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Free Software NVIDIA Driver Now Supports 3D Acceleration With All GeForce GPUs
aloniv writes "The reverse-engineered free/libre and open source driver for NVIDIA cards Nouveau has reached another milestone. 'The Nouveau driver in the current Linux 3.8 development branch has recently acquired everything that's necessary to support the 3D acceleration features of any GeForce graphics hardware. Together with a current version of libdrm and the Nouveau 3D driver in Mesa 3D 9.0, this allows Linux applications to use 3D acceleration even with the most recent GeForce graphics cards."
Now people can stop bitching about how "free" a driver is and just concentrate on how well it works.
Thank you Linux community!! and nVidia disappointed me...
Next step: CUDA?
Anything beyond bumblebee and primus?
I'd never buy a system with NVIDIA graphics even though I support the nouveau projects efforts. The problem is NVIDIA doesn't cooperate with the nouveau project and has provided little to no support for it. I'm not going the ATI path though. AMD just pulls the cloth over your eyes to what is really going on. Good PR is not good enough for this user. AMD doesn't provide sufficient documentation to produce a completely free solution.
Which means that right now Intel's graphics (except for the PowerVR based stuff which is actually third party) are the only good option. And before you go on about what crap Intel's graphics are they have significantly improved from years past and have some of the best support. The Intel drivers even support features the proprietary graphics drivers are lacking from NVIDIA/ATI. So depending on what you really care about Intel's the best bet. The game developers are even tailing to the code because they can (since the drivers are completely free) which has produced a significant boost in performance for some games.
NVIDIA provides binary with the latest features and works great. No need for some confusing drivers.
Or just use hardware that works with a modern OS.
That would make switching from your current OS to a modern OS far more expensive.
Even the TNT2? TNT? Vanta? RIVA128? NV1?
NVIDIA provides binary with the latest features and works great.
Not all platforms treat graphics drivers as user-installable packages. For example, good luck extracting this binary from a particular version of Android in order to use it with an AOSP build for a given device.
This article's summary pretty much sums up why I still have no interest in Linux as a desktop OS.
"The latest modifications should allow the Nouveau driver to support the acceleration features of any current GeForce chip." ..cause all real Linux users only use new hardware, I guess.
I could care less the heritage of a piece of software, as long as it functions correctly. Im a big fan of using the best tool for the job
Until what used to be the best tool for the job suddenly becomes unusable. If, for example, you have found the best tool for the job to be Windows XP, that'll more likely than not become vulnerable to remote exploits by the end of April 2014, soon after Microsoft pushes out the final Patch Tuesday for that platform. A user of free software, on the other hand, is free to hire anybody to continue maintaining the best tool for the job.
still no reliable optimus support
I mean, it is. No snarky comment here. I like and support this.
What REALLY, REALLY needs to happen now to make people switch over in droves is 1:1 game support. If it runs in windows, it should run as well or at least 90% as well in linux.
I know, beating a dead horse, but I figured I'd say it.
I will put a cuddly baby penguin into a wood chipper every day until FreeBSD x11-drivers/xf86-video-nouveau catches up to Linux! ::evil laugh:: ... ::cry::
--libman
Let me start by saying this is good news. I don't have an Nvidia card, but I like to have the option of getting one and have it be supported by Free software.
Having said that, the article is light on details. How well do the features work? Does anything that works with the Free drivers for AMD or Intel now also work with Nvidia? How does the feature set compare with the closed-source Nvidia driver? How does performance compare?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The reason these FOSS drivers are crap is because NVIDIA doesn't cooperate and it requires significant resources to reverse engineer. If you asked me I'd say the NVIDIA cards are defective. They simply don't work without a bunch of fiddling around. That's not how Linux and free software systems work and if your not going to cooperate than why bother? If your going to give me Microsoft Windows I might as well use Microsoft Windows. I don't want that and I won't buy cards with NVIDIA chipsets. FOSS drivers are always the better choice when all other things are equal.
Unlike Nvidia, Nouveau supports Framebuffer and KMS (Kernel Mode Setting). Since XBMC requires it, Nouveau is your best and only option for setting up a Media PC \ Streamer from leftover hardware laying around.
Also, if you're running an X-less server, then you get to have Full-HD terminals which is REALLY nice and useful.
Then you'd not have different goals and needs than the company.
However, most other people prefer at least the illusion of free will.
You, on the other hand, seem to be very open about how weak your will is. Well done.
Re-clocking does not work, which means the GPU core and memory runs at the default frequncy which it gets at boot up which is underclocked.
So the performance is slow. So re-clocking needs to be fixed and implemented. But for that to be done, there needs to be proper fan control support first.
Also, OpenGL 4 does not work. Some parts of OpenGL 3 might be implemented, but not all.
Not all games work properly, such as Warsow, Reaction, etc which suffer from rendering artifacts. But Portal 2 does work though.
Is there any support for media playback acceleration? That's the one thing keeping me with the nVidia driver for my MythTV system.
This is likely to be perceived as trolling, but I'd honestly like to know: why are free 3D accelerator drivers so important? The OSS community has proven to be utterly incapable of developing or contributing to such projects in any meaningful capacity, so what's the point? The argument I frequently see is that this is the fault of the GPU manufacturers for not supporting OSS devs, but if said devs need their hand held every step of the way, what makes people think they can produce a worthwhile, production driver? What's wrong with a high quality propriety blob developed by experts that actually know what they're doing?
One of the problems with the official binary driver is that it only supports x86. With an open source driver, there's no reason you can't use it on any architecture out there. There might be some people interested in PCI cards on PowerPC, but the big interest here is with ARM-based systems.
Steam.
Buanzo Consulting - 15 Years of GNU/Linux experience, for you.
Is that an attempt at not upsetting our sentimental FSF/GNU friends?
There's the "legacy driver" you can download which I use on a couple of old desktop machines in the office that have AGP Nvidia Geforce cards and one with a PCI card as well (actually newer than the AGP cards, but still getting on a bit). Changelogs show Nvidia still fix bugs in the "legacy driver" or make some sort of change every few months so it's not abandonware.
I suspect you've bought new cards the same reason the rest of us do - more shiny features or dying fans
linux devs as well. The constant api/abi churn on linux hasn't helped drivers stabilize, and combined with the recent dropping of i386 and assorted drivers (not a huge deal since userspace hasn't supported i386 since glibc 2.2.5, which you can't run udev and company against anyways!), despite some legacy items just popping in (notably a new hopefully functional zenith znote driver for the 82593, as well as a framebuffer driver for the i740 gpu, right as support for anything pre-r100/i830/nouveau is dropped from mesa. Nevermind removing probe support for vga text console modes even on hardware too old to provide framebuffer text consoles at acceptable speeds).
The problems regarding driver reliability, functionality, stability, and forwards and backwards compatibility are blamable on the devs, the manufacturers, the legal infrastructure surround tech, as well as the users for tolerating it year after year as hardware becomes less and less accessable to the common man. My C64 come with complete hardware schematics, documentation on instruction sets for almost every user accessable chip inside it, as well being built for service by any respectable techie.
Can you name a current piece of your hardware for which you can say the same?
Annoyingly, Mint now uses nouveau by default. On all 3 of my nvidia-based PCs Noveau causes a hard lock up within a few seconds of the window manager starting up. One of my PCs has a GTX 580 another has a gt 520, and the 3rd is a laoptop with an older nvidia mbedded chipset, so I've given it a good range of GPU ages/levels to work on but it fails on all 3.
All problems go away immediately I replace nouveau with nvidia's binary blob driver.
Its even more of a bitch if you want to install Mint Debian because the installer locks up hard (before you can even get a shell up to uninstall nouveau). They've annoyingly also removed any non-graphical install options from the grub menu.
The net effect is you cant install Mint Debian on any nvida-based platform as there's no way to avoid nouveau getting started at boot and locking up the box well before the desktop runs.
I guess I could have hand-customised the installer ISO image to use nvidia instead of nouveau, then burnt another CD but I simply ran out of patience.