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25 Comments
- Saint07, on 10/12/2007, -7/+27If you digg me up I will leave digg forever.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12It lets other people directly alter the graphics card drivers. This can mean better integration, increased performance, better support and additional customizability. However, they aren't as safe as nVidia drivers as most open-source licences include a 'No Warranty' clause, they may be less stable and they may not support all the features that nVidia's drivers provide for a fair while.
- drizek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11There is nothing wrong with it. Everyone should be able to throw in a linux live cd and have a working beryl when they boot up the computer without having to break the GPL or agree to some license. I personally will use these drivers on my linux installs over the binary ones because I want my system to "just work" and i dont care much for 3d performance since I dont game in linux. It also sends a message to nvidia that its not just about making good drivers, linux users demand open source drivers as well.
Also, nvidia doesnt make ppc drivers, PS3 is HUGE. - volfro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10The ones from Nvidia are closed-source, which some open-source advocates feel taints the pure GPL kernel (despite the fact that the proprietary drivers are totally separate from the kernel).
Also, the licensing restrictions on the Nvidia modules are apparently a pain. People would rather have truly free drivers in addition to their truly free operating system, but Nvidia either isn't willing to or can't afford to GPL its driver technology.
Me, I just install the drivers and enjoy the loveliness of Beryl. Although the drivers are closed-source and I love FOSS, I do have the option to NOT load them. And it's not really like the licensing restrictions affect me, the end-user, if I can install them easily enough. (Some people hate the installation process for the closed source mess, but there are repositories with the latest Nvidia drivers for debian-based systems, and the installation there involves typing a command and waiting a few seconds.) So really, for the average end user, the difference is pretty transparent--at least until the licensing restrictions change the way we compute, which is what we don't want, thus the open source drivers.
This project is helping move FOSS forward, ultimately. Dugg. - cdmarcus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The drivers provided from Nvidia are closed source and not well maintained. As for being closed source, I don't have much of a problem with it, but many open-source advocates don't like the idea of a closed source program "contaminating" their perfectly FOSS Linux install. However, the Nouveau project actually has more of a chance of being maintained better. This is a good thing, as right now the Nvidia driver has TONS of problems, one of which is that it actually breaks suspend on many laptops, with certain distros.
To answer Breakpoint25's question, Open Source means that anyone can view the original human-readable programming code before it is compiled into executable machine code. This allows people to improve it and find problems more easily. Some examples of open-source software are Firefox, Linux, and OpenOffice.org. Here are some relevant Wikipedia articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVIDIA_and_FOSS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source - drizek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8These are for linux, not windows.
One of the best things about FOSS nvidia drivers is the ability to get 3d acceleration in PS3 linux. - jaymzjulian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Actually, they've been doing ATI stuff for longer than they've been revenging the nvidia stuff - http://r300.sourceforge.net for the r300, for example.
- open_sauce, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5If anyone is interested in supporting this project with a small donation ($10), then you may want to check out a pledgebank page that someone has set up to help the project.
http://www.pledgebank.com/nouveaudriver
The aim is to get 1000 people to donate $10 each.
Note from the pledge creator:
"The Nouveau developers have asked me to be quite specific that this pledge drive is not in any way connected to the official project.
The intend has never been to give that impression. The aim has always been to show that when the open source community gets together we can do great feats of charity towards software freedom. A display of putting our money where our mouths are sorta speak.
That being said I'm very proud to see the fine pledge rate and I do hope the spirit of charity does bled over in other endeavours." - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Can someone please explain what this open source software/drivers does, to a person with no knowledge, in easy terms please.
And how it is an improvement over Nvidia drivers.
Thank you. - Dot.Com.CEO, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Not well maintained? You must be joking. Nvidia's drivers are very close feature-wise to the Windows versions, following their features, mostly 3 months behind. They're relatively bug free, they work fine and there are constant updates and bug-fixes, I think every three months or so. The installer script is very easy to use, should your distro not supply a kernel module or a dkms rpm.
I'm all for open source drivers, I appreciate the need for them, but please keep things in perspective. Nvidia's drivers are fine and they ARE well maintained, and supported, by nvidia. - Shirk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Sorry for the n00bish post, but what would be the benefit of using these drivers over the ones from Nvidia and the tweaked versions from a couple websites?
- ssam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4these will work on non x86 computers (Powerpc (including PS3), sparc etc)
security issues can be found and fixed, without having to wait for nvidia - Stonekeeper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Something that should be noted too is that as the official ones are closed source, it makes upgrading kernel versions more tricky.
- Stonekeeper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4To be honest, I think most people don't actually care whether the driver they use are proprietory or open source. However, a lot of people will care that their system's ability to work is in some small way linked to the performance of a company. I want my nvidia card to work regardless of Nvidia's ability to run a business.
- truck87bp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4We won't have the ability for new drivers once Vista gets a foothold. Vista means to shutout Linux entirely if it can. Read paragraphs 7 & 8 and make your own conclusions. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Read the whole thing. - drag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3""Not well maintained? You must be joking. Nvidia's drivers are very close feature-wise to the Windows versions, following their features, mostly 3 months behind.""
Features dont' nessicarially translate to be done well. Personally I prefer security, stability, and openness to something like (for example) anti-alias or SLI support.
""They're relatively bug free, they work fine and there are constant updates and bug-fixes, I think every three months or so. The installer script is very easy to use, should your distro not supply a kernel module or a dkms rpm.
I'm all for open source drivers, I appreciate the need for them, but please keep things in perspective. Nvidia's drivers are fine and they ARE well maintained, and supported, by nvidia.""
I beg to differ. There are a many machine-crash-inducing bugs in nvidia drivers. Many configurations are not well supported.
If they work for you, then that's fine. But a quick look at nvnews and my experiances today with a machine that all of a sudden stopped supporting twinview configuration it is obvious that not everybody shares your experiances. - Ademan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Right no there's really no advantage. But the biggest advantage is in freedom, with the nouveau drivers 3d drivers for linux can stop being a pain in the ass. Since they'd be open source there'd be absolutely no reason that they wouldn't be installed by default and activated by default. Additionally, things like OpenGL3.0 support will most likely come extremely late for linux, but noveau could in theory push 3.0 support on linux before nvidia. It's kind of unlikely, since nvidia will have the openGL 3.0 specs before the public most likely, but linux will be last in line for drivers, so it's possible.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2TBH, I'm a Linux fan and if even half of that is true (which I don't doubt it is) then locking out Linux is the least of our problems. What we are talking about with TC is the total control of our machines by others. This has so many potential abuses that I shudder just to think of it. Also what if a hacker gains control of Palladium on your machine. Not an inconceivable event. We are entirely dependant on MS producing a totally secure OS to help perform an impossible task in most respects.
As for the premium content DRM. Personally I'm of the opinion that the *AA should pay for my clock cycles if they expect my machine to do their anti-piracy protection. Also they should pay all the hardware manufacturers for being forced to cripple their tech. Why again is the tech industry being crippled for the, comparatively small fry, media industry. MS themselves are worth more than the music industry. Is it really worth pissing off your customers for them.
Anyway this just strengthens my position of never again buying a CD or DVD from one of these idiots. Their small mindedness is going to cause irreparable damage to the tech industry and become a huge drain on the economy. I personally will not reward them for choking the economy. At least the savings will allow me to put money towards the eventual niche companies that make sane hardware. Never know, we might get them to open their drivers or something daft like that. - patpi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Pleas remember that propriety nvidia drivers dropped support for old cards many times. FOSS drivers will never drop support for old cards. It's better for and user.
Pleas If you can afford donate http://www.pledgebank.com/nouveaudriver - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The main benefit is ease of including them with a distribution. Binary drivers are a PITA and make it extremely difficult for the kernel devs to stabilise the kernel. Having a viable open alternative solves that problem in one meaning the kernel team can move the whole operation forward rather than trying to guess at what sort of mess the closed drivers are making of the kernel.
- Xilon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't see the point in this. Of course it's really great that someone is trying to create open source drivers for NVidia cards, but they will always be behind the official ones... way WAY behind. I can't even imagine how hard it would be to write drivers for a proprietary gfx card for which specifications aren't even provided... it's nearly impossible.
If they do, by some miracle, get these drivers finished and close (or better) to the quality of the NVidia drivers, then I will worship this dev team for it would truly be a miracle. - CircleFusion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I would imagine that there are some applications where the open source drivers are more useful than the NVidia versions, even though they support fewer features. Some people above posted good examples of some benefits that open source drivers would provide over closed drivers (even with fewer features).
- JeffH, on 10/12/2007, -10/+7So they take nvidia, the company that actually has decent drivers for Linux, then try to replace those drivers. Meanwhile ATI users are still left with piss-poor barely functional drivers.
These open-source developers sure do seem to have their priorities straight. - dscx, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3"PS3 is HUGE"... rofl
- JaJangMyun, on 10/12/2007, -11/+4Good.
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