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Nouveau Starts Dropping Non-KMS Support

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  • Nouveau Starts Dropping Non-KMS Support

    Phoronix: Nouveau Starts Dropping Non-KMS Support

    Back in 2008 the developers behind the Nouveau reverse-engineered NVIDIA driver dropped support for their classic Mesa driver even before there was ever a stable release of it. Instead the developers working on the 3D support for all generations of NVIDIA hardware turned their focus to their Gallium3D driver, which still remains heavily experimental to this day...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    What does that do for portabitity?
    kms is a linux-only feature.
    In the past linux != X drivers (methought)

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    • #3
      Originally posted by d4ddi0 View Post
      What does that do for portabitity?
      kms is a linux-only feature.
      In the past linux != X drivers (methought)
      Well, If portability stands in the way of progress, I say to hell with portability.

      It's still open source so users/developers of others operating systems with X are free to implement their own implementation of KMS or port the driver to non-kms, I guess it just takes a little more effort now.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by d4ddi0 View Post
        What does that do for portabitity?
        kms is a linux-only feature.
        In the past linux != X drivers (methought)
        I thought Nouveau has always been Linux only. Looks like there's an effort to port it to FreeBSD though: http://wiki.freebsd.org/NouveauPorting

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        • #5
          Originally posted by d4ddi0 View Post
          What does that do for portabitity?
          kms is a linux-only feature.
          In the past linux != X drivers (methought)
          KMS is ATM linux-only but it doesn't have to be

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          • #6
            Whats the problem with KMS, as far as I can see one of the major things holding up stabilty in the graphics side of Linux is the lack of any Kernel participation in this area. KMS is a LLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG overdue advancement.

            One of the things stopping this sort of actvivity was the view that Unix (read Linux) was a text only kernel with no room far graphics..... A REAL short sited view given the modern world.

            This news for the OS Nvidia driver would one of the best news I have heard recently.

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            • #7
              There is no problem with KMS except that it is NOT very portable.

              That means *BSD/Solaris need to use older drivers until they can port GEM, TTM, and each KMS driver to their own kernel.

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              • #8
                It is unlikely that drivers of this complexity will ever be very portable unless the kernels are very similiar or serious compromises are made to the driver as looks like has happened with the AMD driver FGLRX. From my experience the Linux version is far inferior in performance to the Windows version.
                Unfortunately the number of developers with the drive, the knowledge and expierence to handle such as the new GPU's is very limited and in the case of Nvidia you have the added MAJOR problem of having to reverse enginneer the solution. A REALLY tough task, I take my hat off to those people.

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