The SLI Godfather 86
CaptCanuk writes "Phoronix has an insightful article about the motivation behind Nvidia's alternative operating system support. From the article: 'When it comes time for a user to upgrade their computer hardware, and decide to go with a choice from a leading manufacturer of graphics solutions, software support is a given, correct? Wrong.' Read on to find out what truly funds their development and why some think they treat Linux as a second hand citizen."
This should be on the front page (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft didn't have such a significant segment of the PC market, they would also have to make deals with hardware manufacturers to get drivers written. NVIDIA needs to support Microsoft, so NVIDIA foots the bill with tons of help from MS. HP needed NVIDIA support, so HP was the one who ended up paying for the development.
It's not about conspiracies, it's about money and the need to have a hand in a market segment. If Linux owned a significant percentage of PCs, you'd see NVIDIA tripping over themselves to get a driver written (if it weren't a trade secret risk).
Ballmer needs to stomp his feet and party's over! (Score:5, Insightful)
They're in it for the money, and their real customer base consists of Windows gamers. Now, these customers are rather picky about stable and optimized drivers. They read articles about benchmarks, and a driver that squeezes out an extra 5pfs will in many cases make the difference between $300 of revenue or similar money in the pockets of the competitor. That's why NVidia work hard on Windows. It's their lifeline.
We're living in an age when Microsoft doesn't fear Linux on the desktop. They just don't; they think it's a joke. Suppose something happens to change their mind, and they really start competing in their ham-fisted, machiavellian way. They really only need to do one thing to destroy desktop Linux: Make a phone call to NVidia. Ballmer: "Hey, you know all that work you do on Linux drivers that makes you almost no revenue? Well, stop it. Stop it or you will find some rather unfriendly code in Vista sp1. End communication."
That's all it would take. Remember that starting next year, if you don't have a 3D-accelerated desktop, your machine will look like a dinosaur. So never mind Linux games. Just the regular desktop will look and work like crap without the proper GPU acceleration. And proper GPU acceleration on Linux is impossible without the mercy of GPU manufacturers. This is really the greatest Achilles' heel of OSS. Just one phone call by Ballmer (maybe involving a thrown chair) is enough to cut off the air supply of OSS on the desktop. There is no remedy. Linus was writing code for a chip (386) with documented internals. He did a great job. GPU manufacturers won't document the internals, they keep changing anyway, and trying to reverse-engineer something is probably banned by the DMCA.
This is the grim lesson I leaned from TFA.
Re:Ballmer needs to stomp his feet and party's ove (Score:2)
A non-accelerated desktop may not have the flash of these flashy new 3D setups, but I am dubious as to the functional improvement gained with 3D acceleration.
Re:Ballmer needs to stomp his feet and party's ove (Score:2)
Re:Ballmer needs to stomp his feet and party's ove (Score:1)
It's called heavy handed regulation.
Re:Ballmer needs to stomp his feet and party's ove (Score:2)
It's called heavy handed regulation.
I have another one: it's called an educated consumer base. If we don't educate consumers, then they (being the majority) won't give a rip about whether or not MS is screwing Linux over. In which case, such regulation could not be acheived through popular consensus.
A lot of people out there get sold on the "corporations are evil, hence we need lots of regulation" mantra, and to me it's just silly. Consumers can fight evil just as effectively as the government which
Re:Ballmer needs to stomp his feet and party's ove (Score:2, Insightful)
And it takes just one nVidia employee to spill the beans, and Microsoft finds itself in some rather hot water. I'm not saying that MS wouldn't do such a thing, but they would want to think very long and hard about the approach they take; something that ham fisted would be prima facie evidence of monopoly abuse.
All
Re:Ballmer needs to stomp his feet and party's ove (Score:1)
Re:Ballmer needs to stomp his feet and party's ove (Score:2)
I mean, come on, use your immagination: I was being blunt for the sake of humor. The real email from Ballmer would look like "MS and NV would both profit from a closer software collaboration to optimi
Re:Ballmer needs to stomp his feet and party's ove (Score:2)
Re:Another topic (Score:2)
Re:Another topic (Score:4, Interesting)
Here you see what happens when only binary blobs are available. At some stage even your old hardware will stop working because the manufacturer will not provide updated binary blobs drivers.
NVIDIA is anti-open source. They will happily peddle some binary blobs for some archs (i386) and some OS, but refuse to give any hardware documentation or even tell the name of their various chipsets.
As long as the Linux/FreeBSD crowd accepts binary blobs in order to get their hardware to work, then NVIDIA will happily continue to only handout binary blobs.
Have a look at the FreeBSD nve (NVIDIA nForce MCP Networking Adapter device driver) [freebsd.org] driver:
And this is just a NIC? What's so secret about that? And this is acceptable?
Have a look at what OpenBSD does: Reverse engineer and offer the first open source driver nfe (NVIDIA nForce MCP Ethernet driver) [openbsd.org]
[/rant]
Re:Another topic (Score:1)
I'm personally using it right now on a Tyan 2P motherboard [nForce4 Pro chipset] and it works fine.
Tom
Re:Another topic (Score:2)
Re:Another topic (Score:1)
If you really need gigabit use the DLINK 530-T PCI card. It's supported by the skge/sk98lin set of drivers [can't recall which] and works smoothly at gigabit speeds. The card retails for all of $30 Canadian.
Tom
Re:Another topic (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what happens when your kernel developers refuse to provide a stable driver API.
Yes, it would be better if drivers were open, but it wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue if Linux provided a stable driver API. It'd make everyone's lives easier if the APIs were more stable. People who won't release an open driver for whatever reason would at least be more likely to develop closed drivers, users already using closed drivers would have less issues going forward, and people writing drivers would no longer have to worry about hitting a constantly moving target.
Re:Another topic (Score:1)
Stable API only helps out of tree drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
I was chatting to Linux kernel developer about a year ago and he described how in the early 90s he found a remote security hole in a closed source operating system. He let the vendor know but the vendor did not patch the hole for over a year. To fix the hole the vendor had to change the API (which of
out-of-tree drivers suck (Score:3, Informative)
Re:out-of-tree drivers suck (Score:2)
The kqemu page you linked to says this about the driver: "unlike the rest of QEMU it is a closed source proprietary product". That is no different than VMWare.
I have indeed considered submitting Digium's drivers for kernel inclusi
Re:Another topic (Score:3, Insightful)
People who won't release an open driver for whatever reason would at least be more likely to develop closed drivers, users already using closed drivers would have less issues going forward, and people writing drivers would no longer have to worry about hitting a constantly moving target.
So fork Linux and create a version with an API that promises to be stable, backporting improvements from Linus' version.
I'm actually not suggesting that you, personally, do this, just pointing out that someone could and
Re:Another topic (Score:2)
Wait, what is what happens? Mod parent -1 offtopic if this isn't about Nvidia's drivers.
Nvidia keeps pace with x86 Linux, often better than I do. I haven't had a problem with video drivers since one computer and two video cards ago, when I had an ATI card. I just have to remember to recompile/install the nvidia drivers whenever I compile/install a new kernel, and I'm set.
This was not true once, and after fighting with
Was OpenBSD really first with OSS nvidia ethernet? (Score:3, Informative)
Are you sure that you want to claim that OpenBSD had "the first [nforce ethernet] open source driver" (emphasis is mine)? Can you give some links to back this claim up? I haven't found any yet but then again I don't hang out on the OpenBSD lists all that much...
Re:Was OpenBSD really first with OSS nvidia ethern (Score:2)
Driver support (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if they are never going to use Linux, they still get an NVIDIA instead of an ATI card, just because NVIDIA provides the better drivers.
None of them provider good OS drivers tho
Re:Driver support (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe where you live, but here in germany Linux is a lot more mainstream.
The only reason NV supports Linux.... (Score:4, Interesting)
How is this article insightful? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't doubt that some of it might be true, but at the same time, I don't see anything in here that really makes me turn around and go "Wow, HP paid xxxxxxxx for NVidia to write Linux drivers"
From what I have seen previously, the reason that NVidia make the driver available is because it's an easy port. That's why their IP is worth so much. Admittedly this isn't backed up with fact (Or at least a link to a website) either, but a quick google should see you good, right?
*sigh*
I disagree (but you're right) (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, I disagree. While the authors do not prove any of the points they are making, it is very much standard industry practice for one company to pay another to develop software. If HP needs Linux drivers for their latest CGI-oriented workstations, then they will need to pay NVidia to develop them. If NVidia really needed those Linux drivers, it would have been their first priority to develop and ship them with the release of the HW.
There really isn't a conspiracy to keep drivers out of FreeBSD or Linux or whatever niche OS you're running. The only question is who is going to pay for those drivers. If you need it the most, you will pay for it. NVidia *needs* Windows drivers, so they pay for it themselves. Try getting NVidia to release drivers for Symbian. It's never going to happen without a wad of cash.
Re:I disagree (but you're right) (Score:2)
NVidia does not even release any hardware documentation for any of their many chipsets. So any open source driver for NVidia hardw
Re:I disagree (but you're right) (Score:1)
NVidia will provide drivers for the right price. Maybe a lot more for source code too. Maybe never if the requirement is that the drivers be licensed under a so-called Free license. But there is no reason to expect that every hardware manufacturer is going to bend ov
Re:I disagree (but you're right) (Score:2)
So why does not Linux developers support OpenBSD efforts to get hardware docs? The Linux culture, sadly, seems to be to accept documentation under NDA (for instance, UltraSparc III support) and write obfuscated "open source" drivers, or think the binary blobs are fine.
NVidia will provide drivers for the right price. Maybe a lot more for so
Re:I disagree (but you're right) (Score:1)
That's the agreement we had to come to i
Re:I disagree (but you're right) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I disagree (but you're right) (Score:1)
If you just stopped buying the "Best Buy" special variety of addon devices the market wouldn't think it's ok to box up mediocrity.
Tom
Re:I disagree (but you're right) (Score:2)
Re:I disagree (but you're right) (Score:2)
That it may be, and there is a theory there as well that NVidia could have developed the drivers for Linux knowing that the CGI market exists. Does anyone have any numbers on how many machines are used for the purpose of CGI?
I don't know, but it could quite well be that one of the studios asked NV
Re:I disagree (but you're right) (Score:1)
To paraphrase a well-known line with applies here...
"Your lack of faith in regulation is disturbing."
It might be enough to get one by paying them off, but putting regulation back in applies it to all. Just save your wad of cash for the politician and get it done that way.
Re:I disagree (but you're right) (Score:2)
> The article itself isn't very insightful, and FWIW, it's pretty badly written. "abecedarian"? How about learning to walk before trying to fly?
Amen. That has got to be one of the most pretentious yet utterly incoherent articles I've ever read. About half the time I came to the end of a sentence, I had to back up, read it over again, then read it backwards, and then guess at the intended meaning. The author writes as if he thinks he's being clever with the language, but in reality he's just totall
Re:How is this article insightful? (Score:1, Troll)
Windows drivers! (Score:2, Interesting)
Before you critique this approach,look
and count the windows drivers.
Re:Windows drivers! (Score:1)
is a emulation of API which already exists.Its like a designing a modern
destroyer vessel looking like a spanish
16th century galleon.It another matter.
Re:Windows drivers! (Score:1)
Look, the bulk of your driver SHOULD be portable, e.g. "set port to value X, read port, wait X, etc". What changes is the interface to the kernel. Nvidia seems to be doing alright with their approach.
What...? You think your PCI or PCI-E device operates differently because you're running Linux? Hell it wouild work the same way if you were running an Z-80 8-bit processor behind the scenes!!!
Device manufacturers usually don't write Linux drivers because they lac
Re:Windows drivers! (Score:1)
I think of that "interface to kernel" being implemented(changed to be windows-compatible). And not to rewrite device drivers(i never proposed new drivers).
good drivers don't work that way (Score:3, Informative)
I worked for a hardware manufacturer that made a portable driver. This driver ran in Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, SunOS (pre-Solaris), Solaris, IRIX, VxWorks, and a few other things. The driver was well over a megabyte and had to include a C library. That's disgusting. At the time, a whole kernel was a few megabytes at most.
Re:Windows drivers! (Score:2)
It is probably not necessarily stable either.
Re:Windows drivers! (Score:1)
The "interface to linux kernel" at the basic level.Making the drivers execute as kernel modules. Instead of making drivers portable,making a "portable kernel" which runs all of them.
Re:Windows drivers! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Windows drivers! (Score:1)
I hope ReactOS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS [wikipedia.org]
or other OS,will be a better alternative.
last day for Microsoft is when an OS runs every DLL VXD EXE OCX and stuff independently of windows.WINE is just rewriting the DLLs(mostly wrapper development),
the big step will be making them executable as in windows. Windows API
is the reason microsoft retains a monopoly.With alternative API
which runs all of drivers (i.e. lik
Project Evil (Score:1)
This was done somewhat in FreeBSD in Project Evil.
See link here [freebsd.org].
Quote from the linked page:
The announcement is the previous article in the thread.
Re:Project Evil (Score:1)
Nvidia is bad? ATi is worse. (Score:4, Interesting)
Was I ever wrong.
The binary ATi drivers do not support any of the X1000 series cards. Hell, even the latest & greatest windows drivers do not support my X1400 chipset officially.
The beta ATi drivers apparently support my chipset, but ATi supports 24bit graphics and nothing else. Alas, the display panel in the laptop is 16 or 32 bit. Running at 24 bit yields a display that looks like something one would expect to see after dropping a couple hits of acid.
Even worse, when trying to use the vesa xorg drivers, I am not able to use the native 1280x800 resolution as when the vesa drivers poll the graphics chipset for the available modes, 1280x800 isn't listed! No amount of fussing with the xorg.conf file has yielded a working solution. The final straw is that I am unable to tell the laptop not to scale lower resolutions up to 1280x800, so 1024x768 (4:3 ratio) is scaled to fit the panel, which is 16:10, which just makes things ugly.
So, until I can get native resolution, Linux is useless on this laptop. The display is too fuzzy and stretched to be usefull. Thankfully I still have my old laptop, as it has an nvidia chipset in it. Sure, the laptop is slow compared to the Core Duo, but atleast the display works properly.
Re:Nvidia is bad? ATi is worse. (Score:2)
Alas, the display panel in the laptop is 16 or 32 bit.
I really doubt it. 16-bit, maybe (with 32 intensities of red and blue and 64 of green), but most likely the panel itself is 24-bit, supporting 256 intensities of each red, blue and green. 32-bit color is just the same as 24-bit color, with the addition of an alpha channel to support transparency, which doesn't actually exist at the display level.
Most likely, what's going on is that the beta driver really doesn't properly support your chipset, or e
Re:Nvidia is bad? ATi is worse. (Score:2)
Re:Nvidia is bad? ATi is worse. (Score:2)
Also, you may get lucky... My widescreen laptop with intel 852/855 graphics was underutilized until some geek on the internet released some code to patch the video bios. I run a command before X to add 1280x768 to the list. Messy, but it works.
I wish the code would make it into the official driver.
Re:Nvidia is bad? ATi is worse. (Score:2)
Re:Nvidia is bad? ATi is worse. (Score:2)
Well, that's at least a huge cost savings for you.
As for reasearch, unless you find someone with the exact same model, even accounts of chipset compatibility in laptop land are not all that reliable. For example, in your case, it sounds like there may be a BIOS problem that's screwing up your VESA support; may not have anything to do with the GPU chip itself, could be a shoddy integrat
Re:Nvidia is bad? ATi is worse. (Score:3, Informative)
Yes it sucks.
2. This is a known problem with almost all ATI embedded chips. If you google around, there's a utility that "forces" a new modeline into the bios temporarily. What you do is choose a modeline to replace with youre 1200x800 and it
Re:Nvidia is bad? ATi is worse. (Score:2)
And yes, I've tried it for the heck of it.
Re:Nvidia is bad? ATi is worse. (Score:1)
Your second mistake was that you didn't realize if you hadn't made your first mistake you could right now have *nix and a fully working, beautiful GUI as well as fully supported hardware drivers.
Re:Nvidia is bad? ATi is worse. (Score:2)
Re:Nvidia is bad? ATi is worse. (Score:1)
I've modified the official driver (8.23.7) to recognise the X1400 card, but that's just a workaround. At least I can use the native resolution now (1280x800).
Visit http://toni.to/ati.html [toni.to] for details.
Toni
NVidia may be pro Linux, but not open source. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now for me, I use the OS as a development platform. I don't expect source for any Win32 driver I use nor do I care if I have source for Linux or Solaris for that matter. As long as it works and does the job, I'm happy. I suspect I'm a pretty typical Linux user. The Linux developers would have problems with this - having to poke around a black box is a pain in the ass. My pain point comes with having to deal with them at install/update time. I also keep a small stack of Matrox Millennium (4M PCI) cards around because they do 'just work' without binary drivers. If they made them source based it would be more convenient for me, but NVidia has been pretty good keeping up with the multiple kernels and major distros. I'd call them pro Linux, but not open source.
This article hits and misses (Score:4, Interesting)
For the Linux drivers, the engineers simply say "what do we need more urgently, these bug fixes, or these features?" If they need the features, they borrow the code from Windows and put it in, with possibly some minor glue code. With other platforms, some poor engineer has to learn enough about that one particular OS to get a driver working. Again, how does diverting this portion of time equate to revenue for ATI without a guaranteed contract from the hardware vendor? It doesn't.
nVidia has a steady stream of revenue from Windows users (gamers and casual users) and Linux users (research and education), but the same is not always true of other manufacturers like HP, Sun, etc. And again, why would a business invest their time and money if they don't have a reasonable assurance of profit?
Re:This article hits and misses (Score:2)
I don't know, but some businesses do. I know id has no such guarenteed contract, yet they not only release all their games natively on Linux, but release the source code of all but their latest generation.
Re:This article hits and misses (Score:1)
True, but I would argue that id does have a reasonable assurance of profit from their Linux efforts. First off, id still uses OpenGL, so the graphics engine is pretty much cross-platform, with possibly some small exceptions in the world of extensions. The windowing system used is typically just plain Win
Re:This article hits and misses (Score:2)
Sensibility (Score:1)
Re:Sensibility (Score:2)
That'd be really nice, if it was really a choice.
I do vote with my wallet against Sony. I vote with my wallet against all major record labels. I refuse to buy games that I would have to no-CD crack. These are things I can live without. There are plenty of substitutes -- I already own most of the games I want, and I buy the ones I can download, which don't have horrendous copy protection. There's tons of musi
Where are RedHat, Novel, IBM, etc on this? (Score:2)
The problem isn't nvidia here. I don't have an issue with them not releasing open source drivers. In my opinion, they spent a lot of time and money to just get a few frames ahead of the competition and I don't have problem with them not giving it out. I am not anti-open source, I just don't think i
Re:Where are RedHat, Novel, IBM, etc on this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Second hand citizen? (Score:2)