What Do You Want From NVIDIA's Next Driver?

[nukem]

OpenCL support in the mainstream driver!!! I've been waiting over a year for it in the mainstream driver. CUDA is great and all but I want my code to work not just on NVIDIA cards.

[QuantumKnot]

hybrid SLI support

Support for Hybrid SLI on laptops!!! A lot of us are running an Nvidia 9400M/G210M set up where we can only use the integrated card (9400M), while the G210M is left on to suck up on more battery. Either that or allow us the option of turning off the discrete card to save battery.

[gilboa]

1. KMS. Its just a matter of time before X.org/distributions flip the switch and disable support for non-KMS drivers. (It'll be nice if I could see OOPs message without using a serial cable, let alone having a cleaner VT switch and X.org running as user...)

2. XEN support. Even though I use KVM for my virtualization needs, XEN has some interesting capabilities (E.g. PCI backend / frontend). Most likely this task will be a "must" once Dom0 support is fully integrated into the upstream kernel. (2.6.35?)

3. Better SLI support.

4. Release non-IP specs. It would have been nice if nVidia would have followed ATI/AMD footsteps and went for a full disclosure. But Rome wasn't built in a day. They can start by releasing non-IP specs to the Nouveau people.

- Gilboa

[newbeewan]

Just work as other drivers !

Nvidia driver became with years a piece of crap...

On mobile platform, nothing works well out of the box !

No standard backlight, no support for button to control it, no plug and play for other screen...

If you want that (which are such some basic services !) you must configure/install/take a recipe... configured by hands !

Compared to intel/amd/other graphic drivers, Nvidia driver *is not* user friendly !

I use it because it is the only solution for me at that moment, but if nouveau bring support for my graphic card out, I will switch without any regrets !

[gilboa]

Nvidia driver became with years a piece of crap...
On mobile platform, nothing works well out of the box !
No standard backlight, no support for button to control it, no plug and play for other screen...

Might I ask, how many notebooks/netbooks with nVidia chipsets have you tested?

- Gilboa

[3rdalbum]

I want:

1. A GUI installer that you don't have to shut down X for
2. Repositories for major distributions so you can always have the latest driver
3. DKMS support so the driver will be rebuilt on kernel update
4. Opening up specifications similar to what ATI has been doing. If you can't legally give us everything, then at least give us enough to help.

I won't have a bar of criticism of Nvidia, though - FGLRX is not as good as the Nvidia driver, and neither are Nouveau or RadeonHD.

[portets43]

new redesigned and updated nvidia settings gui, with more graphics configuration options.
the windows nvcpl is ridiculously customizable. it has settings for everything.

maybe even a simple per-application configurator. for example: be able to set supertuxkart to have a high anti-aliasing setting, but vDrift to have a low setting to save performance.
you know, those performance profile thingies.

as well as the other things like a graphical installer, 2d/3d performance improvements, and features features features.

[Kano]

dkms support is very easy - my nvidia script uses dkms by default (until you specify -m option). A gui installer is nothing that you really need because when you script it you usually even disable any output. You have to shutdown X to install, the new way ubuntu and others handle the shutdown is not optimal for this, i added an extra delay that was never needed using sysvinit because when you trigger a gdm/kdm shutdown then it is shutdown at once, its just in a queue, thats something i really hate. What would be interesting would be a better integration in lucid - just because lucid does not follow any other standard.

[md1032]

I would like driver version numbers that actually made sense. 256?? So their next version after that will be 512 right? This is probably Atari's fault to have invented naming their consoles in multiples of 2600.

NVIDIA's Andy Ritger said that the Linux version numbers track the Windows ones, and that those have to go up by large amounts to work around bugs in some old games that look at the first two digits of the version.

[bono8106]

nvidia driver requests

1) KMS

2) Xrandr