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NVIDIA Retiring Their Pre-Fermi "340 Series" Legacy Linux Graphics Driver

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  • NVIDIA Retiring Their Pre-Fermi "340 Series" Legacy Linux Graphics Driver

    Phoronix: NVIDIA Retiring Their Pre-Fermi "340 Series" Legacy Linux Graphics Driver

    NVIDIA has sent out word that they no longer plan to issue anymore driver updates for their 340 series Linux legacy branch...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    People do fairly call Nvidia out for their open source practices. But I still appreciate their customer support. Other companies do need to learn from them in terms of customer support and focus.

    Yes, they do charge as much money as they can for their products and yes they do try to build a moat aroud their walled garden but they also try to know what customer wants and provide a long support.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by vb_linux View Post
      People do fairly call Nvidia out for their open source practices. But I still appreciate their customer support. Other companies do need to learn from them in terms of customer support and focus.

      Yes, they do charge as much money as they can for their products and yes they do try to build a moat aroud their walled garden but they also try to know what customer wants and provide a long support.
      So you accept that perfectly working hardware will just remain blocked on kernel version 5.4, because nvidia? What if you want do play around with the new pidfd API?
      Nope, not with this GPU.
      At work I'm stuck with an older nvidia GPU (well, image scanouter, for what it does...) , and have to work with new kernel features. Believe me, this end of support is hell.

      The OSS debate is a whole other can of worms.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Serafean View Post

        So you accept that perfectly working hardware will just remain blocked on kernel version 5.4, because nvidia? What if you want do play around with the new pidfd API?
        Nope, not with this GPU.
        At work I'm stuck with an older nvidia GPU (well, image scanouter, for what it does...) , and have to work with new kernel features. Believe me, this end of support is hell.

        The OSS debate is a whole other can of worms.
        yes it will. But some of those hardware is from 2006. AMD and their GCN comaptibility in open source drivers; will not let you use their hardware features too. Nothing new here.

        And everything cost money. Open source is just that open source, it is not free. It still costs money to develop and maintain. So, like I said, I would like Nvidia to work with wayland and go opensource. But I have appreciated their customer focus and support. I have a Nvidia Shield TV. It is probably the only Android box from its generation which is supported and updated with latest Android versions. Nvidia does the same with their drivers. They do listen to their "paying" customers. Not saying they are not overcharging. Not saying I won't be happy if AMD pulls off GPU war and CPU war this year.

        My issues with Linux have been, that the focus is on ideological wars, rather than customer benefit and support. Linux would have benefited if we had this intense customer focus. If 70% of your focus customers were using a said brand GPU, a startup would have made sure to work with that GPU maker but not us. We keep flipping them finger.

        PS: I am a practical man. I use Nvidia products for now. Because in fields I work (ML and finance), Nvidia has a huge lead. I also reward them for the extra effort they made. AMD ignored these fields, hence the gap. But I also put my money in what I believe in and I believe in AMD turnaround, so I invest in AMD. They have paid me well since last four years for this belief. I believe in having skin in the game to have an opinion.
        Last edited by vb_linux; 31 January 2020, 10:48 AM.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by vb_linux View Post
          yes it will. But some of those hardware is from 2006. AMD and their GCN comaptibility in open source drivers; will not let you use their hardware features too. Nothing new here.
          Did Radeon opensource driver disappear? Because hardware from 2006 is supported by "radeon", and not "amdgpu"

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          • #6
            While I understand it, it doesn't mean I have to like it. My 2010 MacBook Pro has a GeForce GT 330M that is using the 340 driver and has been very smooth with kernel 5.4. And this was after Mac cut me off with the Mojave release (cue Will Smith crying in Fresh Prince - "Why don't they want me, man?")

            I'll probably stick with the 5.4 LTS kernel until support is dropped, and then switch over to nouveau when that happens, so this will not be goodbye. (#MambaMentality)

            And btw, hardware from 2010 is not dead, I don't care if it's 10 years ago, it's still viable and wouldn't be insane to expect a small amount of resources dedicated to keep support. Here is the output of my ./phoronix-test-suite system-info in case anyone is running a similar setup.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Serafean View Post

              So you accept that perfectly working hardware will just remain blocked on kernel version 5.4, because nvidia? What if you want do play around with the new pidfd API?
              Nope, not with this GPU.
              At work I'm stuck with an older nvidia GPU (well, image scanouter, for what it does...) , and have to work with new kernel features. Believe me, this end of support is hell.

              The OSS debate is a whole other can of worms.
              Wow. Even AMD ends driver support and its much earlier than this. I can't believe Nvidia even had support here for these cards still lol.

              I wanted to expand on that:
              https://www.amd.com/en/support/graph...radeon-hd-5970
              https://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc...-653963/review
              https://bit-tech.net/news/tech/graph...rce-gts-250/1/

              You can see AMD ended support for their 2009 GPU in 2015. You really can't get mad at Nvidia here. That's 4 years more than AMD! About 6 years AMD and about 10 years for Nvidia.

              Nvidia has their cons sure, and a bunch of people using Linux like to complain about them, but they have some nice pros as well. AMD also has pros and cons so complaining about GPUs and GPU support is kind of lame. 10 years is a long time for a GPU not to mention support.
              Last edited by ix900; 31 January 2020, 12:36 PM.

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              • #8
                I still use a Quadro 4000 for BOINC, but the PC it's in is still using Debian Jessie so the kernel is ancient anyway (it's also using fglrx hahahaha). I guess in some ways it'll be nice to do one more driver upgrade and never have to think about it again.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by vb_linux View Post
                  My issues with Linux have been, that the focus is on ideological wars, rather than customer benefit and support. Linux would have benefited if we had this intense customer focus. If 70% of your focus customers were using a said brand GPU, a startup would have made sure to work with that GPU maker but not us. We keep flipping them finger.

                  PS: I am a practical man. I use Nvidia products for now. Because in fields I work (ML and finance), Nvidia has a huge lead. I also reward them for the extra effort they made. AMD ignored these fields, hence the gap. But I also put my money in what I believe in and I believe in AMD turnaround, so I invest in AMD. They have paid me well since last four years for this belief. I believe in having skin in the game to have an opinion.
                  If you want to escape the ideological wars, you're a member of the wrong species, and on the wrong planet, bub. Everyone has a different idea of what is best, and most of the ideas are wrong.

                  More seriously, look into PC-BSD... or that half-baked something-always-breaking mass of spyware with the most hardware support. You know the one. By your definitions, those are the logical choices.

                  Problem for you is that the GNU/Linux/what-have-you operating systems are the ultimate in customer focus. That customer was, up until PCLinuxOS, and then Ubuntu and Linux Mint, generally some variety of developer, systems administrator, or scientist. Now, it's as much casual-customer-focus as it can be without sacrificing security or the previously-mentioned users... and without dropping the GNOME single-thread UI codebase like KDE managed to.

                  The copyleft license? Ensures the customer can tweak things the way they like them, even if the developers don't see a profit in it... and that others get the benefit.

                  The excessive number of choices? In the end, there are far fewer practical options than it appears, due to the available devs to maintain, support, and build on them... but there are competing choices which have to one-up each other to survive instead of stagnating like certain other systems (Solaris, Windows before it had significant non-Mac competition, etc).

                  nVidia gets the finger because it refuses to do the practical thing and use or improve the existing systems in the kernel, causing all sorts of technical difficulties and breakage upon updates. This isn't just a matter of idealogy, this is bad kernel dev methodology with real-world consequences!

                  I'm a practical human, I use what I have available until it no longer does the job without being more of a pain than it's worth in fixing and security holes. That means I use AMD for everything practical, nouveau on my GT430 system, and begrudgingly the nVidia driver on my offline GTX950 system that needs the physics and rendering performance in Blender.

                  Given how the driver breaks on kernel *point releases* (after the *second* decimal point), it barely passes the "more pain than it's worth" check.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Serafean View Post
                    So you accept that perfectly working hardware will just remain blocked on kernel version 5.4, because nvidia?
                    You has a point here. But on the other hand, a FOSS Driver means nothing. For Example the Talks about the removal from GCN1 Support from amdgpu. The radeonsi driver does not support Vulkan but Video decoding. The amdgpu does support vulkan but no video decoding.

                    i prefer vulkan support, so im fucked with a much more recent gpu.

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