Posted on 10/20/2009 1:38:09 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
In late August we started asking our readers for any questions they had for NVIDIA about Linux and this graphics company's support of open-source operating systems. Twelve pages worth of questions were accumulated and we finally have the answers to a majority of them. NVIDIA's Andy Ritger, who leads the user-space side of the NVIDIA UNIX Graphics Driver team for workstation, desktop, and notebook GPUs, answered these questions. With that said, there are some great, in-depth technical answers and not the usual marketing speak found in many interviews. While Linux is our focus, Andy's team and his answers for the most part apply equally to NVIDIA drivers on Solaris and FreeBSD platforms too. There are many questions that range from the status of new features in their proprietary graphics driver to why it is unlikely there will be any official open-source support from NVIDIA to download percentages of their Linux driver.
Some of the particularly interesting answers include how the managerial view of Linux at NVIDIA has changed over the years, how greater than 90% of the driver's source code is shared between Windows and UNIX platforms, the actual percentage of the Linux driver downloads from the NVIDIA web-site, how an open-source strategy similar to that of AMD's may be technically possible at NVIDIA but is very unlikely, whether gaming on Linux will become viable for commercial game publishers, how the Nouveau developers are doing "a really incredible job so far", what's coming in the next twelve months to their Linux driver, motives behind creating VDPAU, and the biggest challenges with distributing a proprietary Linux driver. Among the "not yet here" features talked about include RandR 1.2, kernel mode-setting, ESA, GPU-accelerated PhysX support, revamping the NVIDIA Linux installer, and PerfKit/PerfHUD.
(Excerpt) Read more at phoronix.com ...
fyi
Screw this.
GLIDE is the future.
Thats why i spent 300+ bucks for my Voodoo Monster 3D card back in the day.
” the biggest challenges with distributing a proprietary Linux driver.”
That would probably be people like me who got tired of dealing with it and went ATI.
bttt
I have been exceedingly satisfied by the nVidia drivers supplied by Ubuntu. nVidia has worked side-by-side with the Ubuntu team making sure they have current stable drivers for nearly all nVidia cards, new and old.
In fact, if you install Ubuntu, or even vanilla Debian, on a machine with an nVidia chipset or graphics adapter, and enable the 3rd party software repository, you will be prompted and asked if you’d like to install the proprietary drivers for your specific device.
Now, if we could get the same cooperation and support from the printer manufacturers, we’d be gold.
nVidia just rocks!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.