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72 Comments
- sirhomer, on 10/10/2007, -2/+30The Nvidia binary drivers are free of charge.
- schestowitz, on 10/10/2007, -3/+28That's truly what is needed. NVIDIA ought to **invest** in such projects because it makes NVIDIA cards more attractive to its prospective buyer. Those who prefer the blob, well, fine for them... but at least give them choice to see the code if they wish. That's where Nouveau comes in.
- h0ly, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12It's not just principles. One day you may be stuck with an old Nvidia card, and the open source driver will still work for you, no matter which version of Linux you may be running at the time.
The binary blob on the other hand may be discontinued, and won't have any bugfixes. - MikeZila, on 10/10/2007, -6/+14I agree. It's not like you haven't already given them your money. You've paid for the card, and as part of that purchase, you paid for a well developed driver, that is provided to you free of charge. Why do you need to be able to alter the driver? It's being developed by the company that created the video card, they know more about the hardware than you ever will. Their driver is the best one. I could see if it was really ***** (ala ATi) but it's not. The nVidia Linux driver works great, has a great easy to use installer, and requires almost zero configuration.
People are just bitchy. - h0ly, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6The thing is, you can't really predict the future. Linux is always changing. The API may change.
Even if the open source drivers officialy drop support, you can still hack away with it. - ucg1, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6No. Its not anywhere near supporting compiz fusion from what I gather.
- Giga, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4"you paid for a well developed driver, that is provided to you free of charge"
Make up your mind. Was it free, or did you pay for it? - strabes, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4"Besides, you pay for the video card. Aren't they suppose to provide drivers that work under it?"
Tell that to ATI. - Outdoor83, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Um, what? It's not illegal to do anything of the sort. When you buy it, it's yours (unless it's DRM'd, and that's a different story). You're not buying a license to use the card, you're buying THE CARD. You can do whatever you want with it. If you know how to solder junk on it to make it 1000% faster, more power to you.
- Megatog615, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I think it's cool how they can potentially enable things that are only available on Quadro cards and such(but are available on other cards but not enabled through software).
- Tenoq, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Releasing the information required would mean revealing all aspects of the hardware's design (read: trade secrets). If nVidia did this, they would be giving competitors easy access to any technological advancements and improvements that nVidia made (and put significant R&D into).
- teknomunk, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3It's already in the works: http://wiki.opengraphics.org/tiki-index.php
- Blazeix, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4There are a few reasons why this is good. There is the whole free software ideology which, while nice, your average user won't care about. The reason that most users care about it is because, if it's open source, everyone knows what interfaces are involved, This means that updates to code won't randomly break things (A relatively recent Xorg breakage comes to mind), and we won't have unknown security vulnerabilities (there have been a few of these in the last couple months).
- strabes, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Actually it's already "happening" for me and millions of other users around the globe.
- questionable, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Why would your video card drivers call home? You already bought the hardware to use the drivers.
- jacquesm, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2***** that. if the hardware can do it you've already paid for it so why not use it to it's full extent ? I had (in a gray past) a dragon 32, found out that it really had 64 K of ram and a buddy of mine hacked a little bit of code to copy the rom to the ram, presto 64 K. According to you that was theft ???
- giddytonk, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3This is good and bad. Good that there will be drivers for Linux. Bad, as this may set a precedent, and NoVidia wont produce any drivers because they know the open source community will do it. Maybe other manufacturers will have the same way of thinking (?) as well.
- thrallie, on 10/10/2007, -6/+8Do it for ATI too!
- Tenoq, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3They do NOT work perfectly. The latest ones don't work at all with Compiz Fusion & Xinerama dual screens. I've made optimisation after optimisation to the damn xorg.conf, and still can't get it to work. I can either rollback to old drivers or ditch one of my screens. Stupid.
- gullevek, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4The binary unfree "evil" drivers from nvidia are an example how good drivers can be. They work, pefect. Plus the nvidia settings tool works too, perfect. I never had an dual screen X running as fast as with the nvidia binary drivers. So why should I (as an enduser and long after my "all has to be free period") use those then?
- maz2331, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2The ABIs change frequently requiring at least a recompile of the driver, and manufacturers are often way behind. Also, manufacturers don't always maintain drivers for old models. So, yes, it is important.
Generally, with the kernel, all drivers are maintained by the kernel developers in perpetuity once incorporated into the "mainline" kernel distribution. I've had lots of problems with binary drivers, but never with the open source ones once they hit "release" status.
I have some hardware that I just can't use effectively with Linux since there's either no driver or the manufacturer is still shipping one for Red Hat 7.3 -- like five years old and won't work with any newer distro. - arrenlex, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2It's done and it's in much better shape. The "radeon" free driver (which is probably already available on your system) gives 3D acceleration for a lot of older ATI cards. I use it myself on my X300 and it works fine for me.
- Werrismys, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2This is one crappily written drunken note but lemme submit it anyway.
Summary: Everything closed and proprietary automatically is NOT OK.
It's not only about "violating our free software philosophies" it's the fact that these drivers, NV, and especially ATI, suck much ass.
They're dead from the get-go because they are proprietary but they fail spectacularly on nearly all non-"cerfified" hardware. Please ppl. TRY THEM. You will have to reboot every 2-3 weeks if you use these proprietary drivers.
My next workputer will have an intel gfx chipset.
As a sidenote : for example ubuntu desktops that happen to use these proprietary ati/nv drivers crash regularly. Who gets the blaim? Linux.
People forcibly and with much effort bolt on this proprietary, closed ***** to make Linux unstable. - init100, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1@Giga
You are correct, but that is a completely different matter. - Outdoor83, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2The thing you're "missing" (in quotes because "not being all-knowing" is hardly an offense) is that there's lots of likely proprietary stuff in those drivers. They don't want ATI to get the secrets (or worse, sue over some patent violation).
- Smeed, on 10/10/2007, -9/+10Is it really a big deal to "violate" your free software principles or are you just against paying for anything thats not tangible?
- deathguppie, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2this project bugs me.. Nvidia drivers just happen to work pretty well already, ATI drivers on the other hand suck balls.. so what driver do we go for first??
- Outdoor83, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Yeah, we "can" hack away at it. For some definition of "we," meaning "those who have superior knowledge of graphics drivers. There's no "I" in that group, that's for sure.
- init100, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Then there is the Avivo project for Radeon R500 and R600 cards, and they claim that they could have a 3D-accelerated driver by Christmas.
- init100, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1People can do what they like, and if you disagree with their priorities, just ignore them. If the free ones become good enough, I'll use them, but until then I'll stick with the nVidia proprietary drivers.
- srg13, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It's actually more about being able to use the cards on other architectures (3D accelerated), and being able to have accelerated drivers that work out of the box with Linux distros and stuff like that.
- ssam, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1some people like to be able to fix the bugs in their drivers (don't try to claim the binary driver has no bugs)
some people like to do a security audit on the code they run.
some people run linux on non-x86 computers - init100, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1"your unholy combination of Xinerama and Compiz Fusion!"
Are you trying to say that this combination is worthless or what? - shafi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0cool
http://www.flysince82.com/ - Acglaphotis, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Dude... so my linuxed xbox 360 server is ILLEGAL!? OMG!!!!11one
- sydseale, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3Why don't we see more cooperation between companies like Nvidia and free-software types?
With Adobe, we understand why they don't open-source Flash and Photoshop, but isn't Nvidia a hardware company?
They're both a hardware AND a software company. A lot of the functionality of their product--and a lot of what differentiates them from their competition--is implemented in software, so don't expect them to cooperate and give up the IP. Also, expect that reverse engineering their software will be complicated. Good luck, Nouveau project. - maz2331, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1And... there is zero chance of a "call home" feature being slipped in there someplace without being noticed and seriously disclosed over the 'net. With binary drivers, you just never really know....
- Acglaphotis, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0WTF
- pcpimpster, on 10/10/2007, -4/+4Linux community built drivers Vs. Nvidia commercially($) supported and built drivers...? Wonder which one will get slower fps and crash the most.
- billessig, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Me.
- pyrates, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2I say go ahead. But why make a driver just for the sake of having it be open source? It seems more of a waste to me. Besides, you pay for the video card. Aren't they suppose to provide drivers that work under it? And wouldn't this undermine the api that is planning to be added to allow linux drivers to be compiled once and have them work with any linux kernel that matches the major version 2.6.xx.
- Philluminati, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3does it support compiz fusion yet?
- Giga, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1The one that they went for first. The ATI open drivers have been around for a lot longer and actually work to some extent.
- init100, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1"that is provided to you free of charge."
Duh! It would be pretty stupid to have to pay extra for a driver. - opusagogo, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3awesome! when the open source drivers are done and Nvidia still won't release the drivers, lets build our own open source hardware out of FPGA cards with VGA/DVI plugs on them.
- Giga, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1There are way too many of these "nvidia has nothing to lose by opening up their driver" posts, and plenty of retorts to explain why this is not the case. Do you guys even read these retorts? There is potentially a LOT to lose by open sourcing the drivers, for example opening the gates to patent and NDA violation lawsuits, giving away trade secrets etc.
- Giga, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Yeah, because that wouldn't be slow or anything...
- paulsmith288, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0oh I get why Im being dugg down. I said osx was slow on my ppc machine. Its an old machine it is slow!
- Giga, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1"The latest ones don't work at all with Compiz Fusion & Xinerama dual screens."
News to me. Works fine here. - Acglaphotis, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Because of the ninjas. Duh.
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