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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.
3. PROFIT!
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.
"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.
what!? Did you even read their statement?
3) We are a very active participant in the ARM Linux kernel. For the latest 3.4 ARM kernel – the next-gen kernel to be used on future Linux, Android, and Chrome distributions – NVIDIA ranks second in terms of total lines changed and fourth in terms of number of changesets for all employers or organizations.
(emphasis mine)
Unless you yourself are even more active in Linux then they are, it would be more appropriate for them to say to you ... Fuck You.
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.
1. is correct.
2. Is not. nVidia is spending time and money to write Linux drivers. They actually work pretty well. If they where going to say Fuck Linux then they wouldn't provide drivers.
Let's be honest about what the FOSS community wants. They want nVidia to keep writing the drivers and make them open source. But hey if you still want to stick with the party line of "If you provide the documentation the community will write the drivers for you" then buy AMD/ATI video cards and stop complaining about nVidia. Vote with your wallet.
AKA
2. We will do things the way we think is best if you do not like it then go somewhere else.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
One must be mindful that these offers were all carrot and no stick. The developers came with a plausible story: we have experience and insight into the big company's software, as many of us came from there. We know how to pass validation. We have the inside track to getting on the CD, and can speed your way to market. We can use our secret ways to optimize it because we have special insight we can't share even with you. All we ask (other than pay) is that the interfaces become private between us. We will help you develop your hardware so that the hardware interfaces presented are optimal for interfacing with the software, and we don't want to share that work with others for no pay, which is fair, right? They had good stuff to offer too: the benefits of some deep research into compositing that the hardware vendors couln't get some other way - but it always came with this catch. And it seemed like such a little catch at the time since there were no credible challengers to the big company's ware. And it seemed quite reasonable to work together and not share with outsiders. But the devil is in the details.
Only rarely would the stick come out, in reference to some other company: "oh, that seems to be a smart way to think. So-and-so thought so." So-and-so being a dead company who failed to come around to the "right" way of thinking. The threat implied was never stated outright.
Later, when hardware vendors want more, they get more committed. Implement that new hardware feature in the OS game engine rendering interface? Sure.. but there's more cost than just money. Want the standard user interface to leverage high-end blurring, transparency and shadow features... sure.. but how that works has to remain private between us. That requires a specially committed level of partnership. Along the way there were more patents to incorporate and license, and a stronger bond to build until the hardware manufacturer is committed to the big vendor's software and none other - in a way they can't be free of even if they want to be. These aren't just patents and copyrights: they're trade secrets too, and those are immortal. Each is as much to blame as the other, as they used each other to mutual advantage. There's enough dirt in there to get mud all over everybody and nobody wants that.
Every now and then some PFY trying to implement a feature for X will call up the hardware vendor hoping for some help. "So I've got some app in the debugger, and I can see it load a texture in the buffer and trigger the interrupt that submits it to your hardware. But there are mode-setting things in here that have been deserialized and I can't see which one goes first, or the right grammar for the call so when it doesn't crash it looks like crap. Throw me a bone. Feed me just a tiny little hint please, I'm dying here." These calls used to be fielded by actual developers who might be conflicted and want to say the easy truth but would instead give the same bored answer every time: "sorry, but that's a trade secret." And never would they say the big secret: "and it's not our trade secret so we'll never be able to answer these questions." Now it's probably handled by some flunky in Bangalore who couldn't give the right answer if he wanted to. It might as well be a recording - but they still want to pretend that they care.
This is all in the desktop and laptop arena of course. Servers are different. The big software company didn't have tyranny over server vendors like they did over desktops. Servers had to support Unix at first, and then Novell, and then Linux - to the point where no server company could survive or even be taken seriously with servers that could only run the big company's software - though they did try, notably with Broadcom network chipsets. The special features of the software/hardware interface just weren't as important in servers. Now in servers we have virtualization and the danger is pretty much passed. For some years when people wanted to run desktop software that was not based on the big company's ware they bought
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.
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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.
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.
So, maybe we could get Bay State voters interested in open other things?
Yeah, you're right, who's this Linux Torvalds to judge who contributes to the Linux kernel and who doesn't.
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..
People only buy nVidia GPUs to play games on them
That's not true at all.
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.
As a former NVIDIA buy and a long time AMD owner I must respond to your ignorance AC. AMD over the last 2 years have release drivers as stable as I've ever had. Even better than NVIDIA's. Oh and they have community support for Linux with specs that they are willing to share. But go on with your ignorant bashing of a quality company with very strong cost effective products.
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?
Or the could sneak some ABI into the Linux kenel allowing them to continue using blobs as they do today.
Does that have any tearing?
I have a GTX460 and am getting terrible tearing. I never had that issue with my old 7600GT.
Whoops, s/Linux/Linus
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.
It doesn't exist because that would mean the it would be easily copyable...and we don't the other kids playing in our sandbox, do we?
On a more serious note, the problem in this case is the market. Why should I spend much money on inventing something, just to give it to everyone basically free of charge. Sure, that is how FLOSS works, but that is only *very* slowly adopted around the rest of the world.
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%.
And what do you just think, why is Linux gaming in its infancy still? Think about it while you re-read your own post.
I remember when NVIDIA came to our gaming studio, trying to sell their shit, with the promise that they make our game work better with driver updates. Of course, for some money. That means anti-competition behaviour that is tolerated in the name of IP.
It makes the Linux and open source communities look bad when the man who has essentially become the face of it all is publicly throwing childish profanities at a major company for not offering software to Linux users in the way that he thinks they should. If we want help from other hardware manufacturers down the road then we should at least appear somewhat civilized. I enjoy using Linux but don't appreciate that this is how my best interests are being represented.
It's enough of a miracle that nVidia has thrown a bone to Linux users at all. I have always appreciated that they have taken the time and effort to make Windows alternatives more viable. I would really rather not bite that hand...
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Linus has repeatedly said he prefers FOSS but is OK with blobs when they do their task.
In this particular interview he was complaining about nVidia's refusal to cooperate on an Optimus solution, something nVidia conveniently omitted from their 'reply'.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Linus Torvalds can criticize all he wants. It doesn't make him right, or certainly doesn't enable him to see more clearly.
It's certainly not impossible to do, but there's a huge difficulty. Computer architectures today involve a lot different bits and pieces from different manufacturers. To get all the pieces from completely new manufacturers who are willing to give all the specs, I mean, ALL THE SPECS is pretty hard given that most of the existing companies are involved in some market distorting practices, such as patents, holding back the manuals, and copyright and other bullshit.
Even worse, because we already have a billion-magnitude user base who have gadgets and computers based on standards which come these dodgy practices, a completely new architecture would be doomed to fail because the market is saturated in terms of available options that consumers are willing to choose. You have to serve millions of legacy apps and if the new brand fails any of that, the system will not last long. I mean, you can see here and elsewhere that the consumer culture of technology is deliberately was kept in the dark, and now the darkness dictates not any rational sense. So, when somebody considers a new phone, don't give a shit about the actual technical issues or the software maintainability on the really long run, only the cool factor and the possibility of running the Angry Birds. Symptomatic to our age, the consumer age, where everything made for throwing away in order to generate false growth. Anyway, a completely open architecture would be enormous advance in our life time, but it must measure up to the currently existing technologies right away, or will phase out without a trace.
There's what they say... And then there's the code.
If they're really contributing as much as they claim, then why is the mainline cpuidle support for Tegra in 3.4 so piss-poor compared to that of their own forked 2.6.36 branch? Where's the documentation on their CPU's idle/power management capabilities? Why is the Tegra code so badly branched that devices running Android 4.0 on Tegra are running 2.6.39 instead of the officially recommended 3.0.8?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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.'"
NVIDIA ranks second in terms of total lines changed and fourth in terms of number of changesets for all employers or organizations.
This doesn't mean they are second in total lines changed, it means they are second in one particular branch of the kernel, and of all the Android graphics drivers, Tegra is also second to the Qualcomm chipset in giving me the most trouble. So their 'second number of changes' is probably just a bunch of bug fixes.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
Linus didn't take the perfect poilitical road. Nvidia, in their statement, did. The thing is Linus was complaining about some very real problems, while Nvidia's statement was void of any substance on the matter. And I'll take childish profanities over neglect, suspicion and condescension any day.
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
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.
Or we could look to the present when the open source ATI drivers are more than good enough for most users.
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.
Nobody wants their code. We want specs. Some of us think that if we buy a video card, we should be told how to operate it with a program we write. This was the industry norm in the MS-DOS days.
Vote with your wallet and go by Amd chips, stop griefing over stupid things.
I agree.
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
The reason NVIDIA originally started supporting Linux, and why the continue to do so, is simple, it does so to sell graphics cards to large 3d graphics, animations, video effects and similar studios. They are also happy to sell Tesla cards to the same for backend render farms. Nvidia contributed immensely to the use of Linux in DCC, something that it does not usually get any credit for.
This is the core segment of business in Linux for Nvidia, and why the drivers exist at all. Without DCC, Nvidia would not bother to consider Linux at all. On the other side of the coin, the people doing DCC need more than a driver - they need a full OpenGL implementation. One that is as fast and complete as as on other platforms. So how this really is step-by step (for NVIDIA) is:
1. Make OpenGL driver + library that runs on Linux and is as good as competition, but runs on cheaper hardware
2. Kill off Unix Workstations
3. Sell people more of your cards
4. Profit!
5. Sell people the next generation of your cards, making sure the driver + libraries combination is at least as good as any other platform provides
6. Profit!
7. Keep doing it and getting profit
But this only works if you have both the library and the driver. If you buy the card, you also buy the right to run software that ... makes rather expensive software you buy from Autodesk work. The fact that you can download the driver + library from the web and use it on a system that doesn't run any real 3d design software is simply Nvidia being nice.
Unfortunately, Slashdot seems to have degenerated to the point where few posters have a clear idea what they are posting about, never mind seeing the bigger picture.
X applications are already running on Wayland now. It's an X server called xwayland.
Ummm, yeah. ATI binary blob quite often kills suspend-to-RAM ( won't wake up properly - this HAS gotten better in the last years but isn't 100% yet), often ( in my experience ) hangs on logout - requiring you to set the option to kill and restart Xorg in the KDM / GDM config file, multi monitor ( plug and play ) on laptops is hit or miss... when it works it works, when it doesn't it is quite ugly. Not to mention ATI / AMD _could_ have just gone and used the VDPAU interface for shader decoding, but that is "EWWW NVidia supported" so lets go re-invent the wheel by adapting some obscure X extension ( making VA-API) instead of using the stable tested working API extensions that are already there...
The FOSS radeon driver is much improved I will admit. Not suitable for gaming quite yet, but it is generally stable and has enough oomph to run light to midweight 3D acceleration. I use it on my ATI carded laptops over the blob driver just because it has better sleep support.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
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.
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.
Huh. Didn't know that Linus had written a Linus kernel as well as the Linux kernel.
Gotta be careful with those regexes! :)
There was no /g ;)
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