Discover the best of the web!
Learn more about Digg by taking the tour.
New Linux nVidia Driver Release 1.0-8762
nvidia.com — nVidia's out with another Linux driver release. This one's got a few good fixes including one for the GeForce 6200 memory reporting. Get 'em while they're hot!
Inhibit- 501 diggs
- digg it
- bowe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Please Please tell me that it will work with aiglx.
- pieffe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"9xxx at the earliest" is the best I can give you, I'm afraid. I can't comment on release schedules.
(from NV forums)
- pieffe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"9xxx at the earliest" is the best I can give you, I'm afraid. I can't comment on release schedules.
- sarcoma, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1cheers
- Inhibit, on 10/12/2007, -2/+24Voila! Now you don't even need to check the site :).
* Added support for new GPUs, such as QuadroFX 4500 X2, Quadro FX 5500, Quadro FX 3500, and Quadro FX 1500.
* Improved Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI support.
* Fixed video memory reporting with GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache.
* Fixed a problem with Overlay support when in TwinView.
* Fixed problems starting X with SLI Frame Rendering on nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition.
* Fixed multiple issues with combinations of Stereo, SLI, FrameRendering and G-Sync.
* Fixed several issues with mode selection for CRTs and DFPs.
* Fixed a corruption problem with Rotation and large desktops on older GPUs, including GeForce4 MX.
* Fixed a system crash starting X with TwinView on certain GPUs.
* Addressed an NV-CONTROL compatibility issue; please see the Known Issues section of the README for details.- gdefelice, on 10/12/2007, -18/+8I think that you're doing the Linux community a disservice by posting the information here. We want NVIDIA’s servers to register multiple requests for this information; we want them to know that we are interested. Hopefully they will come to realize that there is such a large base of Linux users that they will release an GPL-ed driver and projects like Kororaa will benefit from that.
- celisyn, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7disservice? Oh please. If nvidia actually cared enough to look through their server logs for the number of requests for the Linux driver page they'd notice all the referrals are from the same place: Digg. What this means, I leave up to you to interpret.
- SkaAgent11, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5I understand your sense of urgency, but I think its harsh to call posting the information "a disservice". Really its overly political of the kernel devs to not use the LGPL and allow proprietary code to be linked to the kernel. We can't just assume all companies love free software.
- prockcore, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I think nvidia already has a handle on the size of its linux userbase.
Did you notice how many fixes there were for the Quattro line? That's the highend line used by CG studios.
- SkaAgent11, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8Can they just open source these already so there is no legal grey area in using them? I understand its uncompromising by the kernel devs to not allow proprietary kernel modules (with the legal grey area Linus claims allows Nvidia and ATI drivers), but can one of the sides just break already so the user can enjoy decent hardware support without the legal ambiguities?
- TomUK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8It's a nice dream but it will never happen.
The major reasons are to do with intellectual property; e.g. a piece of code in the proprietary drivers is licensed from third-party which they are required by law to protect.
ATI has specifically stated that they want to maintain the proprietary, trade-secret nature of this intellectual property as long as possible and Nvidia doesn't believe that open-sourcing the driver would make sense.
Source: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39352584,00.htm
Personally, I use the fd.o open-source r300 driver for my ATI Radeon 9600XT even though it has limited 3D support. I have found that it is much more stable than the ATI driver and 2D performance is ofter a bit better, especially when it comes to SDL-based games (OpenTTD, for example). Another reason in favour of the open-source drivers is that I don't have to worry about there being any compatibility issues between the driver and Xorg. Unfortunately if you need really good 3D performance (playing modern games through Cedega/Wine, for example) then the proprietary driver is probably what you'll have to go with for Radeon cards >9200. - trollenlord, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0Far saner solution was if the fundamentalists would make stable kernel ABIs for the modules, fix the licensing slightly and allow binary blobs all the way. The lessened risks and increase ease of driver maintenance would make supporting Linux far more tempting. ATI and Nvidia would instantly start playing real and put in some real resources on the development.
Now the problem is that every time they finish something the kernel developers break the kernel - they are forced to keep running without any sane reason or actual benefit. It eats resources and there's a risk that if you make the drivers really well (requires a lot of resources) a great amount gets wasted too when some hippie breaks something.
It's the license GPL and the philosophy of the kernel developers that is holding the companies back. Nothing more. - SkaAgent11, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0I totally agree, the GPL is unnecesary. A better solution would be the LGPL...but not everyone would agree to that either (linking to something GPL'd means no reverse-engineering clauses in your EULA). Ultimately, I just want either side to break...not necesarily the graphic card vendors. The everyone wins scenario would be if Nvidia and ATI would just provide full hardware documentation. There would be no disclosure of 3rd party secrets, the vendors would have to do no work, and the linux community would put out better drivers than ATI or Nvidia could.
- Inhibit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The real issue appears to be not in what's in the hardware, but how it's broken. Right or not, I'd say their major motivation in not releasing the full hardware specs is that their cards tend to be fairly broken in the firmware and need lots of software patching to "fix".
At least that's the impression I get.
On the guy with the Radeon above, I was shot down on the LKML for ref'ing the DRI site that the drivers only supported 9200 and older cards. Apparently recent releases support up to the X300 or so.
- TomUK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8It's a nice dream but it will never happen.
- cubikdice, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Whoa, just installed these today without realising the new version and it all went flawless (here on ubuntu) and i must say...nice :D
[nVidia 7800 GT 256MB] - Systembomber, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Maybe we will see some decent ATi drivers for the X xxx series such as X800 soon...
most likely not...- centinall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6not sure if other people would agree with me but i've always had more success with using proprietary linux drivers from Nvidia than ATI. Actually, that goes for Windows too. Hopefully with all of the hype surrounding XGL and aiglx both companies will become more attentive to the Linux users' needs.
- gameboyhippo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0That's why I gave my mom my Radeon 9200. Gave me an excuse to get an nVidia card.
- popfrogs, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5ATi doesn't care about linux, just accept that fact and buy Nvidia only. It's been like this for years in Linux and to a lesser extent, Windows. ATi can't even make decent drivers for XP, let alone Linux. The sooner you come to understand this, the sooner you will be gaming happily like the rest of us. :)
- Systembomber, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Yeah, that's why I'm buying an Nvidia card next time I buy a card :P
- Inhibit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yep. nVidia will respond to requests for comments from Linux users/websites, ATI won't. Think that pretty much says it all with their levels of devotion.
- MrEcho, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3People say just open up the driver, well guess what people the binary part of the linux driver is the same for windows.
Do you really think they would open source there drivers?
That would be like giving the keys to ATI.
You FSF people need to wake up.- tehmoth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yes, because there's no intelligence on the board itself.
- cynyr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2maybe the card should do the work and not the software, i'm probably way off base here but would it really be all that hard to have a firmware like solution that just exposed an API, preferably the same one across all cards, to the OS and reported which "features" it suported? ohh look that would mean the end to video drivers all together and actully mean that the silicone would have to not have bugs/flaw/etc in it... but hey, if you want to work around hardware bugs in software be my guest.
- SkaAgent11, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Give the keys to ATI...what are you talking about? All we're asking for is hardware support. They can leave the fancy performance algorithms out of the drivers if they want, the open source community is just asking for hardware specs. This offers nothing to ATI.
- IMesh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1cynyr: You know nothing about graphics. So a new OpenGL extension or DX feature come out they want their card to support it, WHAT ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO DO? Make a new card every time a new extension or feature comes out? I think not. So yes, you are WAY off base.
- sremick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Eh, not just Linux... but FreeBSD and Solaris too.
Not everyone runs Linux, you know... ;)- tehmoth, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1yeah, congratulations on keeping that opensource, bsd spirit alive by using binary only drivers.
- GlassCasket, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Now if only ATI started making new drivers...
- jgc7, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1While there is no reason to re-install the OS, I can sympathize. It is not exactly obvious that you need to boot in a safe mode and change "nvidia" to "nv" in your xorg.conf file, which may or may not be located in /etc/X11/.
- barbobot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2what? no you dont, you simply open a teminal, edit the file, restart X.
seriously rebooting to install a driver is lame. - Tsuroerusu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you already have a previous version of NVIDIA's drivers, there is no reason in the world to even touch your Xorg configuration, you just it Ctrl+Alt+F1, login as root and type in these commands:
init 3
wget http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-8756/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8756-pkg1.run
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8756-pkg1.run -q
init 5
And there, the driver is updated and you're set to play Unreal Tournament 2004 or whatever with an updated NVIDIA driver.
- barbobot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2what? no you dont, you simply open a teminal, edit the file, restart X.
- anrivout, on 10/12/2007, -13/+1i won't use it as long as they keep it close sourced!
- tehmoth, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2oh yeah, digg down comments like these. if gaming is so much more important than free software why not just use windows?
- Murphious, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3My only question;
Does this fix the UT2k4 rendering problem (the lack of realtime complex shadows)?
I use Ubuntu. I love its stability. I also love games :) - shakeyshakey, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Nice to some more open source support from companies.
Even more cool if it envolves gaming.
+digg - leohart, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This is the reason why I ONLY buy nVidia cards. Until ATI start pumping out drivers for Linux, I will always be a nVidia fanboy.
- Tobey, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Ahh crap! I installed these and now X won't start in Ubuntu Dapper. Looks like I've got a lot of work ahead of me. God I hope I don't have to reinstall...
You have been warned Ubuntu users!- Hindu_Wardrobe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Scroll down till you see something like "Driver "nvidia"", should be under a "Device" section.
Press "i" for insert mode, change "nvidia" to "nv".
Press escape, then type :w (that's colon-W), and then :q (colon-Q).
sudo killall gdm ; sudo gdm start
Then go into Synaptic (if you installed from apt-get), search for "nvidia", and reinstall the drivers. Uninstalling the Nvidia-Glx and the restricted kernel modules and then installing them again always worked whenever I had this problem.
Hope that helps!
- Hindu_Wardrobe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
- futaris, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1compiz.real: GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap is missing
© Digg Inc. 2008 —
Content posted by