On Friday 31 October 2003 11:10 pm, you wrote:
* Fred A. Miller (fmiller@lightlink.com) [031031 19:41]:
[snip]
Does that mean they aren't going to in the future?
Since the 8xxx series they haven't released specs to anyone really. They started putting out binary only drivers because nVidia was selling a lot of cards to the Linux crowd and no one seemed to really complain about the binary only drivers. So ATI figure why not..let's do it as well. I don't think either will give out specs to have good 3D drivers written. It's sad really..all that free labor both companies would get.
Quite! Well, one must wonder if MickySoft has a hand in it as well. I guess we'll have to wait a tad longer till Linux has a larger presence on the desktop and it can't be ignored by these meatheads any longer. Fred -- "...Linux, MS-DOS, and Windows XP (also known as the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)."
On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 12:33:26AM -0500, Fred Miller wrote:
On Friday 31 October 2003 11:10 pm, you wrote:
* Fred A. Miller (fmiller@lightlink.com) [031031 19:41]:
[snip]
Does that mean they aren't going to in the future?
Since the 8xxx series they haven't released specs to anyone really. They started putting out binary only drivers because nVidia was selling a lot of cards to the Linux crowd and no one seemed to really complain about the binary only drivers. So ATI figure why not..let's do it as well. I don't think either will give out specs to have good 3D drivers written. It's sad really..all that free labor both companies would get.
Quite! Well, one must wonder if MickySoft has a hand in it as well. I guess we'll have to wait a tad longer till Linux has a larger presence on the desktop and it can't be ignored by these meatheads any longer.
Fred
You guys are ridiculous. The reality is that NVidia produces the BEST drivers available for X and OpenGL. The fact they will not open source the drivers is really not a matter for concern. NVidia has stated in the past that they have a rather unique technology that allows drivers to be unified for ALL the chipsets they produce. They don't write the drivers in 'C' or some other common lanquage. They have some proprietary system. Sure with the specs one might be able to write some drivers in 'C' or whatever. But do you really think that an outsider is likely to produce better drivers than NVidia does? Now of course some companies drivers suck and they could be improved upon. However, NVidias probably are nearly as good as they can get for X. -Jim-
<snip>
You guys are ridiculous. The reality is that NVidia produces the BEST drivers available for X and OpenGL. The fact they will not open source the drivers is really not a matter for concern. NVidia has stated in the past that they have a rather unique technology that allows drivers to be unified for ALL the chipsets they produce. They don't write the drivers in 'C' or some other common lanquage. They have some proprietary system. Sure with the specs one might be able to write some drivers in 'C' or whatever. But do you really think that an outsider is likely to produce better drivers than NVidia does?
Now of course some companies drivers suck and they could be improved upon. However, NVidias probably are nearly as good as they can get for X.
-Jim-
Nvidia's support for Linux is commendable and their drivers have caused a few problems but this far out-weighed by the advantages once installed. On SuSE 9, the drivers work well. LW999
* LinuxWorld999 (linuxworld999@yahoo.co.uk) [031101 02:05]:
<snip>
You guys are ridiculous. The reality is that NVidia produces the BEST drivers available for X and OpenGL. The fact they will not open source the drivers is really not a matter for concern. NVidia has stated in the past that they have a rather unique technology that allows drivers to be unified for ALL the chipsets they produce. They don't write the drivers in 'C' or some other common lanquage. They have some proprietary system. Sure with the specs one might be able to write some drivers in 'C' or whatever. But do you really think that an outsider is likely to produce better drivers than NVidia does?
Now of course some companies drivers suck and they could be improved upon. However, NVidias probably are nearly as good as they can get for X.
-Jim-
Nvidia's support for Linux is commendable and their drivers have caused a few problems but this far out-weighed by the advantages once installed. On SuSE 9, the drivers work well.
I never had a problem with nVidia or their drivers. What I wrote about ATI and them not providing specs for their cards had to do with the fact that the open source drivers for the Radeon 7500 are damn good but the drivers that ATI have been putting out for their 8000 series and above have been crappy and problematic at best or so I've been told. I don't much care of ATI or nVidia open source their drivers..as long as they work and are of good quality. -- Ben Rosenberg ---===---===---===--- mailto:ben@whack.org ----- If two men agree on everything, you can be sure that only one of them is doing the thinking.
Jim Norton
They don't write the drivers in 'C' or some other common lanquage. They have some proprietary system.
And you really believe that? Isn't that a bit naive?
Sure with the specs one might be able to write some drivers in 'C' or whatever. But do you really think that an outsider is likely to produce better drivers than NVidia does?
At least for me it's not about better drivers, it's about better maintainability. The audience for the peer review would be *much* larger and thus the possibility of making the driver even better. Another point is that you're stuck with waiting for nvidia to release drivers that adapt to newer kernels or other platforms. With open sources, you could do the adaption yourself! Philipp
On Saturday 01 November 2003 13:01, Philipp Thomas wrote:
Another point is that you're stuck with waiting for nvidia to release drivers that adapt to newer kernels or other platforms. With open sources, you could do the adaption yourself!
In the case of 3D this aspect is really irrelevant. There are two main reasons for wanting 3D acceleration, one is games and the other is rendering 3 dimension objects. Both of which are highly commercial in nature, and therefore outside the need of community drivers and stuff. We already have mesa, which provides the basic stuff for those who wish to try this for fun. I see no problem, with accepting binary 3D support from NVidia provided of course that they *do* provide these for their cards.
Örn Hansen
In the case of 3D this aspect is really irrelevant.
No, it's not!
There are two main reasons for wanting 3D acceleration, one is games and the other is rendering 3 dimension objects. Both of which are highly commercial in nature, and therefore outside the need of community drivers and stuff.
Ah, then please tell me why there are open source programs that do need 3d rendering, beginning with the 3d screen savers. And Mesa is out of the question, as it's far too slow to do any real stuff. So games would be the only reason I could perhaps accept.
I see no problem, with accepting binary 3D support from NVidia provided of course that they *do* provide these for their cards.
Even if they do, there are a lot of cases where you'd like to have more. Take for instance development kernels (i.e. those with uneven minor version) where lots of things can change which can lead to the nvidia driver not working anymore because symbols (i.e. functions or variables) they need don't exist anymore in the kernel. In that case it's normally rather easy to fix that yourself, given that you have the source code. And before you mention it, I do know that the glue code is open source. But some experiences tell me that the code in the binary only module isn't encapsulated as good as it ought to be. So whichever way you turn it, I uphold my POV that binary only modules are a bad thing that should be avoided as much as possible and so also hardware that needs them to fully use it. Philipp
On Sunday 02 November 2003 00:08, Philipp Thomas wrote:
Even if they do, there are a lot of cases where you'd like to have more. Take for instance development kernels (i.e. those with uneven minor version) where lots of things can change which can lead to the nvidia driver not working anymore because symbols (i.e. functions or variables) they need don't exist anymore in the kernel. In that case it's normally rather easy to fix that yourself, given that you have the source code.
And before you mention it, I do know that the glue code is open source. But some experiences tell me that the code in the binary only module isn't encapsulated as good as it ought to be.
So whichever way you turn it, I uphold my POV that binary only modules are a bad thing that should be avoided as much as possible and so also hardware that needs them to fully use it.
Of course, I agree with the last statement that they should avoided as much as possible. But we must also understand the position of companies like Nvidia and try meet them somewhere in the middle. In my personal point of view, the problems with modules in the Linux kernel is not just a question that concerns graphics drivers. I think the modularity of the kernel could be improved, as these symbols are far too easily broken. And when its too easily broken, creating drivers for commercial systems becomes a big issue, as a company that is selling state of the art hardware is going to wait with releasing these for us, because maintaining these drivers for every version is too expensive, and we just have to understand their point of view, not to release specs to us until "later" in this hardwares life. Which is just hard luck for us ... so, to me, the question here would be a challenge to improve the modular aspects of the kernel, at al. Just my 2¢, Örn
Örn Hansen
I think the modularity of the kernel could be improved, as these symbols are far too easily broken. And when its too easily broken, creating drivers for commercial systems becomes a big issue,
In some parts yes, in others no. You can't really guard symbols as otherwise you'd have to cement them for all time and thus either make kernel development impossible or bloat the kernel more and more.
as a company that is selling state of the art hardware is going to wait with releasing these for us, because maintaining these drivers for every version is too expensive, and we just have to understand their point of view, not to release specs to us until "later" in this hardwares life.
Specs for nvidia chips have *never* been released, at least not since XFree86 changed to their module loader design which allowed vendors to issue binary only drivers. And just look at the size of nvdriver.o, in many systems larger then all other loaded modules together.
just hard luck for us ... so, to me, the question here would be a challenge to improve the modular aspects of the kernel, at al.
There isn't much to do, unless you're willing to accept a lot of drawbacks too. Philipp
participants (6)
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Ben Rosenberg -
Fred Miller -
Jim Norton -
LinuxWorld999 -
Philipp Thomas -
Örn Hansen