NVIDIA Drops Linux Driver Feature Not Found On Windows

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Drops Linux Driver Feature Not Found On Windows

While the proprietary NVIDIA Windows driver has features not found in the NVIDIA Linux driver, it seems the company will not support Linux-only hardware driver features. At least one feature has been removed from the NVIDIA Linux driver over "feature parity between Windows and Linux."..

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTQ3NDE

[Rambo Tribble]

Hmmm ...

Maybe now Linus will give them the pinkie, (that's for when you don't care enough to send the very best).

[Tobu]

This might be the only reason to keep their driver proprietary when they give it for free: they want to cripple the performance or functionality of their cheaper models.

[erendorn]

Would that be because they fear Linux only features would be derivative work of the kernel?

[birdie]

This is a far more important issue which affects a 1000 times more people than those who need 4 displays support.

[Tobu]

Would that be because they fear Linux only features would be derivative work of the kernel?

That might explain NIH and reinventing kernel interfaces, but doesn't work for high-level features like this one.

[brosis]

This is actually characteristic to Nvidia. This is their "spoon" of crap to the "honey jar" of performance.
Its pure luck Dolphin project didn't notice that, prior to rating them as "excellent".

They have history of artificially limiting driver, if hardware name is not acceptable. For example, they crippled OpenGL extension on non-Quadro cards, causing a lot of games to reduce FPS.

Now, they cripple card possibilities, because microsoft told them so or because they expect user to pay 1000$ extra, for their blessing within driver.

This is not something new... either accept them or change vendor (and get other "mentalities")

This is proprietary application. Is it any *advantage* to the user? No. This is for your information, schmidtbag.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

So they going to cut off Optimus from Windows driver for feature parity sake?

[madjr]

This is a far more important issue which affects a 1000 times more people than those who need 4 displays support.

indeed agree.

[pmorph]

The less differences there are between windows/linux code, the better. It means Linux users will enjoy "for free" (more of) the testing efforts made on windows side.