Linux 7600 GT driver when?

[spikebike]

I see that monarch and newegg are selling 7600GT cards from numerous vendors. When should a linux driver be available?

[netllama]

As was discussed in other threads, the next driver release will support the GeForce 7600GT.

Thanks,
Lonni

[LubosD]

Originally Posted by netllama

As was discussed in other threads, the next driver release will support the GeForce 7600GT.

It is funny that it didn't answer the question...

[arokh]

Originally Posted by LubosD

It is funny that it didn't answer the question...

Funny, I thought it did.

[zbiggy]

You both have right. However like the others here we rather expect less volatile answer from Nvidia.

[LubosD]

Originally Posted by arokh

Funny, I thought it did.

When somebody asks "when" the answer should be some date or time range.

SIMILAR SITUATION:

Q: When are you going to call him?
A: Yes, I am going to call him.

[phaseburn]

Yea, I just bought a 7900 GTX and lost my X display because of it - no drivers... I'd very much like to know *when* drivers will be out as if it's not soon, I'm putting my old video card back in - but that's a lot of trouble I'd rather not go through if they'll be out in an hour or tomorrow or some time...

[twljagflba]

Phoronix has posted:

While we have yet to receive any official information as to when the public can expect to see the new NVIDIA Linux proprietary drivers to succeed the 1.0-8178 candidate, one of our sources has revealed that the drivers may be delivered this week, and specifically Wednesday, March 15, 2006. Of course, this information has not been confirmed by any NVIDIA representatives up to this point. Upon receiving additional credible information it will certainly be passed along. Of course, these drivers will append GeForce 7300/7600/7900 compatibility as well as a great deal of other improvements. For reference, this will be the first NVIDIA Linux driver release since the 1.0-8178 drivers were made available in late December of 2005.

http://www.phoronix.com/?page=news_item&px=MTM2

[netllama]

phaseburn,
The next driver release will not be today or tomorrow (or this week). It will be several weeks from now.

Thanks,
Lonni

[phaseburn]

Well thank you Lonni for a very specific answer. While I'm not overly happy about the release date, I'd like to say that I'm much happier with at least knowing. Very much appreciated. Overall, you guys do go the extra mile for us linux users, and I'm happy to support nVidia - If you need a beta tester for 'em, btw, I'd be happy to test :-P (I run gentoo linux)

In the future, just as a suggestion, (yes, I know it's not feasable to withhold a product for a driver on a platform that few people (in terms of a percentage base) use), maybe an announcement to the community (a sticky thread for instance here would have done wonders - I'd have checked an hour after giving up on the 8178 drivers and been back up and running on my old card last night, rather than waiting and spending a couple hours looking to see if maybe I missed something, etc) would be of major help. When a product is so new that few people who use linux have one (I got mine the 10th) that there's few posts about it on the forums, it can be a little difficult to find any suggestions, answers, etc. It took me a few trips to slashdot, Phoronix, and a couple other sites to realize that the drivers themself didn't support the card. So a sticky would have just gone a long way, even if you don't have an ETA on a driver release - just something stating "BTW, the 8178 series won't support these cards - next driver release will support X, Y, and Z, and we're hoping to release it soon" would go a very long way.

Anyway, thanks again for the answer, Lonni, and thanks for listening.

-David
phaseburn at phaseburn period net

[Spyke]

...Went to sleep indeed...

[morgoth]

Originally Posted by netllama

phaseburn,
The next driver release will not be today or tomorrow (or this week). It will be several weeks from now.

Thanks,
Lonni

Perhaps, not the good thread to post answer...Feel free to move it.

First, sorry for being upset.

Secondly, I'm sorry, Lonni, for being rude. You're not the target of this message. I always appreciate the help you can provide on this forum and the discussions we had elsewhere. Fell free to send this message to you boss or anyone taking decisions regarding NVidia and Linux.

Why being upset ?

Simple:

Why nvidia doesn't give (or distribute with a special agreement or ...) beta drivers to Linux Community ?. All around we have problems with current drivers: either buggy, or not supporting newest cards etc.

Even if development of "release" drivers takes time (being a developer, I can understand it), we (users) can also understand that beta drivers won't work as expected and contain bugs. But what are those bugs beside a limited but functional system (ex: just starting an X server on a 7300. No 3D accel, no fancy stuff. Just having a framebuffer !) ?

If I want stability, I can buy "old" cards and use "old" drivers with "old" kernels. But if for any reason, one element in the system requires updated drivers 'let's say audio or network), you get stuck.

------------------------------------
Let me illustrate this:

For example,we have the following problem. We have a Gigabyte motherboard with GeForce6150/nforce 430 on it. Nice stuff but : driver 8178 doesn't work well on this card. So we added a GeForce 6200TC to it and disabled builtin 6150. This way, we can use 7174 drivers which work quite well.

That's what I call a "stability" choice.

Here's where it becomes tricky:
- 7174 driver doesn't work with kernel >=2.6.15 (7174 is not maintained for recent kernels and causes kernel stack traces: the 8178 was patched to avoid this, but not 7174....)
- audio chip only works with recent alsa versions (>=2.6.15.5)
- forcedeth requires also newer sources (>0.49)

At the end it becomes really tricky to get something to work.

Should we buy "old" motherboards to get it work ? Probably, but we need hundreds of these and they're not manufactured anymore ! (ask ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI ... for a motherboard lifetime)

NB: we have the same problems with ALL Geforce6150/nforce 430 motherboards around: we tested Gigabyte, MSI and ASUS. No luck: none better than others => that's not a bios problem, or a manufacturer problem: it's really a problem with nvidia drivers and timeframe for releases.

If I add that my company is trying to build a set-top-box prototype which could lead to thousands installed solutions, you can understand that I'm quite nervous on stability problems. It's not just a "gamer" problem who can't get 8000FPS on it's card ! It's a professional solution which works well on 6150 but we can't sell because of stability and bugs of nvidia drivers !

We've tested nearly ALL possible combinations with :
- 6 different motherboards (ASUS/MSI/Gigabyte/Foxconn),
- 5 different nvidia cards (from 6150 to 6600),
- 3 different drivers (7174,7676,8178),
- 8 different kernels (from 2.6.13 to 2.6.15.5)
during nearly 6 months.
Imagine all the stability tests and developpement efforts we had to give just to workaround a driver bug (8178 for GeForce 6150 is buggy: no antialiasing, sync/vblank problems, freezes ...) and finally try to get a stable system.

That's not realistic ! And even now, we have something running quite fine, it's just because we have a dual GPU box (6150+6200 with 6150 disabled) ! Finally, I could believe that buggy 8178 drivers are just a good marketing strategy for nvidia: 2 GPUS/box instead of 1 ;-) . But it's not acceptable for us.

And again, even if we're happy with this funky hardware we assembled and tested in 5 months, we have more and more troubles to find 6200TC cards which are being quickly replaced by 7300 (not supported anywhere !).
Conclusion: as soon as we have a working box, we can't be sure we'll be able to sell it more than 1 or 2 months simply because of GPU disponibility !
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If nvidia just gave beta drivers (as for Windows!), I could make all the stuff work with a recent kernel (2.6.15.5 or even 2.6.16-rcX) and no patch-o-patch stuff. This way, I could be sure of our hardware choices. When nvidia would release the driver, we could release our solution (of course, end customer shouldn't have beta drivers in its box). But giving beta drivers would help all developpers around too.

At the time of writing, we have prototypes running nvidia chips with 7174 or 8178 drivers. But I can't be sure the hardware is good and stable for our application => if nvidia doesn't do something quickly, we'll have to switch to something else ! Our market is ready and waiting for us. I just hope it will wait until nvidia releases it's new driver...

I know there's a developper program which perhaps gives access to beta drivers (I'm even not sure that Linux drivers are available). I registered myself 2 months ago and no answer (not even a confirmation mail !).

IS THAT NVIDIA'S CONCEPTION OF CUSTOMER SERVICE ?

I'm going to call the French NVidia Office too, even if I already know the silly answer I'll get ("we can't do anything bla bla bla not responsible bla bla bla linux ? what's that ? bla bla beta only for window$ bla bla bla bla...")

Finally, I'm just very happy not to have spent precious time in january to try to reproduce 3D problems we have with GF6150: by coding some repro case programs and taking time for it, I'm quite sure I would'nt have received any patch for current driver as a reward (and not even a beta one).

So, why pay for something which is not supported in "normal" timeframes ? First motherboards with 6150 came out in september 05. 6 (SIX !) months later, nVidia is not able to provide a working driver for it. That's just taking customers for milk cows (as we say in France ;-)). I wouldn't buy a 7900 now for sure if I can expect having it running well only in 2007...

NVidia shouldn't claim a support for Linux in these conditions. And specially, NVidia shouldn't use Linux as a marketing argument.

It's not fair. It's just a lie. People must know it.