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Linus Torvalds Calls NVIDIA The Worst Company Ever

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  • #71
    Originally posted by grantek View Post
    Can anyone comment about how big/invasive the Nvidia graphics driver is to the rest of the stack? Last time I used an Nvidia card (about 4 years ago) the Nvidia blob replaced a large amount of Mesa/X and the rest of the system, which is why eg. RandR support took so long to be implemented.

    If it's still being maintained that way then Nvidia definitely is being hostile to Linux development, it's taking the "we can't support a tainted kernel" argument and extending it to say "you're not actually running Linux any more once you install the Nvidia blob" - all for a graphics/parallel compute device
    It is still the same. AMD does this also, but actually this is not really a problem. If you install the driver it makes backup copies of the original files and it writes them back when you de-install it (at least the Catalyst does this, not sure about Nvidia). I had at some time problems with that because of a major X.Org upgrade on Slackware -current, but this was easily resolved with re-installing X.Org, easy to do on Slackware, not sure about distros with automatic dependency resolving.

    I find it not really that invasive that they replace some few libraries with versions that are optimized for the drivers, as long as they write them back when you de-install the drivers.

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    • #72
      Originally posted by benjamin545 View Post
      its funny how in about 2-3 years public oppinion of nvidiaa has turned from "best hardware vendor support" (i dont think anyone really thought it was the best since it was proprietary, but the graphics driver is a very noticible and important componant of the desktop and therefore stuck to the front of your mind rather than say a wifi driver) to "omg they SUUUUCK burn them with a chemical fire"
      .....
      we now have more options, and we are lucky we do because open source devs now have control over what hardware will be suppported and what driver capabilities we will have. a lot of work went into our current linux gpu support and it has come from both the open source and closed source sides. just a few years ago everyone would praise nvidia because of their wonderful linux support and now people have huge rants and raves about them even though they still provide the best opengl support for linux. you can get up on stage and say "fuck you nvidia" but you are not really helping the situation, i really doubt that will fix anything, what incentives do they as a company have to change their current policy's? its still just as easy for them to continue their current binary support, and their is no major advantage for supporting the opensource driver.
      Good one!

      (char limit)

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      • #73
        Even if you're not aware of the problem, you will still suffer the consequences. I'd say it's our obligation as computer-literate people to bring these issues to the surface.
        Agreed. I did this with DRM. Of course, I'd mention "If the company you get it from turns off a server.. like if they go out of business or just lose interest... then your files will not work." In one ear and out the other, until exactly that happened to them, then it dawned on them what I was saying.

        Well, I figure it'll be similar for this, some people "won't care" until inevitably some closed-source-driver bit of hardware they have goes out of support and won't work with any newer linux distro (in other words, newer kernel and so on.)

        All this said... I wouldn't flip them off personally. I don't like the continuing lack of specifications for video cards. But the fact of the matter is they provide excellently performing Linux drivers that support a wide range of kernels and Xorg servers. I don't give them a fuck you for that.

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        • #74
          Originally posted by AnonymousCoward View Post
          what i don't understand is how it comes to that radeon and noveau drivers are on par (at least from my point of view) why isn't radeon driver much better than noveau?
          They both are running instructions dispatched from mesa, which may be part of the problem. I'm sure the proprietary drivers are very aggressive with optimization, whereas mesa has to worry about a lot more than dispatching instruction to on type of card.

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          • #75
            Originally posted by johnc View Post
            It amazes me that Windows and OS X are able to make these proprietary drivers work without a hitch.

            The way people talk here, it's simply an impossibly horrible way of doing things.
            some people choose a gnu/linux system because of the freedom it offers - a big nasty blob that replaces half of X flies in the face of this

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            • #76
              Well maybe understand that this driver only works well with desktop systems and a very small part of laptops where you can disable other gfx chips completely. Then it comes to Optimus support then nvidia is really VERY bad. It is impossible to recommend that hardware and say it will 100% work. There are hacks like bumblebee but thats not an official solution. I do not consider amds dual gfx solution so much better however, so you should go for intel only hardware in case of laptops. In theory the systems with amd apu might work as well, but there the binary driver has got a much worse video accelleration and faces often problems with new xservers/kernels. The oss driver stack does not work good for those systems as well. I also remember a curious reboot instead of shutdown problem with such kind of hardware - but that looks more like a bios problem.

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              • #77
                Originally posted by johnc View Post
                It amazes me that Windows and OS X are able to make these proprietary drivers work without a hitch.

                The way people talk here, it's simply an impossibly horrible way of doing things.
                Haha, the nvidia driver was also the main cause of crashes of ms windows systems a few years ago. Nowadays 64 bit ms windows 7 only loads drivers signed by microsoft. And Microsoft tests the hell out of those drivers which takes quite some time. Or I.O.W. Microsoft and Nvidia spend an enormous amount of money, time and people to make it so. I'm guessing that the nouveau developers are way way more efficient. Don't know about Apple, but I'm guessing the same.

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                • #78
                  Originally posted by deanjo View Post
                  For their IP yes, for the IP that they license they do not.
                  Hm, did they still pays to 3dfx ?? ))))

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                  • #79
                    What he calls organic, is ofcourse what the religious calls metaphysical. Let natural roles form around a project. Which is also religiously surrender to natural behaviour and Gods will.

                    Praised Be God.
                    Peace Be With You.

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                    • #80
                      Originally posted by grantek View Post
                      Can anyone comment about how big/invasive the Nvidia graphics driver is to the rest of the stack? Last time I used an Nvidia card (about 4 years ago) the Nvidia blob replaced a large amount of Mesa/X and the rest of the system, which is why eg. RandR support took so long to be implemented.

                      If it's still being maintained that way then Nvidia definitely is being hostile to Linux development, it's taking the "we can't support a tainted kernel" argument and extending it to say "you're not actually running Linux any more once you install the Nvidia blob" - all for a graphics/parallel compute device
                      well nvidia blob replace libGL.so from mesa and few other files. it makes backup thouth. but you cant update mesa/kernel otherwise you end up with broken driver. catalyst have IMHO better integration as it let you build deb/rpm package and doesn't overwrite any files. it keeps own libGL.so in /usr/lib/fglrx and point at it with entry in /etc/ld.conf.d

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