Nouveau Driver Remains Much Slower Than NVIDIA's Official Driver

[deanjo]

Canonical did introduce many end-user interesting projects: software center (much more comfortable to find and discuss software), jockey (to autofetch drivers), automatic Xorg restarts (to eliminate "CLI suprise" in case of bad drivers), upstart (before systemd was born), networkmanager (this is clearly userfriendly) early adoption of PulseAudio (with funny effects).

software center --> their version of click and run nothing special I believe Mandriva also had there version as well. Networkmanager was Redhat and Pulse again was not developed by Ubuntu and when it was introduced brought A LOT of heartache.

[hoohoo]

It doesn't seem to be "much slower", rather "reasonably fast, but slower then proprietary". Regarding trolls above, stable OSS driver will be great, even if it is 10% slower (most people wouldn't notice) because it will be much more stable (tested by millions of people) which makes difference especially for older cards, that companies tend to ignore. Also, security can be reasonably checked, rechecked and fixed by experience kernel devs, closed binary code is simply potential security and maintenance problem. And last but not least, having ALL drivers in Kernel, eventually, will make life of developers lot easier, especially regarding refactoring of various APIs.

Some people said they've had issues with closed vendor driver. Fair enough, me too: an AMD c50 based netbook I bought was not properly supported for some time. However my succession of card for desktops (8800GT -> GTX260 -> GTX560 and much longer string of AMD up to an HD7970) were supported well and quickly by the vendors.

Last time I looked into it (maybe 6 months ago) the vendor's drivers were still untouchable for OpenGL feature support and execution speed compared to the open source drivers.

Even on 2D operations like redraw window contents during window resize, the open source drivers drag.

Using open source drivers I find that Firefox may not use hardware acceleration and is thus dog slow. Never had that problem with proprietary.

Having all drivers in kernel / refactoring: before I buy a new video card I check for vendor support for the new card for Linux. If the kernel devs refactor or otherwise improve the APIs or kernel internals then it is AMD or NV responsibility to support the new kernel. In any case, how often does a major kernel subsystem like graphics (or SCSI layer or network stack) get overhauled? Every five years? Longer?


Other people's comments:

(paraphrase) "too stupid to uninstall a driver": I am perfectly capable of removing Nouveau after an install. But it's a pain in the neck: the VESA driver will just not get used if I install proprietary driver, so why should I have to mess with blacklisting the nouveau module? It's as if someone does not want me to disable it. It's not as bad now as it was when it first showed up, I guess some zealots at e.g. Fedora got half the message.

FPS & game consoles: I use PCs & Linux professionally, I play shoot 'em up games on Windows. I do not think consoles offer a compelling value proposition.

"trolls": I reject you out of hand. My comments about open source AMD/NV video drivers are perfectly valid.

[deanjo]

(paraphrase) "too stupid to uninstall a driver": I am perfectly capable of removing Nouveau after an install. But it's a pain in the neck: the VESA driver will just not get used if I install proprietary driver, so why should I have to mess with blacklisting the nouveau module? It's as if someone does not want me to disable it. It's not as bad now as it was when it first showed up, I guess some zealots at e.g. Fedora got half the message.

Someone tried to make that all easier with a trivial patch but some developers got their panties all bunched up.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=NjYwMw

[BO$$]

Someone tried to make that all easier with a trivial patch but some developers got their panties all bunched up.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=NjYwMw

Damn! The xorg devs really are fucking morons. I suspected them to be but I always thought that because they write code they can't be too stupid. Looks like you really can be really good at doing something while being a total retard. Total lack of care for the end user....

[ChrisXY]

Damn! The xorg devs really are fucking morons. I suspected them to be but I always thought that because they write code they can't be too stupid. Looks like you really can be really good at doing something while being a total retard. Total lack of care for the end user....

Why does a reference to proprietary 3rd party x86-only-binary drivers need to be upstream?
https://projects.archlinux.org/svnto...es/xorg-server
Something like that has been in arch since mid 2011.

[pingufunkybeat]

Damn! The xorg devs really are fucking morons.

So, after Linux devs, now xorg devs are also morons. Everybody who makes your software is a moron.

What do you call a user using software written by morons then?

[gens]

Even on 2D operations like redraw window contents during window resize, the open source drivers drag.

painting a window and resizing it at the same time is not a trivial operation, in fact its bloody complicated and needs lots of bandwidth


also you can all bash on OSS drivers but the truth is if they dont suit you either dont use them or get your hands dirty
complaining on some forum or another is useless and annoying

if you are not suited to code them, like i am not, best you can do is file bug reports (ofc check if your setup is good and if the bug is already filed)

[ChrisXY]

There's still a bit truth to it. Try using the window management a bit with a geforce 6600 (!) and xfce, even with compositing. It just feels right.

[BO$$]

So, after Linux devs, now xorg devs are also morons. Everybody who makes your software is a moron.

What do you call a user using software written by morons then?

You can write good code and yet be a moron. That is the point I am trying to make. The fact that I am using code written by morons says nothing about me.

[gens]

The fact that I am using code written by morons says nothing about me.

sure it does
on many levels

but honestly for one of the main xorg devs to take so long to realize that everything should be a buffer tells a couple things too