NVIDIA Releases Yet Another Linux Driver [2008]

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Releases Yet Another Linux Driver

In the past week we've seen the NVIDIA 177.67 binary driver for Linux which was outdone by the NVIDIA 177.68 driver just two days later. The 177.70 Beta driver was then released this morning with fixes and other enhancements since the 177.68 driver...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjY4MQ

[stan]

Back in March Phoronix wagered a laptop (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjM5Mw) for how confident they were about an NVIDIA open source strategy. Half a year later, Nvision 2008 has come and gone with no open source announcement in sight. Has NVIDIA played Phoronix (and all the others who've bought their junk hardware on the false promise) for a fool?

[deanjo]

Back in March Phoronix wagered a laptop (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjM5Mw) for how confident they were about an NVIDIA open source strategy. Half a year later, Nvision 2008 has come and gone with no open source announcement in sight. Has NVIDIA played Phoronix (and all the others who've bought their junk hardware on the false promise) for a fool?


They gave their answer a few months back

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2588

[stan]

They gave their answer a few months back

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2588

Right, and the day after (June 24th) Phoronix was still holding onto hope (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU0NQ) that an open-source strategy will be announced at Nvision: If NVIDIA intends to make an announcement of an open-source strategy, we are betting on it taking place at their NVISION 08 conference in August.

[oblidor]

Right, and the day after (June 24th) Phoronix was still holding onto hope (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjU0NQ) that an open-source strategy will be announced at Nvision:

Today the news came that X58 will have SLI. NVIDIA had to change their policy or be out of the game... On Open Source drivers from NVIDIA, I think this is probably at least 1-2 year off. Much will be determined on how AMD(ATI) does saleswise I think...

But that said, NVIDIA has supported Linux a lot more than ATI ever bothered, so ATI has some work to be done in order to get a better rep. Seemed that AMD was the tipping point.

[stan]

On Open Source drivers from NVIDIA, I think this is probably at least 1-2 year off.

I will avoid NVIDIA hardware like the plague until they take concrete steps to provide a viable open source driver.

[ovi44]

Nvision 2008 has come and gone with no open source announcement in sight. Has NVIDIA played Phoronix (and all the others who've bought their junk hardware on the false promise) for a fool.

[deanjo]

Nvision 2008 has come and gone with no open source announcement in sight. Has NVIDIA played Phoronix (and all the others who've bought their junk hardware on the false promise) for a fool.

I don't think anyone bought their hardwardware from nvidia based on it's opensource strategy. They bought it because it works period.

[remm]

They gave their answer a few months back

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2588

Yes, their claim is that it is useless. Now, THAT's arrogance, folks.

[Vadi]

Nice!

OpenGL 3.0, suspend/resume work great, nothing else to ask from me :D

(except maybe to release the driver as open-source so loud people who aren't helping coding nv but posting on forums instead can keep quiet!)

[bulletxt]

Wow... I would feel ashamed if I were AMD... NVIDIA is just number 1, period.

[SyXbiT]

BUNG!

i picked the worst time to sell my 8800GTS and buy an ATI 4870 (about 4 months ago)

ARGH!!!!!!!!! ATI sucks!

most people don't care about OSS, they care about stuff freaking working!
ATI: worse drivers, no proper hardware decoding, no compiz with movie playback, lagging support for latest XServer

ATI, you suck, get your act together, or all my new gfx cards will be NVIDIA.

All people do is talk about how in the future ATI will be better, and that it's improving.

I heard that over a year ago, and there's been no change

[maleadt]

BUNG!

i picked the worst time to sell my 8800GTS and buy an ATI 4870 (about 4 months ago)

ARGH!!!!!!!!! ATI sucks!

most people don't care about OSS, they care about stuff freaking working!
ATI: worse drivers, no proper hardware decoding, no compiz with movie playback, lagging support for latest XServer

ATI, you suck, get your act together, or all my new gfx cards will be NVIDIA.

All people do is talk about how in the future ATI will be better, and that it's improving.

I heard that over a year ago, and there's been no change

Please get your act together yourself, comments as "ATI SUCKS" don't have any value in this discussion at all. AMD just released one of the essential pieces in order to have a working driver for the latest hardware (R600/R700 documentation & registers), so they are definitely working on the issue.

Where NVIDIA might indeed provide a at the moment more functional driver, I'm very confident the path AMD is walking will prove to be much better in the long run. When DRI2/KMS will been fully operation and the open-source drivers have been ported to Gallium, I think NVIDIA's drivers won't be leading no more / as strong as it now is. Time will tell :)

Also, users are now very dependent on the work NVIDIA is delivering. When they redefine their priorities (which could always happen, given the financial unstability) and minimize the linux support, users won't have those functional and up to date drivers anymore, whereas AMD's effort will more or less guarantee a working driver as long as open-source developers maintain the code.

It remains a personal choice though, which I do respect, but you might consider a more civilized response next time.

[dickeywang]

Does Phoronix have any plan for a reviewing article on 2D/3D performance for the Nvidia driver(particularly the 173, 177 and 180 branch)?
I heard that the 2D performance has been boosted in the 180 driver, but there are also some complains regarding significant 3D performance issues in the 180 driver.

[kraftman]

(except maybe to release the driver as open-source so loud people who aren't helping coding nv but posting on forums instead can keep quiet!)

Better code nouveau rather than nv. In both cases you have to code in blind and nv is crap. Btw. I like nvidia in some part, because they release drivers quite often.


Thankfully my GF 7600GT which I bought yesterday was broken so I will buy AMD/Ati card now. I want to support OS friendly companies and stay away from proprietary blobs.

[SyXbiT]

it's just a fact of life.
linux users have been buying ATI because they've been assured that 'soon' the drivers will be good.
but the 'soon' never comes

[kraftman]

it's just a fact of life.
linux users have been buying ATI because they've been assured that 'soon' the drivers will be good.
but the 'soon' never comes

There's (you can put 'also' here if you want ;)) another reason - they gave us specifications so we're not forced (or some part of us right now) to use binary blobs.

[bulletxt]

we all know a serious working, feature-rich and stable OSS driver won't happen before the end of 2009 (I personally think June 2010). By that time, new card series will come out, it's gonna be a race against the impossible. That is what's gonna happen. A non stopping race. NVIDIA instead, yea they work and do what 99% users want from their GPU.

And to the guy above that thinks AMD will become number 1 in the linux market, oh well you made me laugh so much that it was worth reading your post. You maybe forgot that who is having serious financial problems is AMD. You forgot that NVIDIA release a true linux driver since year 2001. They worked hard and continue to work. So be carefull when saying such stupid things and, to all the guys on this community, learn how to "Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s", and even phoronix should learn this. Of course in this case, NVIDIA is Caesar.

[maleadt]

we all know a serious working, feature-rich and stable OSS driver won't happen before the end of 2009 (I personally think June 2010). By that time, new card series will come out, it's gonna be a race against the impossible. That is what's gonna happen. A non stopping race. NVIDIA instead, yea they work and do what 99% users want from their GPU.

And to the guy above that thinks AMD will become number 1 in the linux market, oh well you made me laugh so much that it was worth reading your post. You maybe forgot that who is having serious financial problems is AMD. You forgot that NVIDIA release a true linux driver since year 2001. They worked hard and continue to work. So be carefull when saying such stupid things and, to all the guys on this community, learn how to "Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s", and even phoronix should learn this. Of course in this case, NVIDIA is Caesar.

Upon which you made me laugh by your ignorance, seems like a win-win situation. Seriously, learn to read. I said the OSS driver initiative might functionally improve a lot due to the Gallium framework. I'm having a hard time understanding how you can deduce that I think AMD will become number 1, when having clearly stated "I think NVIDIA's drivers won't be leading no more / as strong as it now is".

They worked hard and continue to work. So be carefull when saying such stupid things
Be careful yourself when commenting what one said. I acknowledge that NVIDIA provides functionally great drivers and are leading the Linux graphical market now, do I "attack" their efforts by any matter? Not at all, yet you seem to have an urge commenting them.

About what you call "the race against the impossible", this indeed seems to be an issue right now. But then again, the Gallium platform might possibly offer an outcome here (mind the excessive use of conditionals in order to prevent unwanted comment), given that AMD doesn't wait too long to release the specifications for entirely new chipsets. Which again makes me quote myself: "time will tell", in which I do not attempt to predict what will happen but only express my excitement about upcoming developments.

All this is my opinion though. Might be a bit idealistic, but does that hurt? Anyway, I'm happy using my ATI X1600 next to an NVIDIA 7600GT, which both work flawlessly using Linux - which after all remains the most important matter :)