"On the Phoronix Forums we have been running a Q&A with the developers of the Nouveau project. For those out of the loop or new to Linux, the Nouveau project aims to provide an open-source 2D/3D graphics driver for NVIDIA hardware. After collecting a number of questions from our readers, KoalaBR and Marcheu have answered these questions. The questions range from whether there will be open-source SLI support to asking if NVIDIA has ever contacted the Nouveau developers."
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2007-07-10
I don't understand what you're trying to do with this argument - it is worthwhile for users of older or non-mainstream hardware to have these capabilities, it is for these users that an open-source solution (which can service the long tail of the market) is necessary. Why have nouveau focus on only the latest and greatest, when some just want their cards to 'work'? Your argument would make more sense if you were advocating nvidia to open source their own drivers - and I don't think that ethical quandaries over 'binary blobiness' is what's stopping linux from making inroads on the desktop OS scene.
Member since:2005-10-13
It seems like the most progress has been made on 6xxx and 7xxx series cards, which aren't exactly the latest and greatest - I think they are probably the most popular linux graphics cards right now. I do think you could make an argument that supporting the older cards first would be simpler and allow extensions to then work on newer cards, but I'm not sure if that is really true or not. Maybe the architecture just changes too much between releases.
Edited 2007-09-04 05:29
RE[4]: Good luck for this project
Member since:2006-04-20
Well, yes you are right in the sense that the nVidia drivers work reasonably well, and are easily installed on most distros.
The thing is, the Nouveau team will always be several steps behind nVidia, simply because they are trying to reverse engineer something. This takes considerable time, and if the Nouveau team focus on cards that are old (eg, 2 years or more), by the time they have developed a fully functional driver for it, it will be well and truly ancient, and even people clinging to old hardware may have moved on.
If you are going to reverse engineer something, start with the 8800/8600 series, because by the time you have a fully functional driver for these cards, they will be starting to look a bit old.
So yes, it is worthwhile for users of older hardware to have these drivers, but the definition of older hardware will shift, and what is bleeding edge today will be older hardware by the time you get a decent driver written for it.
Unless of course nVidia or ATI/AMD open up their drivers, or Intel actually make graphics hardware worth using...
Member since:2006-06-26
That's life, and life has sad things, what's the matter? ;-)
No, really, what I want to mean is that they drop support unnecessary. There are toons of people with this kind of cards, there are toons of people of *customers* that doesn't reserve to be treated that way. The effort necessary to keep supporting cards like that is minimum, since there's a unified driver to rule them all. I don't know the technical details, perhaps I'm wrong, but if you asked me for a reason for nVidia to drop support I will answer that people on nVidia wants to force their older customers to update their hardware.
But it's not a checked fact, and perhaps the effort necessary it's bigger than I think.
Member since:
2006-04-20
I get where you are coming from, but really, that is life. Old technology is superseded by new technology (in the case of computer graphics, very, very quickly). The burden in terms of time and effort required to support older hardware is just not worthwhile in most cases, and for linux to make serious inroads into the desktop computer OS scene, it needs to be able to support current 3D hardware through a simple driver installation if not out of the box. So the priority for the nouveau team should be to get the latest DX10/openGL3.0 cards working before worrying about obsolete hardware. It is very hard to reverse engineer drivers for 3d hardware, especially when the bulk of the market for that hardware expects full support for all of the features of the latest hardware, not stuff that is several years old.
So while I can empathise with your frustration, unless you are prepared to contribute resources to the project to enable them to work on out of date hardware, I think you will be stuck with the commercial nVidia driver for quite a while longer.