Ubuntu 9.04 To Get Nouveau Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 9.04 To Get Nouveau Driver

The Nouveau driver has been in development for several years now but with limited developers that are reverse-engineering NVIDIA's GPUs and there being no public documentation or support from NVIDIA, it has taken quite a while to come up with a reputable open-source driver that supports all of NVIDIA's hardware. Nouveau still doesn't have a stable released version of its 2D DDX or Mesa 3D driver, but development snapshots of it have appeared in Fedora and a few other distributions...

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

[bulletxt]

ok so, as of today 10 December 2008, give me one reason to use nv driver over NVIDIA. Sometimes I ask my self if there are people in the world that like to buy things just for the fun of seeing it not working. what's exciting in this news? what's excting about Ubuntu shipping a totally incomplete driver? and especially, since 99% of ubuntu users are "normal" users, I would like to know the crazy Windows user that installs Ubuntu and then goes and get troubles with NV driver. I mean, or he's crazy or i don't know.

now if you did this article just for information then ok, I accept it because information is always information, but there is nothing excting about this. I'm still not excited that AMD after 1 year didn't release full documentation of their "newer" cards and now I should be excited about this?

ok I'll just forget about this news.

[[Knuckles]]

bulletxt: for example when the nvidia driver doesn't support your graphics card anymore. Or when it is very slow with things like kde 4. Or when it crashes on your pc and you're left wondering if/when nvidia will do something about it. Or when you have a brand new kernel or X server and the nvidia driver doesn't support it. I could go on...

Finally, you may want to run your pc completely on free software; it might not interest you, but remember that there are people who are interested in it, and remember that this all started because Stallman's printer had a closed source driver.

[deanjo]

;54680']bulletxt: for example when the nvidia driver doesn't support your graphics card anymore. Or when it is very slow with things like kde 4. Or when it crashes on your pc and you're left wondering if/when nvidia will do something about it. Or when you have a brand new kernel or X server and the nvidia driver doesn't support it. I could go on...


lol, seriously opensource drivers have not been any quicker addressing issues. How long did it take for a decent video playback with out tearing on the ATI drivers for example? Nvidia also has an excellent track record of publishing drivers for their older cards. Heck the drivers for a TNT was updated just over a month ago. opensource by no means guarantees longterm support or quick resolution to issues.


Finally, you may want to run your pc completely on free software; it might not interest you, but remember that there are people who are interested in it, and remember that this all started because Stallman's printer had a closed source driver.Richard "For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.)" Stallman is a nut job at best.

He probably worked as a stage hand on this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RHj15wVXec

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134979

[bugmenot]

I agree the NVIDIA binary driver is going to be a LOT better than the opensource driver. NVIDIA are always adding new stuff to their driver (including Pure-Video like features that only opensource drivers can dream of) and fixing performance issues (like 2D performance)

On the other hand NVIDIA do a very poor job at packaging their binary driver because forcing people to drop to the terminal and doing funky stuff like stopping your xserver is pretty painful way of installing the driver. Why can't they maintain an ubuntu repository ?? Making a volunteer dev handle NVIDIA's binary driver for millions of users is not good at all. I would expect that the norveau devs would maintain their repository better.

[deanjo]

I agree the NVIDIA binary driver is going to be a LOT better than the opensource driver. NVIDIA are always adding new stuff to their driver (including Pure-Video like features that only opensource drivers can dream of) and fixing performance issues (like 2D performance)

On the other hand NVIDIA do a very poor job at packaging their binary driver because forcing people to drop to the terminal and doing funky stuff like stopping your xserver is pretty painful way of installing the driver. Why can't they maintain an ubuntu repository ?? Making a volunteer dev handle NVIDIA's binary driver for millions of users is not good at all. I would expect that the norveau devs would maintain their repository better.

Having Nvidia maintain packaging for all the distro's is unrealistic. It's far simpler for the distro to repackage as necessary. The distro is the ones responsible for packaging for other software for their distro as well. When nvidia did do the rpms, debs and such there were constant requests for other distros and people got pissed off when their favorite distro was not in the list.

[Zhick]

lol, seriously opensource drivers have not been any quicker addressing issues. How long did it take for a decent video playback with out tearing on the ATI drivers for example?
Well, it was faster than the proprietary driver (which lacks it still today). The ATi FOSS-driver is in many aspects already better than the proprietary, so you can't deny there's a point in it.
So saying there's no need for a free nVidia-driver just because the proprietary driver is better right now is only based on the trust nVidia is going to continue it's good support.

[deanjo]

Well, it was faster than the proprietary driver (which lacks it still today). The ATi FOSS-driver is in many aspects already better than the proprietary, so you can't deny there's a point in it.
So saying there's no need for a free nVidia-driver just because the proprietary driver is better right now is only based on the trust nVidia is going to continue it's good support.

Where is the foss drivers faster? Certainly not anything 3d. Nvidia has given no indication at all that they are going away from linux/bsd/solaris support. Seriously the Henny Penny "the sky is falling" holds nothing when FACTS are put into the arguement. There is no guarantee in foss as well that a maintainer quits or abandons their code nor does is guarantee that someone will pick up the torch.

[TechMage89]

Uh, have you not been aware of the major 2d performance problems with newer nvidia cards recently, particularly with kde4?

Some people just need an easy, usable desktop without messing with a blob, and don't care about 3d acceleration much. Nouveau will establish a much higher baseline of functionality than the nv driver.

[deanjo]

Uh, have you not been aware of the major 2d performance problems with newer nvidia cards recently, particularly with kde4?

Some people just need an easy, usable desktop without messing with a blob, and don't care about 3d acceleration much. Nouveau will establish a much higher baseline of functionality than the nv driver.

Ummm, you haven't been keeping up with the driver progression I see. KDE4 is smooth as butter using the newer drivers on 8200 / 8500 / 8800 / 9600.

[miles]

Those that deny the use of a piece of code because 99% of the users won't need it are a strange bunch... and shouldn't they be posting that on a another site, since 99% of the users don't need Linux or BSD?

Like any company, Nvidia isn't going to provide drivers for exotic systems (even though those can be used by thousands of users, tens of thousands, etc...) or architectures different than x86 and amd64. What do you do if you've got a nice ARM piece of hw, a PowerPC (they might support that), a Power or Cell architecture?

Proprietary drivers aren't bad, it's the lack of specification that hurts. Call me whan Nvidia is providing a proprietary driver for Haiku... or for one of those new MID/netbooks that ARM is going to offer.

[bulletxt]

NVIDIA has provided drivers for linux since 2001. if you wanna talk bad about NVIDIA you'de better change company.

and now, since this world isn't perfect and no company is perfect, I prefer lack of documentation combined to a serious driver instead of AMD that released 50%? documentation and release a driver we all know what it is. if you really can't look at reality then ok continue dreaming I don't care.

[deanjo]

NVIDIA has provided drivers for linux since 2001. if you wanna talk bad about NVIDIA you'de better change company.

and now, since this world isn't perfect and no company is perfect, I prefer lack of documentation combined to a serious driver instead of AMD that released 50%? documentation and release a driver we all know what it is. if you really can't look at reality then ok continue dreaming I don't care.

Amen to that.

[miles]

In what ways is trying to get 2D and 3D acceleration on other systems than Windows/Linux and other archs than i386/amd64 a bad thing?

I've got no gripes with Nvidia and ATI proprietary drivers, I've got problems with bulletxt telling people what they should be doing/using just because that's the only thing he'll ever need. Let people do/have what they want, and don't consider the fact that they might want to do things different a threat.

[bulletxt]

yea whatever, go ask yourself why is there an ATI Wiki for installing fgrlx driver and there isn't one for nvidia.
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Main_Page
Also go through the Ubuntu page and look what a mess. Look man, look.

Just ask yourself this question. then of course if you like dreaming I can't do anything about that.

[miles]

What has ATI to do with the Nouveau driver?

Seems to me you were just ranting against the new for no reason. No Nvidia engineers were harmed during the production of the Nouveau driver, so what's your problem if you're not going to use the open source drivers anyway?

Now can you grow up instead of polluting threads?

[DanL]

yea whatever, go ask yourself why is there an ATI Wiki for installing fgrlx driver and there isn't one for nvidia.
What's wrong with having a wiki for a driver to address common issues? I'm guessing most n00bs with an nvidia card rely on EnvyNG to install their nvidia driver (and then make a bunch of repetitive threads when their resolution doesn't work).

I prefer lack of documentation combined to a serious driver instead of AMD that released 50%? documentation and release a driver we all know what it is.
Here's the problem: you state what you prefer and then claim it's "reality". Maybe some of us would prefer that the hardware vendor release documentation and let open-source devs write a driver.

if you really can't look at reality then ok continue dreaming I don't care.
"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one..."

[TechMage89]

Really, what is this argument about? Is the nouveau driver somehow mutually exclusive with the nvidia blob?

Seriously, they both have their place. The blob won't work for people on powerpc, and nouveau can better address the needs of users who need only reliable and wide supported 2d, while the blob addresses the needs of users who need performant 3d and video decode acceleration.

Both drivers do something good, and there's no reason to rant about...(what exactly is the point of contention here?)

[Ex-Cyber]

ok so, as of today 10 December 2008, give me one reason to use nv driver over NVIDIA.Because it ships with xorg and therefore provides an "out of the box" solution with no need for special treatment by packagers.

If you have a problem with nv's functionality, the only party to blame is NVidia. They're the only ones that can meaningfully maintain it, because the hardware parts of it are a wall of undocumented hex literals.

[Paczesiowa]

ok so, as of today 10 December 2008, give me one reason to use nv driver over NVIDIA

I can give you plenty of reasons as of 2 months later.

I have 7 years old card gf4mx440 (or maybe it is even older). it does EVERYTHING I need from video card. it displays regular things, and with xvideo working I can watch 720p video (don't have a screen for 1080).

1) as of today there is no stable nvidia driver for my card. sure you can use use beta driver, if you like your browser to look like this:

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/4421/screenshotnvidialinuxnvnb6.th.jpg (http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshotnvidialinuxnvnb6.jpg)

why does it look so bad? because nvidia forgot to BACKPORT some fix from non-legacy drivers. that's right, they know how to do it, they just didn't get around to actually do it for 3 months.

2) there isn't even beta driver for very old cards (tnt and gf2) that work with xorg 1.5 (and I think most of current distributions).

3) you can't hibernate with any agp card that uses agp modules (kernel or nvidia module - doesn't matter). unless you patch nvidia drivers to allow using 2 agp drivers at the same time. that's right, some guy figured out how to use simultaneously 2 drivers to make hibernation work with enabled agp, while nvidia can't make it with their own drivers. it doesn't stop their representatives in nvnews forums tell everybody that it works with their agp implementation.

now you give me 1 reason to use nvidia driver. with nv everything I need works fine and out of the box. and it's free.

[kayanat]

How to get asus my cinema u3000 hybrid usb tv tuner work with ubuntu 9.04?
I fresh install ubuntu 9.04 alpha that has newest kernel said to be support. Asus u3000 hybrid tv usb tv tuner that has analog tv, digital tv and fm radio tell me how to get those work?