NVIDIA Denies Opening Up Its Driver

[duby229]

Probably a better analogy would be restricting the car to only run on paved roads unless you crawl underneath each vehicle and rip out some wires.

Absolutely not. That's just a cop out.

Sorry, I was trying to make a different point. If the kernel devs stick these changes in and the distros decide to rip them out again everything is simple. I don't know what is going to happen there. There's a good chance the distros will pass the changes through rather than do battle with the kernel devs.

Surely the same problem happens when a user is running an open source driver with their new card, requiring a bleeding-edge drm in the kernel. When you upgrade the kernel and pick up an older drm driver in the process the user is equally broken until they reinstall the driver.

Not once the driver makes it into the kernel tree. That is the point and purpose. If your going to develop an open source kernel driver, the point and purpose of doing so must be to get it into the kernel tree as soon as possible. Without that end goal in mind there is no point in doing so.

A real solution would be to work with the HW vendors to ensure that appropriate proprietary kernel drivers were included and tested before each new kernel was distributed. I do agree that there would be some expectations re: making the kernel drivers smaller and less likely to "oops" -- again, that would be good for everyone.

Now *that* would be doing something good for the users

Backwards. A real solution would be for the hardware vendors to work with the community to develop an open driver so there hardware will work properly. It's your hardware after all, and Linux is here to stay with or without you.. ATi is doing this to a limited, but somewhat succesfull extent, but only in a half assed "If I must" attitude. nVidia isnt doing it at all, and Intel is doing it perfectly. And as would be expected Intel has the best drivers, followed by ATi, with nVidia at the end.

In the end I'm glad that ATi is doing what it is already doing. I'm happy with the progress being made, but it is too slow. ATi has literally the best graphics hardware on the planet. They've got the talent that is certain, but I still think that ATI can do better on the open source drivetrs.

[bridgman]

I'm curious... other than GLSL (which is just a matter of time) and the fact that Intel started sooner and therefore have drivers in most distros today, in what way do you feel Intel's currently shipping open source drivers are better than, say, radeon/drm/mesa running on a 5xx ? We all use the same infrastructure, and perhaps 1% of the code is different between Intel and AMD hardware.

Writing releasable programming documentation for the 6xx has been a huge task, larger than even I expected, but that is nearly done now, and at that point the same functionality on 6xx and beyond should come quite quickly.

[Redeeman]

i havent really tried the r500 free stuff yet (im hoping to recieve the X1650 i oredered today/tomorow (its 05:35 here now)), but glsl is quite important.

but what i "feel" (and yes, it is feel at this point, nothing factual), the intel commitment at this time seems to be a more solid thing, the drivers are proven, you KNOW that when you buy intel it WILL work.

with r500 one still have to get the dev stuff, and it really isnt "garantueed" (i know, intel isnt garantueed to work either, but it is strongly expected to) to work.

i realize that this says nothing of amd's commitment, as the this is just a matter of time.

But if you ask what i feel, i would have to say that i think its very likely that for now, intels drivers are more stable than the r500 stuff in development. I base this on absolutely nothing, except that it makes sense, as intels drivers are in production and used by thousands of people, whereas the r500 stuff is residing in git used by tens of people

i am nevertheless EXTREMELY eager to try out the r500 stuff, and i really do hope its every bit as good as i imagine

[Alex W. Jackson]

I'm curious... other than GLSL (which is just a matter of time) and the fact that Intel started sooner and therefore have drivers in most distros today, in what way do you feel Intel's currently shipping open source drivers are better than, say, radeon/drm/mesa running on a 5xx ? We all use the same infrastructure, and perhaps 1% of the code is different between Intel and AMD hardware.

I think it's mainly the fact that R5xx is now three generations behind the times (at least in terms of retail numbering, i.e. HD4xx0->HD3xx0->HD2xx0->X1xx0) whereas Intel's open source driver has full 3D support for their very latest hardware.

Another part of it is that some popular distributions don't seem to bother to ensure an optimal or even a working default configuration for open-source ATI drivers (e.g. not keeping DDX/DRM/DRI reasonably up to date in their update repositories, or not even keeping them in sync with each other) since the distro maker assumes that everyone with an ATI card is just going to install the binary driver immediately.

[Redeeman]

that will almost certainly change soon though..

[Svartalf]

This is where the threads always get really philosophical and rathole on the essential difference between "not making something easy to do" and "making something hard to do"

Ain't that the truth? You should see the "fun" over in the Gaming section stuff if you've not gone and done it. I've had a "fun" week this week- and it's not close to over yet... </sigh>

[duby229]

I'm curious... other than GLSL (which is just a matter of time) and the fact that Intel started sooner and therefore have drivers in most distros today, in what way do you feel Intel's currently shipping open source drivers are better than, say, radeon/drm/mesa running on a 5xx ? We all use the same infrastructure, and perhaps 1% of the code is different between Intel and AMD hardware.

Writing releasable programming documentation for the 6xx has been a huge task, larger than even I expected, but that is nearly done now, and at that point the same functionality on 6xx and beyond should come quite quickly.

Great questions. All of them. Code maturity is one thing. I can get acceleration on any Intel card using well tested, solid drivers that have already been in the mainline kernel for a long time already. I don't have to worry about manually installing from a git repository, or about which versions of what will work with this or that. I know that the packages that are marked stable in the package manager are simply going to work with no fuss. I know that when I update the kernel I don't have to worry about breaking the graphics driver because it is already built in. I know that when kernel mode setting goes mainline Intel will be the first with working drivers. Across the board. I know that when Gallium3D goes mainline Intel will be the first with working drivers. Again across the board.

The list just goes on and on and on. The point is that right now Intel's open source drivers are better then everything that ATi has right now combined and then a whole hell of a lot more, for as far into the future as my mind can reach..

The question in my mind is "How long till Intel releases a top end competitor?" and "Then what will ATi do?"

[legume]

I think that post is a bit one sided. Sure, nVidia's drivers have problems, but what driver (open or closed) doesn't? It's not like open source drivers are more stable.

But it makes me wonder.. how would free desktop adoption be with only open source drivers? Well, for one, we could kiss next gen gaming goodbye..

You can use s3tc now - it's not in mesa but you just download and install a lib.

I guess the same workaround could happen for the the others.

[Chris]

You can use s3tc now - it's not in mesa but you just download and install a lib.

I guess the same workaround could happen for the the others.

Being able to use S3TC, and being able to use the textures *properly*, are two different things. The advantage of S3TC is that they take up about 1/4th less space on the card than the uncompressed counterparts and are decompressed on-the-fly, allowing more/larger textures to be used and used faster (since less data needs to be read). If you have to decompress them on load, you gain nothing.

[legume]

Being able to use S3TC, and being able to use the textures *properly*, are two different things. The advantage of S3TC is that they take up about 1/4th less space on the card than the uncompressed counterparts and are decompressed on-the-fly, allowing more/larger textures to be used and used faster (since less data needs to be read). If you have to decompress them on load, you gain nothing.

Well I read the links as meaning it does use h/w - but I may misunderstand.

http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/dri_experimental/s3tc_index.html

http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/S3TC