RedHat 9.0

[Cheshiremackat]

Seems like redhat announced that RedHat 9.0 will be released on March 31st... so those of us who were waiting for new drivers probably wont have to wait much longer!


I cannot wait to see how 9.0 looks... lets hope for the fellow nforce users that the installer will be compatible with the onboard graphics :D

_CMK

[bwkaz]

9?

I thought it was going to be 8.1?

*shrug* Oh well, whatever they want to do, I guess. RH is the king of artificial version number inflation... :p

(/me runs and hides)

[Cheshiremackat]

I was a little shocked too when I read the RHN letter in my inbox too.

I guess there was enough changes to warrant a x.0 release... PLUS with mandrake @ 9.0 noobs might think MDK 9.0 is newer than RH 8.1...

regardless we are getting a new RH and New NVid drivers... which is almost always a good thing :)

P.S. I though Slackware was the king of inflating version numbers...

_CMK

[ajdthomson]

So should 9.0 support nForce2 as well? Reason I ask is have just purchased a shuttle SN41G2 and would save me the pain of installing the drivers etc.

[Cheshiremackat]

You will always HAVE To install the Nvidia drivers seperately b/c they cannot be included in a distro (nvidia license), BUT XFree86 4.3 is *supposed* to support nforce1/2 natively with the nv driver (basic functionality)... so here is hoping that the XFree driver will work... d/l and installing the nvidia driver is waaay easier when X already works!
You could try upgrading to Xfree86 4.3 and try the nv driver before 9.0 comes out, but I'm just going to wait and see :)

_CMK

I like the shuttle product too, and nforce2 is a big platform, so I would expect the Nvidia drivers will work (wait for the next release tho) quite well...

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by Cheshiremackat
regardless we are getting a new RH and New NVid drivers... which is almost always a good thing :) No arguments from me on that one. Definitely a good thing. :)

P.S. I though Slackware was the king of inflating version numbers... I don't really know, I just heard RH and Mandrake referred to once as that, so I figured I'd just sort of keep up the tradition. :p

But yeah, to other people, don't take anything I said up in the previous post too seriously... ;)

[Andy Mecham]

You will always HAVE To install the Nvidia drivers seperately b/c they cannot be included in a distro (nvidia license),

This is untrue. The NVIDIA License specifically allows for the redistribution of the Linux driver.

--andy

edit:

Specifically,

2.1.2 Linux Exception. Notwithstanding the foregoing terms of Section 2.1.1, SOFTWARE designed exclusively for use on the Linux operating system may be copied and redistributed, provided that the binary files thereof are not modified in any way (except for unzipping of compressed files).

[bwkaz]

Originally posted by Andy Mecham
This is untrue. The NVIDIA License specifically allows for the redistribution of the Linux driver. Right, but the GPL doesn't allow it.

The GPL specifies that any users that can get the binaries for a GPL'ed program (like the distro's kernel) must be able to get the full source for exactly that version, so they can build it themselves.

If a distro were to include the nVidia drivers, they would have to, in order to satisfy the GPL, distribute the full sources to the NVIDIA_kernel and NVIDIA_GLX packages. Which they can't do, because they're closed.

The nVidia license may allow redistribution of it with Linux, but the Linux license does not allow redistribution of the nVidia kernel modules with it.

[Cheshiremackat]

my point exactly, Nvidia and the GPL are incompatible, and most distros are siding with the GPL...

I sincerely hope someday a comprimise can be made. I often hope that the distro would include a CD that is not covered under GPL that users can use as they wish (Nvid drivers, Acrobat, Real, etc) would save me hours of d/l of closed source programs with every new distro upgrade.

So Andy, now that you are here, is Nvidia going to be ready with RH 9.0 drivers?

_CMK

[Andy Mecham]

This is what I get for reading too quickly. :)

Some distros do ship the NVIDIA drivers - I believe they come on one of the Mandrake boxed CDs.

--andy

[manu]

Hy!
This is my first post on this forum, and i have a question!
I'm a Redhat user and now i'm running rh 8.0 with Riva TNT2, and it's working.
But i wanna upgrade to rh 9. Does anyone now when NVIDIA will release drivers that will work with rh 9 (and with hyperthreads(NPTL))?
Good luck!

[bwkaz]

The issue isn't with hyperthreading, the issue is with thread-local storage support in the kernel.

The kernel (if TLS is being used) and the nVidia GLX driver both use the same segment registers, so they step on each other and cause fun stuff like crashes, etc.

But no, I don't know when new drivers fixing this problem will be released. :( I hope nVidia wasn't banking on waiting until kernel 2.6 is out to address the issue (because kernel 2.5, the current development one, is what triggers it)...

[Cheshiremackat]

Well redhat 9 isn;t out until March 31st, so the absolute earliest could be april 1st...

_CMK