NVIDIA's Open-Source Driver Gets Updated

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA's Open-Source Driver Gets Updated

The ill-maintained, feature-limited, and obfuscated driver known as xf86-video-nv driver has a new release out. This is the first open-source NVIDIA X.Org driver update in several months, but its change-log is rather limited...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzE4OA

[DeepDayze]

Can't wait till Nouveau goes fully mainstream on a par with the ATI radeon/radeonhd drivers and then this old thing can be put to pasture

[FunkyRider]

Phoronix's tongue is always biased

For NV:

'There are basically eleven changes with this latest xf86-video-nv update, but none of them are worth getting excited over. '

But if it's for ATI it would be worded like this:

'There are basically eleven changes with this latest xf86-video-ati update, all of the are so worth getting excited over! '

Or

'There are 2 bug fixed for DRI2, but we can expect it to work in.... next year! Only a year to go! Good job! Well Done! Love you all!'


Sigh...

[bulletxt]

ahuahuuha you are so right man But it's not a problem for me, it actually makes me smile and have a nice day! Imagine what phoronix would do if AMD releases fglrx driver the same number of times NVIDIA does!! They'll make a party!


And this is the best sentance of the year:

"
'There are 2 bug fixed for DRI2, but we can expect it to work in.... next year! Only a year to go! Good job! Well Done! Love you all!'
"

LOL it's so true!!!

[Melcar]

Originally Posted by bulletxt

... Imagine what phoronix would do if AMD releases fglrx driver the same number of times NVIDIA does!! ...

They already do.

[MaestroMaus]

Or maybe, these updates aren't very interesting since there only about a 2D driver instead of a 3D driver.

[Duo Maxwell]

Originally Posted by DeepDayze

Can't wait till Nouveau goes fully mainstream on a par with the ATI radeon/radeonhd drivers and then this old thing can be put to pasture

And that'll be when abouts? I'm guessing at least another decade minimum for yesterday's hardware?

Originally Posted by FunkyRider

Phoronix's tongue is always biased

For NV:

'There are basically eleven changes with this latest xf86-video-nv update, but none of them are worth getting excited over. '

But if it's for ATI it would be worded like this:

'There are basically eleven changes with this latest xf86-video-ati update, all of the are so worth getting excited over! '

Or

'There are 2 bug fixed for DRI2, but we can expect it to work in.... next year! Only a year to go! Good job! Well Done! Love you all!'


Sigh...

Maybe because theres actual work being done on the Radeon drivers? As in theres real video features beyond basic 2d for most hardware, and theres docs to make most everything work being spit out by amd aon a regular basis?

Don't believe me? take a look at http://wiki.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature and http://wiki.x.org/wiki/RadeonProgram

So, exactly how much can the the NV or Nouveau drivers actually do at this time? Last I read it wasn't much worthy of note and Nvidia was saying it had absolutly no interest in giving out any more information other then chip IDs and basic 2d docs once every 5 years to the projects.

So what Nvidia is now spitting out a new driver every other day, all they're doing is giving you access to their nightly builds, sans bits on upcoming hardware.

At least if you go with ATI you know you already have docs out for entire R700/HD4000 and probably the FireGL series cards as well.

So you'll at least have 3d support on a Radeon HD4890 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...n_hd4890&num=5 if AMD where to come out tomorrow and say "ƒü¢|< open source, we're going windows only for here on out." because they've already let the cat out of the proverbial bag by releasing the docs that they have.

[bulletxt]

It's all about having the cake made or knowing the cake's recipe and do it yourself. Only time will say what is better between the two.

[yesterday]

No it isn't.

You are confusing the nvidia driver with the nv driver. The nv driver is opensource in name, but not in spirit. It's maintained by Nvidia to provide an opensource option, but it is heavily obfuscated. They give you the recipe, but make it ridiculously difficult to actually make anything of it. This has nothing to do with the nvidia driver.

The ATI 2D open source drivers are readable and backed by available documentation.

And seriously, are you trying to compare DRI2 improvements to PCI-ID additions and BUILD FIXES ? I.e. fixes to configure files?

[bulletxt]

Originally Posted by yesterday

No it isn't.

You are confusing the nvidia driver with the nv driver. The nv driver is opensource in name, but not in spirit. It's maintained by Nvidia to provide an opensource option, but it is heavily obfuscated. They give you the recipe, but make it ridiculously difficult to actually make anything of it. This has nothing to do with the nvidia driver.

The ATI 2D open source drivers are readable and backed by available documentation.

And seriously, are you trying to compare DRI2 improvements to PCI-ID additions and BUILD FIXES ? I.e. fixes to configure files?

I was comparing the open source ati driver (available doc) with the proprietary nvidia "good" driver (cake already made).