent to the low-res vesa driver by default, at least they'll be able to see things on their screens.
My experience is different. I just ran some tests on Ubuntu 12.04. Both Nouveau and Nvidia's own driver worked, the difference was thet Nouveau worked without screen glitches during video mode switches. There was no noticable difference when running Bzflag at max quality.
Windows 2000 was the last MS operating system to include that game.
You can copy over the files and have it run just fine on Win7, however. :)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Yeah, it's clearly the aliens teaming up with the Illuminati to suppress linux graphics drivers.
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Saying "at the end of the day, ..." makes everything better to me. It is corporate-speak that gives me the warm-and-fuzzies.
Did it occur to anyone that optimus (as written) won't work on Linux.
Well to be more precise, the way Nvidia does optimus in Windows won't work on Linux, and thus can't work with their strategy of "rebuild the same driver as on Windows and throw some shitty wrapper module in between".
Basically you have to have hardware carveout memory shared between the two graphics units (nvidia and intel integrated) and that memory model doesn't mesh with the linux driver memory model
Indeed. The linux kernel has a way to do such routing from card to card. It works. Even to the point that it's possible to do crazy stuff like ouput 3D on an external USB LCD display pannel, which was accelerated by the GPU card inside the computer (as long as the GPU card has an opensource drivers). There are even some prelimilinary support in GIT repositories to get the Nouveau drivers (done only by reverse engineering, without Nvidia help) to do exactly that: route the Nvidia's ouput through the onboard Intel GPU.
But no, Nvidia doesn't play nicely and collaborate with this technologies, they prefere to do their things their way even if it doesn't work for optimus.
(and maybe even the open source intel integrated driver).
Indeed, on Linux Intel officially use an opensource drivers which was written by Thungsten graphics and which runs on Mesa (for older hardware) or Gallium3D (for newer hardware). Nvidia doesn't want to spend the effort playing nicely with those.
Also you have to (virually) unplug the graphics which means state-save and state restore which isn't just limited to the graphics, but the PCIe hot-plug driver as well.
Tha'ts what "switheroo" is for and it works (although that a restart of the X server might be needed for now, Works on Wayland too). the PCIe hot-pluging has been present since long time in the Linux kernel (in fact, Linux tend to have more support for crazy attempts at hotplugin. Including bat shit crazy stuff like hot-plugin not electrically-hotpluggable interfaces like IDE, or even replacing live memory modules. Of course there's a risk of crashing a controller or frying electronics, but from the software side the abilities are here).
No doubt nvidia got these working on windows with great effort, but there's no such infrastructure in Linux to fit their driver into, and there's little incentive for nvidia to do this work {...} So if the linux community would just provide the infrastructure for Optimus for the nvidia driver,
There are the necessary infrastructures. They are currently used with more or less success for opensource drivers, including for Nouveau. It's just that Nvidia prefers doing things their way, which is among other using their own in-house facilities instead of playing along with what everybody else is doing and refuses to collaborate with kernel developers in order to find a solution to have support for what interface they need between the in-kernel facilities and their own driver.
This is really bad, because for some optimus configuration, this can mean no display AT ALL. (At least not without switching to Nouveau once the specifics get reverse engineered).
you might just see that feature pop-up in their closed source driver.
No, you won't. Because their official position is:
Basically the company replied they're committed to Linux using their proprietary driver that is largely common across platforms
Translating from PR-Speak to geek-english: they reuse their windows code as-is and only slap a crappy adaptor module in between. They prefere doing things their way, because it's easier for them, and don't want to play nicely and collaborate with kernel development to use the facilities that everyone else is using.
They might start to offer optimus, if there a too big buyer pressure on them, in which case, they'll jus
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
ECC memory
There is no actual ECC memory on the card. It's the same memory except that when the drivers are in Quadro mode, they reserve a part of the memory to hold checksum data. The end result is grossly the same (resistance against unreadable bits)
Appart from the separate 3D Stereo connector that some Quadro card have, there is no difference between Quadro and GeForce cards.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
As an exemple: take to cards.
- a GeForce
- and a Quadro with exactly the same hardware.
Under Linux, only the Quadro cards can do 3D stereo, because the API to do it under linux is through standard "stereo quad buffering" under OpenGL, and Nvidia has decided that their drivers will only enable setereo quad buffering with cards which report a "quadro" PCI ID.
Even if the hardware present on both cards is fully able to do 3D stereo, as proven by the Windows DirectX 3D driver able to run DX3D games in stereo 3D also with the GeForce card (well, as long as you get the exact perfect combination of Nvidia drivers and stereo drivers).
Thus if you need 3D stereo for anything beside 3D gaming (like for exemple, molecular modelling), you need to buy the more expensive Quadro card, because modelling software use the standard "stereo quad buffering" API in OpenGL, and not the proprietary Nvidia API in DirectX3D.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm going to third this opinion. I make my living writing and maintaining Linux-based 3D simulators for the FAA. We use only nVidia cards, and only the proprietary driver, as we just can't get the performance out of nouveau or ATI's joke of a driver.
Hell, I remember at my last job when we got our first 8800GTX, and the Windows driver was completely borked (couldn't disable vsync, control FSAA, anything), but the six month old Linux driver we were using gave us 150fps on a dual-channel setup to drive the HMD, right out of the box without any tweaking. nVidia's on the right track, their universal Linux driver is pretty much always fast and rock-solid.
That being said, I have a Radeon on my home PC (Windows box used for gaming), so I'm not using nVidia at work by choice. We don't have the luxury of choice.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Aside from how they are to work with and the proprietary driver, I have historically had much better success with NVIDIA under Linux than ATI (before AMD).
You can never use a new release of android until the manufacture releases its updated version that includes updated drivers.
This is the perfect example of the closed driver issue.
Do anything. They don't have to release specs or drivers for Linux at all. Of course it would be dumb of them to ignore that market space, but Tovalds needs to realize the entire world is not servicing his wang on his whim.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
"Let's see the open source keep up with the GL spec instead of holding the whole damn platform back in 2.0 land"
Normally, I wouldn't bother responding, because there is little chance that you will see this response. However, the above quote is important.
I will refer you to [Blythe2011] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15869-f11/www/lectures/blythe_compute.pdf
for an interesting critique on current 3D work.
And remember, the "radeon" driver supports R100 on up.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
since my old one was over heating. I'm not a gamer, I don't need a great spec. My first criterion was: ''Not Nnidia''. Quite simply: I don't want a kernel that is tainted. There are plenty of other cards to choose from.
They are probably worried that releasing low-level specifications for external driver writers would create the following burdens:
1. Answering inevitable questions related to those specs
2. Pressure to not change driver-visible behavior across generations
3. Dealing with the fallout from people using buggy drivers written by third parties--most of the anger will be directed at NVidia eventhough the real problem is that not everybody is qualified to write a tricky low-level driver.
Or just use the blob driver, which works fantastically. I really don't understand this whole concept of not using a working piece of software because it wasn't developed in a manner consistent with your religion.
Could they be going this route so that they can please Hollywood in the future? I admit I'm a little weak on knowledge about why they'd make a decision like this, but speculation is fun, and this notion fits the bill.
Get real. Should I direct my ire at a group which gives me software with source, for me to study, modify or distribute at will, only subject to the small restriction that I give as I get? Or to the group not giving me the source?
Sheesh.
For me it's: "Meh. I won't buy NVIDIA. I won't recommend them"
Why would nvidia support a hobbyist project that produces an consistently out dated and inferior driver?
I guess it might be fun. but at the end of the day it sounds like they would just end up with unhappy customers trying to use the wrong driver. And nvidia would have to wrestle control away from open source arm chair architects trying to design DRI/DRM layers for hardware that they do not understand. Given that a vendor knows more about the future architecture of their own products than an open source enthusiast, I see no reason to solve this particular problem democratically through the open source community.
Accept some tyranny and all will be well.
I've followed this topic for years and honestly, I don't think this is a problem anymore. Nouveau is making ridiculously fast progress on supporting modern cards and hardware features that I just don't see this as being a problem within 1-2 years. I think if people really want nvidia open source support they should just back the crap out of nouveau since they've almost got full support for all the cards anyway. I am much more interested in seeing nouveau complete 3d support across their cards rather than focus on peripheral things like Optimus. Considering that they don't have to implement OpenGL 4, and that that is where Gallium3d's devs are working I think the future of these drivers is looking pretty good.
All I can say is MY experience is their drivers have sucked. So much so that for my latest PC - I got an AMD Radeon Card instead. That has proven to be less hassle so far. To be honest - whilst I prefer Open Source... all i care about is it works well - and their drivers kept having little issues.... 3D mode wouldnt work or they wouldnt install right on ubuntu without extra fiddling etc etc...
They were a nightmare on Linux Mint.
And their decision means - issues are difficult to fix - SO THEY CHOOSE a path that makes things difficult for the community... and they poduce a crap product.
Im sorry... I choose to use another product. Im not a gamer. I dont need the best graphics card. I just want it to work....
Of course Nvidia would have to respond to Linus' comments and of course it would be pathetic (they don't have a lot to back them up). The fact is, Nvidia create various pieces of hardware and also provide closed-source drivers for some of that hardware and which is designed to hook into various versions of the Linux kernel. This can be great for some Linux users but is undeniably inferior to source code. Nvidia also don't even provide detailed specs for their hardware!
For people that don't really care about FLOSS but are happy to use cheaper and more reliable software where it's available, Linux and Nvidia can both be recommended. For people that do care about FLOSS Nvidia is a waste of time.
The problem right now is that people are throwing money at this "great" nVidia hardware when the reality is very different. Intel's graphics chipsets are comparable to nVidia on the low end and more than capable of meeting 95% of the world's computer using populations needs. Including the "techy" crowd. The idea you can't have a "high end" system without nVidia (not to say it isn't difficult to go high end without also getting nVidia as a consumer though) isn't true.
You can get "business class" laptops with as much as 16GB of ram, higher than 1280x768 screens, USB 3.0, and Intel HD graphics WITHOUT going nVidia or ATI. They are hard to find though. That said none of the current models are available without Microsoft Windows.
ThinkPenguin.com's working on releasing some more impressive models specification wise without nVidia or ATI graphics chipsets. I's not an easy task though given the lack of demand. More people need to be purchasing with freedom in mind if things are going to change for the better. Free software needs the money (ThinkPenguin donates a significant portion of its profits to free software development efforts too) and the demand needs to go up for free software compatible hardware to become a reality. All ThinkPenguin hardware is free software friendly- not just "open source" friendly. The problem right now is there are minimum quantities necessary for products to be cost effective at manufacturing or supporting and right now the support ain't that great because GNU/Linux users aren't spending money on freedom. Without that demand from companies like ThinkPenguin the chipset vendors (Atheros, Intel, etc) don't have an incentive to release the complete source code for newer chipsets or provide the specifications that Linus and the free software community need to provide adequate support.
Most mainstream manufacturers targeting Microsoft Windows/Apple expect people to want nVidia and ATI. These are known for being the "better" graphics chipsets. And in some respects it's better. Although it isn't better in all respects. ATI and nVidia are more power hungry. Intel's graphics are also better with video acceleration on GNU/Linux. There are other things Intel does better than nVidia and AMD.
In any case it is possible to design a model with support for 16GB, USB 3.0, and 1600x900 / 1920x1080 screens which use Intel graphics. Celvo is one of the few companies which actually does the manufacturing for laptop computers, there are 4-5 companies that actually manufacturer laptops, and none of which typical consumers would be aware of this. Companies like Dell, Lenovo, HP, and even Apple generally don't manufacture anything. These companies are just branding systems made by others. ThinkPenguin is working with Clevo to put together a model with a higher resolution screen 1600x900 +, 16GB of ram, USB 3.0, and Intel HD. The model ThinkPenguin.com ships may end up being without 16GB of ram depending. If that happens there may be a 1280x768 screen, USB 3.0, and 16GB ram in addition to the other. ThinkPenguin works with the companies who actually do the manufacturing to get GNU/Linux users the right hardware.
From what I've been told the availability of higher end models with Intel graphics chipsets will probably available in the September time frame. Until then you can still get laptops with some serious horsepower (i7, 8GB of ram, SSD, etc and of high quality).
Another thing to note is that most companies shipping Linux laptops don't really care if the product works later on. Or they don't know enough to realise the systems they sell suck. They are merely branding laptops without actually doing ANY work at all to make them GNU/Linux or free software friendly. Even utilising the right wireless chipsets is too much work. Despite this being easy to do so it's all about marketing for them. Part of this is because many of them aren't building the systems themselves and aren't offering any real support. They simply have hired a third party to do it and pocket the profits. They aren't
I think Linus was being a bit hard on them. They have the best video drivers out of the video bunch, so i'm sure they want to keep some things in-house. But at the end of the day, any linux box i've ran with an nvidia card inside has worked very well and accelerated by using those drivers, I've never really had a problem getting stuff to work and they have a pretty useful config tool, even some multimonitor hacks so we can have a better experience. This is what I run at home and at work. I know linus wants everything in the kernel and free and open as do I, but seeing how they actively keep their own stuff up to date I don't see this as a really big issue.
I'll just be thankful I can game under Linux at all.
Every trollism an AC posts is prefixed, in my mind, with "A. Coward whined, in a weak and cowardly voice:"
just watch me...
Kensington and Logitech for not supporting trackballs in *nix
NVIDIA as per Linus's remarks
Since for the most part, my computer - to me- is my screen and my input devices , I'd say there is basically a deliberate and con$scious effort to starve *nix of a decent user experience and that such concerted effort is probably not coincidental or driven even by market forces, seeing as the implied beneficiary of such a "starve the beast" approach is clearly micro$soft who has been caught, tried and convicted in a court of law of just exactly the tactic of wielding it monopoly power in order to effect "starve the competition from access to users":
For those too young for the events to have been contemporary and in personal memory, the BBC tells it like it is:
From Judge Jackson's Finds of Fact regarding micro$oft's coercive practices:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/business/2000/microsoft/700702.stm
. The OEM Channel
With respect to OEMs, Microsoft's campaign proceeded on three fronts.
First, Microsoft bound Internet Explorer to Windows with contractual and, later, technological shackles in order to ensure the prominent (and ultimately permanent) presence of Internet Explorer on every Windows user's PC system, and to increase the costs attendant to installing and using Navigator on any PCs running Windows.
Second, Microsoft imposed stringent limits on the freedom of OEMs to reconfigure or modify Windows 95 and Windows 98 in ways that might enable OEMs to generate usage for Navigator in spite of the contractual and technological devices that Microsoft had employed to bind Internet Explorer to Windows.
Finally, Microsoft used incentives and threats to induce especially important OEMs to design their distributional, promotional and technical efforts to favor Internet Explorer to the exclusion of Navigator.
Microsoft's actions increased the likelihood that pre-installation of Navigator onto Windows would cause user confusion and system degradation, and therefore lead to higher support costs and reduced sales for the OEMs.
Internet Explorer is not demonstrably the current "best of breed" Web browser, nor is it likely to be so at any time in the immediate future
Not willing to take actions that would jeopardize their already slender profit margins, OEMs felt compelled by Microsoft's actions to reduce drastically their distribution and promotion of Navigator.
The substantial inducements that Microsoft held out to the largest OEMs only further reduced the distribution and promotion of Navigator in the OEM channel
The response of OEMs to Microsoft's efforts had a dramatic, negative impact on Navigator's usage share.
The drop in usage share, in turn, has prevented Navigator from being the vehicle to open the relevant market to competition on the merits.
2. Maintenance of Monopoly Power by Anticompetitive Means
...
Microsoft early on recognized middleware as the Trojan horse that, once having, in effect, infiltrated the applications barrier, could enable rival operating systems to enter the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems unimpeded.
Middleware [like Netscape's browser] threatened to demolish Microsoft's coveted monopoly power
Simply put, middleware threatened to demolish Microsoft's coveted monopoly power. Alerted to the threat, Microsoft strove over a period of approximately four years to prevent middleware technologies from fostering the development of enough full-featured, cross-platform applications to erode the applications barrier.
Microsoft's campaign succeeded in preventing - for several years, and perhaps permanently - Navigator and Java from fulfilling their potential to open the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems to competition on the m
Just buy AMD hardware instead. It's a better investment for the future, as once OSS driver support is complete, you will be able to use it regardless of what happens to AMD.
I know, I know, this implies that you won't just-be-upgrading-again-next-year-so-why-bother, but the way performance is currently going, it no longer really matters much.
Smarter software is more important.
Less power use is more important.
Peak specs just haven't been a market driver for a few years now. We got "fast enough", "enough memory", etc.
The applications just can't use more. Lower power, lighter weight and longer battery life have been the main things.
4 GiB ought to be enough for anybody. And often is. How often do you ever have more than that allocated and actually used, rather than just being used for buffers that *maybe* help performance a little here and there? How many games require more than that to run at all? How much difference in performance of games is there between systems running 8 GiB and 16 GiB? Sure, it gives you something to brag about, but do you really need it?
How much of a difference does that jump from 2 GiB to 3 GiB on video memory make?
Now if we jump to retina display resolution then that isn't true - but there's no level beyond retina display.
An improvement of resolution beyond that point simply makes no difference at all, that's the point of a retina display. You just start getting physically bigger, and/or enable a closer focal length.
proper, working, non-tiring VR will take over soon and eliminate even big high resolution displays. Our eyes simply don't have all that much actual retinal resolution anyway. With low-latency VR incorporating gaze tracking and dynamic resolution (as well as tracking focal plane depth per eye as well) computational requirements will actually *drop*. Since only what you're looking at directly need be rendered in high resolution. Carmack is already looking into this.
So then what you will *need* will be a video card with at least two outputs, and a couple orders of magnitude *less* performance than the top end of today. So, why upgrade?
So are NVIDIA in the wrong here?
Hell yes they are, they're not following scientific practice, and are therefore not following engineering practice, and are therefore negligent in their mandated responsibility to their customers.
Sure we've let a lot of companies get away with doing this for a long time now, but just because a practice is common, doesn't excuse it from being *wrong*. Ultimately it ought to be stopped.
Delete patent law! Registering source design documents should be the function of the people currently in the patent office. We should be requiring the source code to all sold items.
We should be requiring that so that it can be confirmed that their engineering is in fact competent to the standards at the time of the design. We should be requiring all hardware to be open source in this fashion so that it is always possible to repair the things that we own, rather than continuing the wasteful and unsustainable "disposable" culture that we have. Such wastefulness ultimately hurts us all - the energy wasted can never be used again, it's entropy never naturally decreases. Once energy has been made to do work, that's it! For all time!
Economically, practical market systems are unable to optimize for efficiency by themselves. It's just something they cannot do, and this is known as a mathematical proof!
Fix things as above, and the increase in efficiency will soon impact an increase in overall economic growth, and *everyone* benefits. Those who have "given away their competitive advantage" will end up richer too!
Science and engineering only work because science is exactly "open source". That science itself isn't publishing all the source details and data freely anymore means that science itself as a culture has become corrupt. Hell, ever try to read an ISO standard online lately? These standards often are legislated into legal req
When I was a kid, I programmed games and demos on Commodore AMIGA.
When I saw a special effect or a technique in another game that I liked and could not find documentation on it, I just lauched my debugger and looked at the assembler code to see how they did it, try to understand it and then do the same, but better and faster. And by looking for the PUSH's and POP's you could even guess what Pascal or C functions were originally used. Something bothered me ? (like a life counter in a game) Just change it...
If you know a bit of assembler, closed source doesn't exist.