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]

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.