Nouveau: NVIDIA's New Hardware Is "VERY Open-Source Unfriendly"

[jonwil]

The fact that there are patches on the noveau mailing list from @nvidia.com people including patches related to loading the NVIDIA firmware (rather than the noveau firmware as extracted from the binary blobs) seems to suggest NVIDIA isn't out to kill the noveau project and in fact they want to provide a way for the project to continue even as future GPUs secure more of the hardware to only work with signed firmware.

[chithanh]

LOL! Where?!? Where's the full features with the FOSS drivers from AMD? Particularly, with the most recent cards or most recent generations of cards. There is no tearing with radeon drivers with new AMD cards? Source?

Hardware acceleration?

I have an AMD Kabini APU and the free/open source driver supports almost everything.
No tearing.
Hardware accelerated 2D, 3D, video decode and encode.
Power management.
It does not support very well GPU compute and is limited to OpenGL 3.3 (all mesa drivers share this limitation) but that is in the works.

http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/

NVIDIA isn't out to kill the noveau project and in fact they want to provide a way for the project to continue even as future GPUs secure more of the hardware to only work with signed firmware.

The first part of your sentence is hardly news, in fact not actively hindering Nouveau was publicly stated policy since at least 2009 when a NVidia representative said so a Phoronix interview.

I am not fully convinced yet that they want to provide a way for Nouveau to continue. They made a promise in order to placate the community, but nothing has happened since. But that doesn't have to mean anything. Promises followed by extended periods of silence have accompanied the first cooperation attempts between NVidia and Nouveau, too.

Also keep in mind that AMD works to make their hardware more open source friendly (as stated by bridgman), while we have now witnessed NVidia hardware become less open source friendly.

[jonwil]

If they didn't want Noveau to continue they wouldn't be posting patches to the mailing list...

[board]

As it has been stated before, it seems that Nvidia wants Nouveau to at least provide basic support for their GPUs so that the first experience of the Linux users wont be unpleasant. Nvidia then obviously expects the user to upgrade to proprietary drivers once his system is up and running. In short, I don't see any interest from Nvidia in replacing their proprietary drivers with Nouveau.

Maybe for the one who values the open source trend it is wiser to stick to AMD.

[torsionbar28]

As for Intel, their monopolist behavior and their connections to the military-industrial complex are all reasons to buy something else.

Military industrial complex? Are you serious with this? The 1980's called, they want their outdated buzzwords and closed-minded thinking back LMAO.

[torsionbar28]

Just as you can't continue to pollute the world with CO2 with out eventually getting hotter and more venus-like climate,

Al Gore, is that you? Sorry, but proven-false global warming junk science makes for a poor argument, lol.

[torsionbar28]

All my dedicated Linux machines have Intel cards.

I do wish Intel would produce discrete graphics cards. My machines with intel graphics all have -by far- the smoothest UI. Zero tearing, zero jerkyness, just smooooth. Unless you're playing 3D games or doing CAD work, intel GPU's offer the absolute best desktop Linux experience IME. Plus intel contributes heavily to open source projects, including their own drivers, and the kernel, so I like to support the businesses that support us.

[Luke]

As a social activist I must treat purchases as votes

Military industrial complex? Are you serious with this? The 1980's called, they want their outdated buzzwords and closed-minded thinking back LMAO.

If I buy Intel where AMD is an option while also protesting say, the occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza, that would have my left hand fighting my right hand. That's because of Intel's facilities in Israel. If I buy intel while protesting monopoly and the purchase of Congress, the same critique applies. I consider the Wall Street bankers and CEO class to be enemies in war. Ask anyone arrested for being on the same block as protesters in New York while trying to watch a movie. This happened in 2004 during the RNC, in 2011 during Occupy Wall St, and again just days ago during a police brutality protest. Speaking of the 1980's, I fought here in the US at that time to oppose Ronald Reagan's war of aggresssion against El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica.

[Baconmon]

Dear Luke..

Can I tell you some thing?.. I have read a lot of your posts in lots of threads on here, and I have to tell you...you seem like a very brave and adamant TRUE patriot to this country.. From some of the things that you've talked about, like going to lots of protests and rallies and having police question you and try to get unencrypted access to your computer et cetera..... You are a much braver person than I am.. I try to boycott evil companies and stuff as much as I can also, and try to write some posts on the internet some times to try to shift peoples' consciousness more towards helping out poor people and balancing out the ridiculous power difference between poor normal people and huge powerful corporations and governments etc etc, but besides that, I really don't go out and do any thing else about it...Actually one reason is because I have a crappy medical condition that makes it really hard to do that type of stuff...but even if that wasn't stopping me, my laziness would..

So, I'm not sure how many people say thank you for doing what you do.. Hopefully you have lots of friends that join you and motivate you.. But if not, I wanted to say that at least I (AKA random person on internet) am appreciative of what you do and you have a lot of respect from me.. I've always thought that an eventual revolution would not happen outwardly physically, but instead I think it will slowly happen from the inside-out with technology.. Technologies that become common and that give the normal person new powers and abilities that they previously did not have.. For example, internet, cell-phones (can record pictures/videos with phone), 3D-printers (so people don't have to rely on companies as much to make stuff), digital currencies (bitcoin etc).. I think that eventually in the far future, these technologies (and new ones that will be created later) will grow and grow until eventually the balance of power shifts in to the normal peoples' favor, to where the government literally can't do any thing to stop it any more (just like how now they can't legitimately stop the internet, or every nerd in every basement would be in the streets rioting).. Once a solid technology is that wide-spread, it can not be taken away.. This is why I have an optimistic view of the future.. Although I think the real golden era of freedom via technological advancement will sadly probably happen way after we are dead from old age..

[oleid]

Al Gore, is that you? Sorry, but proven-false global warming junk science makes for a poor argument, lol.

Since when is global warming proven false?