NVIDIA Developer Talks Openly About Linux Support

[Svartalf]

wrong. Creating documentation for outside consumption is time consuming and expensive. Just as mtippett or bridgeman. Oh wait, no need to ask, they have alreay explained it.

And explained it repeatedly. There's pieces that they just can't expose to the world, and it's not just due to "embarassment" or hiding flaws (which is one of the reasons some other vendors don't do this...they've got design defects in their silicon... )- or even Microsoft's influence as some keep intimating. I know...I've seen quite a bit of this type of internal documentation over the years whilst doing the hired gun thing for Linux driver work.

[SyXbiT]

this article was great.
i agree that it's disappointing about nvidia's OSS strategy
BUT, even still, at least their drivers work NOW (rather than promises of working in the future)
and at least they are quick to support new kernels and XORG
unlike some unnamed competitors..... cough cough

[Ant P.]

Yeah, VIA is terrible for keeping pace. They're even further behind xf86-radeon and -intel than nVidia.

[krazy]

The only indication of it being crap code would be to judge it by its performance. And since it performs *extremely* well, and seems to be very, very well optimized (to the point where open source code can only dream about), your argument makes zero sense.

Yep, when it's not causing strange artifacts, crashing, locking up, or just failing to suspend/resume the 3D performance is great!

And this is important to me, what with the large range of cutting edge 3D games only available on linux.

[Ex-Cyber]

hiding flaws (which is one of the reasons some other vendors don't do this...they've got design defects in their silicon... )

For maximum hilarity, they can document the intended interface and then neglect to mention any of the defects to anyone except their own driver team...

[Svartalf]

For maximum hilarity, they can document the intended interface and then neglect to mention any of the defects to anyone except their own driver team...

Heh...that would make 'em look bad either by accident from the FOSS community or by a competing vendor with an axe to grind. They never want to look bad deliberately- so they do the brown paper bag moment play and hide the problems in shame with a proprietary blob.

[SyXbiT]

Come on. Look at the Linux kernel, 10+ million line of code. id Software's Quake series have earned 1+ billion Dollars to id, Google Chrome and V8, Mozilla's Firefox, Sun's Open Office, GIMP, the list goes on.

id has definitely NOT made 1+ billion dollars from the quake series.
I don't know what you're smoking

[Jimmy]

Yep, when it's not causing strange artifacts, crashing, locking up, or just failing to suspend/resume the 3D performance is great!

Lets roll on down to the auto shop and claim that all cars have serious issues based on the localized sampling found inside the shop. Maybe if if we decide we hate Nissan we'll just include those found in a Nissan dealership's shop as conclusive evidence that all Nissans suck.

If I linked to AMD/ATI forums we'd see something other than a long list of things gone wrong and cries from users drowning in their tears?

How about this: Ubuntu is great when it isn't segfaulting, failing to boot, or locking up.

I think it's just about as rock solid as the "it's crap code because it's crap code" argument found elsewhere in this thread.

[L33F3R]

id has definitely NOT made 1+ billion dollars from the quake series.
I don't know what you're smoking

damn, i need to get me some of that shit.

[krazy]

If I linked to AMD/ATI forums we'd see something other than a long list of things gone wrong and cries from users drowning in their tears?

Ok, where's the link? Here?