Will everyone PLEASE stop trashing the Nvidia Linux devs?

[ilarrain]

Leave Britney Alone!!!

[ThermalGrease]

Well the Nvidia Linux drivers might not be as good as windows dx9/dx10 drivers but with Opengl I dont see all that big different. Sure I have cursed the Nvidia blob from time to time but if one wants to use Linux there isn't much other to use.

I havent had to much problem with it, usually just compile it - and happy sailing (but I dont use composite or any fancy stuff...)



So cudos to the Developers...

[uOpt]

I absolutely do not trash the developers, as in the people who give us the drivers.

However, from where I stand, the following is true:

• The quality was much better than it is now. As an approximation it has gone down when NVidia, with a fixed set of developers, had to take on more and more different cards and more and more APIs and API features.
  • There are numerous corruption problems with 180.x in particular, among other reported by me and a huge thread not involving me that see no solution. There was no reaction on part of the developers, although it is a clear, 100% reproducible regression from 17x.x that can be tested back and forth with a driver reinstall.
  • Users are getting into increasing trouble with the problem of more and more cards being pushed into legacy. In particular it is difficult to run a new Linux kernel and anything that's AGP or PCI (not PCIe), although not impossible. For me it kinda runs but the backtraces in syslog get on my nerves.
  • Standard Xorg features such as dual-seat are not supported.
  • No attempt is being made to have a card requiring NVidia's binary drivers and a card requiring Xorg's drivers to co-exist with a LD_LIBRARY_PATH userlevel switch.
• NVidia refuses to solve the problem by giving documentation to do even a low-performance driver that does have basic 3D acceleration. This would be useful for people like me who do Google Earth, some blender and the like but do not game.
• NVidia has not revised their stance on the former after ATI did start documenting many of their reasonably current cards in a way that Xorg now improves the drivers. In fact, NVidia has not reacted to the ATI move at all.
• NVidia insists on keeping the OpenSource driver free of 3D and not supporting many essential non-3D features.

I am very well aware that NVidia doesn't have the manpower, and that is why I'm not bashing the men.

However, it is clear that NVidia is not quite reasonable if they think that without an increase in manpower they can deal with so many cards and so many APIs and API features.

Subsequently, NVidia is blind to even the possibility of letting OpenSource developers help with any of this.

Does the stuff work with Xen, anyway?

[ViN86]

I think the NV Linux driver is phenomenal, and the majority of the problems people complain about are small things. My two cents.

[brainkilla]

Overall, I am very satisfied with Linux drivers produced by nVidia. On the other hand, as an early adopter of the 9xxx series, I can't help recalling that I had waited more than six months for drivers that enabled me to open heavy web pages without extreme choppiness or X crashes... These things make you feel like a second class citizen and they are, IMHO, the main reason people make such deafening noise about the drivers quality...

[ThermalGrease]

Originally Posted by ViN86

I think the NV Linux driver is phenomenal, and the majority of the problems people complain about are small things. My two cents.

hehe,NV...ftw....

[Tonglebeqk]

Does nv have 3d support yet?

[artem]

NV driver will likely never support 3d.

[Ubuntaqua]

Originally Posted by artem

NV driver will likely never support 3d.

I guess those who insist on using a free driver are betting on "nouveau" for having 3d support available instead of "nv".

[thefirstm]

It probably will, at some point. The only question is, when, and how long before it is mature (all OpenGL 3.2 features supported, good performance, vsync, etc.)

[uOpt]

Originally Posted by Ubuntaqua

I guess those who insist on using a free driver are betting on "nouveau" for having 3d support available instead of "nv".

What I want, and I am arrogant to say that many of us want that, is basic 3D acceleration, with low to medium performance, in an OpenSource driver for the NVidia cards.

I only use 3D for Google Earth, some visualization and maybe messing with Ogre or OpenScenegraph in applications that probably only need 10-20% of the performance my card offers.

The gamers who want current games will be stuck with binary drivers either way, but I'm not one of them.

I am even willing to pay for NVIdia hardware that is very fast and run it at medium performance. I just don't want to have to deal with the binary drivers anymore. The quality is dropping, there is no doubt, whether the developers deserve trashing or not (I say not, but that doesn't change the situation). It is a huge hassle to move kernels back and forth and it creates very unfortunate cross-constraints with the VMware kernel modules.

[Ubuntaqua]

Originally Posted by uOpt

The gamers who want current games will be stuck with binary drivers either way, but I'm not one of them.

I may have misunderstood, but I believe the very aim of those guys (radeonhd driver prorammers AND nouveau driver programmers) is to invalidate that very claim. I understand that you want something different though (and arrogant or not, yes a lot of people probably agree with you).
The driver the most likely to get where you want seems radeonhd.
So as with all open source project that doesn't go in the direction that suits you, your solutions should be clear: join the project and influence them, or fork and create your own.