Another Week, Another New NVIDIA Linux Driver

[NSLW]

they just dont care enough to fix the insane stability issues which many are having....

I'm using 185.13 drivers and they are not the newest and everything runs stable on my hardware. I admit that there was huge problem with 180.35 stability but this wasn't stable driver at all so various things happened.

Or i didn't understand your post and you are saying about xf86-video-nv which i personally use only on the beginning when switching from Fedora n-1 to newest Fedora n

[Kano]

Compared to 180.41 I prefer 185.13 too as 180.41 has got some VDPAU glitches on my 8800 GTS 512.

[Ant P.]

For all those who want to buy new gfx and have got dilemma:
Nvidia cards are THE BEST and company does care about it's customer

A company that cares about its customers would not use proprietary software as a tool to force them onto an upgrade treadmill. nVidia is a company that only cares about its bottom line.

[jonnycat26]

A company that cares about its customers would not use proprietary software as a tool to force them onto an upgrade treadmill. nVidia is a company that only cares about its bottom line.

How does NVidia do that? Contrary to ATI, which is dropping support for older chipsets, NVidia maintains and updates legacy drivers for their older hardware.

[RealNC]

A company that cares about its customers would not use proprietary software as a tool to force them onto an upgrade treadmill. nVidia is a company that only cares about its bottom line.

Yes, they care about their bottom line by producing drivers that work. Proprietary software is good. Because it works. Just like in Windows. Everything works there. Who needs open source drivers? For what? Staring at the license? I prefer staring at tear-free videos and fast and compatible OpenGL.

[NSLW]

A company that cares about its customers would not use proprietary software as a tool to force them onto an upgrade treadmill. nVidia is a company that only cares about its bottom line.

Nvidia doesn't force you to anything. Now they are supporting 8 year old hardware and you'll be able to start newest Ubuntu 9.04 with old GF2. Do you still think they force its customers to anything?

The only thing they do are rare updates of their legacy drivers but hey now they don't get the money from selling GF2 so why they still update drivers, are they working for free? Do they want to force you to buy new hardware?

Ati on the contrary drops support for 3-4 year old r500. Aren't they force you to buy new chipsets? Think about it who cares more about its bottom line Ati or Nvidia?

[Kjella]

A company that cares about its customers would not use proprietary software as a tool to force them onto an upgrade treadmill. nVidia is a company that only cares about its bottom line.

It's arguments like this that just make me laugh. I have two machines, my main and last-gen. My parents have the two before that. And even the oldest of those run the proprietary nVidia drivers just fine. Granted, I have a bit of circulation because I game a bit but it's still ancient. I've had one ATI card, it's thrown out because it didn't work worth crap under Linux and I have enough nVidia cards.

I'm not blaming AMD for any of it, they've been catching up both on the open and closed source side since they bought ATI, but they started miles behind nVidia. My hope? RDR and basic 3D acceleration ready by the time the R800-based cards are released, I figure anything they're building now is built for at least that. Give me that and they got a sale coming.

[bridgman]

FWIW, the closed source work started at "ATI" a year or so before joining AMD, but the changes are pretty significant so it takes time to complete them and get them out the door. The open source work was definitely championed by the "AMD" folks, however.

[Stedevil]

A company that cares about its customers would not use proprietary software as a tool to force them onto an upgrade treadmill. nVidia is a company that only cares about its bottom line.

In all fairness, "customer care" is a marketing strategy and all companies care mostly about their bottom line. It just happens that people dont like to buy stuff from companies that "just dont care" so a lot of resources are spent on keeping up the impression that companies do care.

Contrary to ATI, which is dropping support for older chipsets, NVidia maintains and updates legacy drivers for their older hardware.

Since AMD/ATI is actively participating in developing the open source drivers that DO support the older chipsets, that statment is completely false. What AMD/ATI has done is drop support in the LATEST binary driver, which is no different to what Nvidia has already done. The only difference is that an OSS driver will always be updated as long as the hardware is used, while a close source one can at any time be permanently halted for many various reasons (spanning the whole range from "we think it's too old" company decisions to bankruptcy)


But the real kicker will come in the next 1-2 years. Once the GPU is fully integrated in the CPU, people will finally understand why OSS drivers matter. Who would ever want to buy a CPU for which Linux driver support can be simply shut down for whatever reason.

[jonnycat26]

But the real kicker will come in the next 1-2 years. Once the GPU is fully integrated in the CPU, people will finally understand why OSS drivers matter. Who would ever want to buy a CPU for which Linux driver support can be simply shut down for whatever reason.

And hey... maybe when that happens, I can pull my 4650 out of the closet and use it for something again. Until that day when I can use an ATI driver in Linux for something useful, it's staying in the closet.