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NVIDIA Updates Its Legacy Linux Driver Again

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  • NVIDIA Updates Its Legacy Linux Driver Again

    Phoronix: NVIDIA Updates Its Legacy Linux Driver Again

    Last week NVIDIA updated one of their legacy Linux GPU drivers for supporting decade-old GPUs. Today, they've put out another legacy Linux driver release...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Originally posted by BO$$ View Post
    Why can't AMD be more like nVidia? nVidia seems to care enough about its customers to not force them to use the open source cancer drivers that turn any graphics card in Voodoo2.
    Use Windows.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by BO$$ View Post
      Why can't AMD be more like nVidia? nVidia seems to care enough about its customers to not force them to use the open source cancer drivers that turn any graphics card in Voodoo2.
      AMD is waaay better than nvidia - they provide the docs and help writing truly free drivers that will/can be supported forever.

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      • #4
        Don't feed the troll people...

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Cyber Killer View Post
          AMD is waaay better than nvidia - they provide the docs and help writing truly free drivers that will/can be supported forever.
          AMD open source drivers aren't really free and open source and still slower than the already slow catalyst drivers.

          Sorry if that hurts somebodys feelings.

          However, the ATI drivers use nonfree microcode blobs, whereas most of nVidia's products (excepting the most recent ones) work ok with Nouveau, which is entirely free and has no blobs.


          Also NVIDIA does provide documentation for nouveau. I prefer working drivers of slow pseudo open source ones.

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          • #6
            Also NVIDIA does provide documentation for nouveau. I prefer working drivers of slow pseudo open source ones.
            Yeah, not so much... AFAIK the best they got were some names for registers and some basic info about powermanagement. AMD on the other side released their whole ISA, AND they have developers working on the OSS driver that have access to internal documentation... (understand errata and such.

            Serafean

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Cyber Killer View Post
              AMD is waaay better than nvidia - they provide the docs and help writing truly free drivers that could be supported forever.
              In theory, they could be supported forever. However, dropping support for those products will happen as well eventually. We have already seen a lot of legacy support dropped recently on older hardware because the effort outweighs the reward for maintaining them.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by blackout23 View Post
                AMD open source drivers aren't really free and open source
                Let me also quote Stallman's words from your link: "ATI has released free drivers."

                "However, the ATI drivers use nonfree microcode blobs, whereas most of nVidia's products (excepting the most recent ones) work ok with Nouveau, which is entirely free and has no blobs."
                Radeon drivers don't "use" microcode, they just upload it to hardware in order to initialize it and make it work - microcode is a part of hardware design, and it's used by GPU hardware, not by the driver.

                Basically any complex hardware relies on microcode and I wonder why some people think that having the same microcode blobs hidden inside the hardware instead of being uploaded by the drivers (that is, without the ability to easily access it contents, study and potentially replace it with your own absolutely free implementation) would magically make something more free and open. If the driver doesn't explicitly upload microcode to hardware, it doesn't really mean that the hardware doesn't use any nonfree microcode blobs.

                Also, Stallman talks about older nvidia gpus. AFAIK older radeons don't require microcode blobs uploaded by the driver as well.

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                • #9
                  nVidia......RESPECT

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Rexilion View Post
                    Use Windows.
                    If you are using some muxless amd cards. Windows will not solve so much. Linux works better.

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