Opening Nvidia Drivers

[dsio]

This has been something that's been circulating for a while now, trying to convince Nvidia to open up their close source drivers and allow the open source community to be involved.

One of the big problems many people have with linux is the fact that in order to have working 3D, you need to seperately download and install the nvidia drivers. The reason is that closed source drivers cannot be included in a linux distro due to the GPL license requirements.

If Nvidia were to open their drivers, one of the benefits would be that Nvidia drivers would be installed and working by default on any fresh install, no hassle, no worry, and another would be that the community may actually be able to improve on Nvidia's work in some areas.

The petition and more information is located here: OpenTheBlob.com - An Open Letter For Open Drivers To NVIDIA

And to date over 7,800 signatures are there.

If you want to go a step further, and apply some pressure to Nvidia by contacting their board partners, a template letter, and a series of contacts is located here: OpenTheBlob.com - Doing More For An Open NVIDIA

Mentioning for example to ASUS, that you like your 8800GTS, but are saddened by the state of Nvidia's driver support could go a long way if ASUS turns around and asks Nvidia on your behalf.

I intend to do this for Dell and ASUS, the two companys that have supplied me with Nvidia hardware I'm currently using.

[Daniel ~]

Done! But why don't you go front page with this! ":O}

[Redroar]

In the scheme of things, Nvidia's doing pretty well. ATi's drivers just plain suck, and a ton of smaller third party brands have no dedicated drivers whatsoever. However, with those smaller peripherals it is typically easier to get a working driver from scratch. It may not have the performance of the dedicated driver, but with today's computers and the low requirements necessary for most peripherals that is not an issue.

But I signed it. It would certainly be beneficial, and likely a way to get other companies (I'm looking at you, ATi!) to do the same.

[dsio]

ATI's drivers are actually really good now, AND ATI have opened their drivers and specs months ago.

[Redroar]

....My bad. The ATi fglrx drivers still give me nothing but problems, but I'd forgotten they'd opened up. I just have a little bad blood right now because it almost broke my Suse install when I tried to use the fglrx drivers. Nasty stuff.

But yeah, once some new OSS drivers come out based on the opening of the ATi specs then stuff should be quite good.

[Daniel ~]

Oh! I'm told they were misible for years! But they got the word and ATI Linux is now suppose to rock... haven't seen it yet myself...

[Redroar]

The fglrx (ATi) drivers are still very unreliable, at least for me. However, the radeon and radeonhd OSS drivers will probably exceed the quality of the fglrx drivers in the coming months due to the opening of specs. Somehow I'd forgotten about that...

[dsio]

I was just speaking to few knowledgable people about this, and they raised an interesting point. At present, Nvidia supports SLI on Nvidia chipsets, but does NOT support SLI on intel or AMD chipsets.

Now a current Intel X38 platform has 2 PCI-E 16X slots, and technically there is no reason why it can't support SLI, in fact driver hacks have sometimes allowed SLI to work on AMD/intel platforms.

If Nvidia releases the specs and opens up their drivers, an open source driver could potentially allow for SLI on all platforms and potentially different configurations.

This would mean there would be less reason for people to buy Nvidia chipsets. There are other things, possible, but not enabled by default in the driver, for example, transparency antialiasing was originally touted as a tech unique to the Geforce 7 series. In reality it was just a driver tweak, and when they reused NV4x cores in the 7 series, new drivers allowed transparency antialiasing to work on the whole Geforce 6 series. I have no doubt they're still doing it.

Closed source drivers give them that power and control over us. They don't want to lose it.

[Áedán]

Well, the RadeonHD drivers don't appear to support either 2D or 3D acceleration yet. How much patent issues will affect the drivers is another entirely though.

[Daniel ~]

It just amazes me how often corporations are just as content to earn their living frustrating our needs or desires as they are by meeting them... Consumers need longer memories I think...

[ccperf721p]

Exactly what has nvidia as a corporation done to frustrate linux users with drivers.

[Daniel ~]

Well we could start with product naming conventions that make it hard for even professionals to know which card or motherboard they are actually ordering.

Then there was that little matter of Nvidia lying to the public as to what was a hardware innovation and what was really already available in the drivers...

But my remark was a general one and Nvidia is neither better nor worse for my money than the rest... but then... the bar IS always being lowered! ":O}

[dsio]

Originally Posted by ccperf721p

Exactly what has nvidia as a corporation done to frustrate linux users with drivers.

I think he means more that the limitations artificially imposed by NV are unfair more than that the drivers are crud, the drivers are every bit as good as the windows ones in terms of speed, there's no disputing that, thats why I'm going an 8800GT again.

[ccperf721p]

Lying about it was uncool, but the fallout from telling people with 6 series cards they couldn't have transparency would have been worse.

It just gets old seeing people shout for companies to open there stuff up, then you look at what they've done with what's been available for years. I haven't seen any true innovations in Linux in a long time. Eye candy and GUI front ends for already existing apps don't really count.

Then I remember Con Koliva, where I got the chance to see corporation like politics at it's finest..

[booman]

I signed it. I'm not even going to tell my story of installing GeForce drivers 3 times before it worked...

[Redroar]

Originally Posted by booman

I signed it. I'm not even going to tell my story of installing GeForce drivers 3 times before it worked...

I've never had bad luck with the Nvidia Linux drivers. They are very well put together IMO. But I don't think that bad things could come of them opening it up. If they continue to provide good drivers I'll be happy, though and 'competition' from the OSS drivers certainly can't hurt. They won't be able to do some of their less honorable practices, then.

[booman]

If Nvidia driver came installed with Linux I would praise them forever. I'm a big GeForce fan and plan to keep buying them.

[ccperf721p]

There's much more to this than just being allowed to ship them with a distro.

What is happening is that anything not under the GPL will not be allowed to use GPLonly symbols in the kernel. It will affect much more than nvidia drivers.

For those that need a reference model to work with, there are a couple of select individuals deciding what is best for us in the way we use our computers. (They don't work for nvidia)

Given what I'seen over the last year in Linux and what I expect to see this year, my avatar will most likely change. I wouldn't be testing Vista if I didn't feel it may turn out to be a better alternative.

[booman]

I'm surprised to hear that from you Cliff. You are the Linux guru!

[Redroar]

Originally Posted by ccperf721p

There's much more to this than just being allowed to ship them with a distro.

What is happening is that anything not under the GPL will not be allowed to use GPLonly symbols in the kernel. It will affect much more than nvidia drivers.

For those that need a reference model to work with, there are a couple of select individuals deciding what is best for us in the way we use our computers. (They don't work for nvidia)

Given what I'seen over the last year in Linux and what I expect to see this year, my avatar will most likely change. I wouldn't be testing Vista if I didn't feel it may turn out to be a better alternative.