27 replies to this topic

[Urmas]

14.6.2012
Aalto Talk with Linus Torvalds



VIDEO HERE


(WARNING! Contains a naughty gesture and a naughty expression)

[securitybreach]

Excellent talk!! I watched it late last night.

Nvidia provides great binary drivers for Linux but Linus does have a point, they are one of the worst manufacturers as far as openness and documentation for their drivers. Hence why the Noveau drivers have been so hard to polish. They do work but they only provide 2D graphics: http://en.wikipedia....veau_(software)

[V.T. Eric Layton]

HA! Linus is even MORE my hero after that.

[crp]

When Linus gets rolling on something that offends his sensibilities on what a program or software device is doing, its a

Edited by crp, 18 June 2012 - 10:07 PM.

[sunrat]

Linus - "I wish everyone was as nice as I am."

[securitybreach]

And of course, Phoronix.com: NVIDIA PR Responds To Torvalds' Harsh Words

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Well, to be perfectly honest here, I have no issue with Nvidia's proprietary drivers. I use them on all my Linux (and Windows) installations. They don't cost me anything to use. They're reliable, efficient, and easily installed. Nouveau sucks. This is just my reality. It may be different for others.

[raymac46]

Isn't this issue more with Nvidia Optimus technology rather than the mainstream proprietary driver? I believe Nvidia was on record that this would not be supported in Linux so if you have a machine with Optimus you know right away it won't be Linux friendly.

[LilBambi]

Quote

Basically they said they're committed to Linux using their (proprietary) driver that is largely common across platforms and this allows for same-day Linux support, etc. They also promote how they're active in ARM Linux for Tegra, support a wide-range of hardware under Linux, etc. However, they haven't made any commitment to better support Optimus under Linux nor provide any level of open-source / technical support to the Nouveau community.

For as far as nVidia has gone to support Linux, they have done a great job. The problem is the support is not comparable to their support on Windows and Mac.

I like what that they are committed to Linux ... at least as far as they are going with it. But...

That is also the major problem with nVidia. They are committed to keeping Linux a second class citizen in regard to their nVidia drivers. They will only give 2D support? They take it to a point and draw a line. That to me is sad.

[raymac46]

I would say that every graphics maker has one or two Linux sleletons in the closet. AMD does not support their legacy cards with the Catalyst drivers in Linux although the FOSS drivers aren't too bad. Intel is normally a default choice for Linux friendliness, but their GMA 500 graphics solution was a nightmare until they took matters into their own hands and provided at least decent 2D support for it.
Once you get the Nvidia driver installed it's excellent, but including nouveau in the kernel has been a big problem with many distros on my systems at least.

[securitybreach]

Well the nvidia drivers are good for most setups but you run into problems if you try anything out of the ordinary.

For instance, nvidia does not support SLI(dual video cards) very well at all on Linux. If you use two nvidia video cards to power multiple monitors you will only have 2d on your monitors and your FPS will be really low (~55 FPS on my dual 9800s with 2gb combined video). So no transparent windows or composite. This is one of the reasons I moved away from Nvidia.

If I have powerful hardware, I want to be able to use it to its full potential or at least somewhat close. That said, the ATI drivers are not much better with dual gpus but I could not find a nvidia card with 4 ports that was not insanely priced (~ $400+). Of course, my ATI cards are not the same version so SLI cannot be enabled anyway. If I did have two identical cards, I would be able to run full Crossfire (ATI's version of SLI) without any issues.

So all in all, for a basic setup the Nvidia drivers are fine but if you run multiple cards (like a lot of people do nowadays), you will get poor performance.

[Temmu]

one has to look at the cost-effectiveness of what you are asking -
nvidia makes the premier 3d card for =windows= gaming
how many high-end games run on linux? (and what fraction of a percent of the gaming world does so?)
it is not profitable for nvidia to develop high performance drivers for a small audience that lives in a small share of the pc world.

when linux hits 10% of the pc market, perhaps nvidia will have to sit up and take notice.

[securitybreach]

Looks like it may have done some good:

Quote

"It seems that recent comments made by Linus Torvalds have made the people at NVIDIA take Linux more seriously. Recently Nvidia employee Stephen Warren asked in the Kernel Summit mailing list what could be done differently to make Linux support better. 'In a Google+ comment, Linus noted that we have mainly been contributing patches for Tegra SoC infra-structure details. I'm curious what other areas people might expect me/NVIDIA to contribute to. I assume the issue is mainly the lack of open support for the graphics-related parts of our HW, but perhaps there's some expectation that we'd also start helping out some core area of the kernel too? Would that kind of thing help our image even if we didn't open up our HW?'"

Slashdot: Nvidia Engineer Asks How the Company Can Improve Linux Support

So I guess the Linux users mean more to Nvidia than just percentages of the PC market.

[raymac46]

I agree that if Nvidia could make some contributions to the Nouveau project that would be a step in the right direction. Intel did this with the GMA 500 chip - where they did not have access to the proprietary code for it, but they did fix the 2D aspect so it works very well.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Nvidia stuffs up huge Chinese order

Failed to manage Linux support

http://news.techeye....e-chinese-order

[securitybreach]

V.T. Eric Layton, on 29 June 2012 - 12:14 PM, said:

Nvidia stuffs up huge Chinese order

Failed to manage Linux support

http://news.techeye....e-chinese-order

Maybe companies will now take notice as a $500 million loss is quite large.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

It's always about the money.

[securitybreach]

V.T. Eric Layton, on 29 June 2012 - 01:58 PM, said:

It's always about the money.

Indeed

[crp]

I don't think it is really anything nVidia has against Linux, they just make garbage drivers.
I am running version 301.42 for a GeForce 9500 GT and several times a day my W7 will blank out and then W7 will give a message that it has recovered from the nVidia crashing.

[sunrat]

crp, on 16 July 2012 - 01:43 PM, said:

I don't think it is really anything nVidia has against Linux, they just make garbage drivers.
I am running version 301.42 for a GeForce 9500 GT and several times a day my W7 will blank out and then W7 will give a message that it has recovered from the nVidia crashing.

You must be unlucky. I've had no problems in Linux with drivers with my  GeForce 7600 GT, currently 302.17. I only use Win 7 occasionally, but have never had a problem there either.
I'm about to buy a new GeForce GTX 560 Ti so I can play newer games, particularly Portal 2.

[sunrat]

More on the Chinese news from Phoronix: NVIDIA Loses Huge GPU Order Due To Linux Blob
The Chinese company who developed the Loongson MIPS CPU blew out a 10 million GPU order and moved it to AMD, all because Nvidia wouldn't open source their drivers.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

sunrat, on 16 July 2012 - 09:17 PM, said:

You must be unlucky. I've had no problems in Linux with drivers...

Same here. As a matter of fact, I can't get any decent performance with anything other than the proprietary Nvidia drivers. Nouveau is absolutely worthless to me. I might get 500 fps out my hi-perf vid card with Nouveau. With the Nvidia drivers, I get 22,000+ fps. No herky-jerkiness on my monitor.

[crp]

V.T. Eric Layton, on 16 July 2012 - 11:14 PM, said:

Same here. As a matter of fact, I can't get any decent performance with anything other than the proprietary Nvidia drivers. Nouveau is absolutely worthless to me. I might get 500 fps out my hi-perf vid card with Nouveau. With the Nvidia drivers, I get 22,000+ fps. No herky-jerkiness on my monitor.

ummm, I'm running W7 and i use it a  lot and frequently. This version of the driver doesn't handle "screen savers" all that well and it gets confused by sudden , quick mouse moves. and it seems to be confused about whether or not the 9500GT can do directx11 or not.

[sunrat]

crp, on 17 July 2012 - 01:19 AM, said:

... whether or not the 9500GT can do directx11 or not.

No, it's a directx10 card. Doesn't seem to bother my older 7600GT though, but I don't have any screensavers configured.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

crp, on 17 July 2012 - 01:19 AM, said:

ummm, I'm running W7 and i use it a  lot and frequently. This version of the driver doesn't handle "screen savers" all that well and it gets confused by sudden , quick mouse moves. and it seems to be confused about whether or not the 9500GT can do directx11 or not.

My only W7 installation is on my Inspiron laptop (Radeon graphics), so I cant' use Nvidia there until I change out that vid card for the Nvidia one. I can still get the Nvidia card for $10-15 on eBay. It's on my list when I have a bit of disposable income.

In XP on my main system, though, proprietary Nvidia are a must for me because the only reason I maintain an XP installation is for playing games (1st person shooters), which require high powered graphics. I can play all of my games on the max graphics levels with no issues on my XP installation.