NVIDIA 180.51 Display Driver Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA 180.51 Display Driver Released

NVIDIA has now managed to make it nearly two weeks before issuing a new Linux driver update. The NVIDIA 185.19 Beta is still the latest in the 185.xx series, but NVIDIA has provided a pre-release of the 180.51 driver. The NVIDIA 180.51 driver adds support for the GeForce GT 130, GeForce GT 140, GeForce GTS 250, GeForce 9400GT, and GeForce 9600GSO 512MB...

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

[KDesk]

So... NVIDIA has 0 problems making the blob driver compatible with a new unreleased Kernel (and Xserver), but with other companies the user has to wait many months after a new kernel/xserver release.

The good side of the story is that the free nv driver is bad (that is of course bad, fortunately nouveau is becoming better) and the radeon driver is every time better.
But that is not a excuse to not make the driver compatible with the latest stable kernel/xserver...

[deanjo]

So... NVIDIA has 0 problems making the blob driver compatible with a new unreleased Kernel (and Xserver), but with other companies the user has to wait many months after a new kernel/xserver release.

The good side of the story is that the free nv driver is bad (that is of course bad, fortunately nouveau is becoming better) and the radeon driver is every time better.
But that is not a excuse to not make the driver compatible with the latest stable kernel/xserver...

And this suprises you? Development when unhindered by politics usually will deliver results faster.

[d2kx]

As far as I know, AMD has to do more development work for new Xorg/Linux due to being closer to these systems / using more parts of them. NVIDIA has rewritten most parts for their own.

[Kano]

as far as i know fglrx is full of crappy bugs, like that vdrift one i discovered using pts, but nvidia worked fine...

[DeepDayze]

And this suprises you? Development when unhindered by politics usually will deliver results faster.

This

With all the hoo-ha surrounding ATI's fglrx, no wonder they have a problem getting out good releases. The open ATI drivers are getting better with time and perhaps be on a par with fglrx very soon

nVidia just gets better...and I do wish they opened their drivers as well.

[immudium]

NVidia drivers == awsome.
ATI drivers (open and closed source) == major eye-gouging inducing suckage.

[bridgman]

Just curious, what are the "politics" everyone is talking about here ?

[deanjo]

Just curious, what are the "politics" everyone is talking about here ?

Having to adhere to a license that stifles progress, having to debate endlessly about how to do crap and then having one party say screw that we will start over and go another route, development in area's that interest the developers (useless things like plymouth) instead of things that end users want (ummm video playback comes to mind), or how about the endless "we don't use it so fsck you, we don't care if it can help you" replies and in the case of Xorg, having to wait until intel tells what the others should do.

[bridgman]

OK, so basically all the usual problems that come with a volunteer community.

I don't think it's really "Intel telling people what to do"... Keith was telling people what to do at SuSE, and at HP before that IIRC. He and Jim have been working on X for so long that I doubt anyone has a problem with him taking the lead on X... I don't know how many of the other X devs you have met but none of them seem to have much tolerance for being "told what to do" unless they agree with the proposed direction.

Not sure what you mean by "a license that stifles progress"; are you talking about the X11/MIT/BSD license there ?