NVIDIA's Andy Ritger On Linux Drivers 269
tykev writes "The Director of Unix Software at NVIDIA talks about Linux drivers, planned features, development cycle, and the open source Nouveau driver. (The interview is in English but all the comments are in Czech.) Quoting: 'NVIDIA's stance is to neither help nor hinder Nouveau. We are committed to supporting Linux through a) an open source 2d "nv" X driver which NVIDIA engineers actively maintain and improve, and b) our fully featured proprietary Linux driver which leverages common code with the other platforms that NVIDIA supports.'"
Nouveau (Score:3, Interesting)
But what will they do when nouveau is complete, and replaces the nv driver? Will they stop commiting to xorg?
Re:Nouveau (Score:5, Insightful)
Until Nouveau gets good, I imagine they'll keep pushing the proprietary driver, though.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Some of our license agreements prevent us from contributing 3D support to open source drivers, we like Nouveau but can't legally contribute to it."
One wonders what happens if Nouveau becomes the official xorg driver. Perhaps NV will be able to legally contribute to the 2D aspects of the driver. The binary drivers will likely continue to exist as long as they are encumbered by technologies licensed from other vendors which NV has no direct con
Re:Nouveau (Score:4, Interesting)
It's all a matter of how desirable it is for them.
If Nouveau became the official xorg driver and was decent enough that people wouldn't rush to replace it, Nvidia most likely find a way to contribute to it to ensure that Nvidia hardware has a good quality driver on Linux.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nouveau (Score:4, Informative)
No, I don't think NVIDIA are in the position to renegotiate a license that they don't have direct involvement in. I'll give a few examples from OpenGL extensions for why I think this way:
A number of other OpenGL extensions are NVIDIA proprietary, and most of the suits will probably hang on with their dying breath, if typical corporate behavior is any indication.
It'd be nice if they opened the driver, but half of the OpenGL ARB's members would probably sue their pants off if they tried.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Unreal Tournament's need for the last one marks the beginning of ATI providing proprietary drivers and partial specs for their cards rather than full specs. There was a huge to-do about Unreal Tournament 2003 only working on NVidia cards in Linux back when UT2K3 was released. Epic's response was basically "we use this feature, it's implemented in all Windows drivers and the NVidia 3D drivers, we cannot work around the lack of this featu
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Nouveau (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the point of spending money developing a proprietary driver if everyone just uses the default Free Software one which works reasonably well?
Re: (Score:2)
I disagree. I think it would be pointless to stop developing it. Remember that their drivers are built on a common code base, meaning it shares quite a bit of code with Windows. They are also heavily optimized to a level that free software may never achieve in a reasonable time frame (simply due to lack of documentation and such). Their closed drivers will probably always have superior 3D performance, and that is why people buy Nvidia cards. If you only want 2D, you don't care most of the time. There is sti
Re: (Score:2)
Tell that to ATI. Their r100/200/300 cards were just about fully supported by free drivers for both 2D and 3D.
Aren't you glad they dropped the crappy fglrx drivers, and started developing the open source ones that everyone was using, since, after all, it would be pointless to do otherwise...
Your baseless assertion doesn't make a
Re:Nouveau (Score:5, Informative)
This is the same tired, fallacious argument NVidia has been trotting out for years: "Developing GPU drivers is much too complex. Why don't you Linux kids go run along and play with your toys, and let us write the GPU drivers?"
Well, it's just wrong. I have used many reverse-engineered drivers for complex pieces of hardware, and nearly all of them work as well as or better than the original vendor's drivers. Most recently, I had the pleasure of trying out the Broadcom 43xx wireless driver, which was painstakingly reverse engineered [sipsolutions.net] in the face of an INCREDIBLY recalcitrant vendor that won't release a shred of documentation on their devices to open source developers, even under NDA! And, surprise, the card works better under Linux with the reverse-engineered driver than it does with the Windows driver, which seems to lose the signal quite often. The bcm43xx developer Michael Buesch has even got some evidence that certain parts of their code are implemented more efficiently and elegantly than the original driver.
Why is this "natural"? Intel releases documentation on the low level stuff about their GPUs, Realtek goes out of its way to help the Linux community with Ethernet and wireless IC documentation, and Linksys has released the complete code for its Linux-based routers. If a business is based on continual innovation--rather than maintaining an entrenched monopoly--it is entirely possible to be successful and open at the same time.
Again, this is only true if Intel holds back some of the documentation necessary to make a good compiler. If they publish complete instruction set information, with accurate timing, cache, and pipeline data (which they have done, for the most part), then making a better compiler is "merely" a question of developer resources and talent.
I suspect that, to the extent that GCC code doesn't run quite as fast as ICC, it's because GCC has higher priorities for its code base, especially ensuring support for an incredible breadth of platforms [wikipedia.org]. GCC has essentially become the reference compiler for a lot of embedded development in particular. Even companies like Broadcom that won't lift a finger to help open source out rely on GCC to build the firmware for their own devices [broadcom.com].
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Full-featured 802.11g wireless drivers are pretty darn complex. I don't believe there is anything particularly "exceptional" about 3D drivers, so I see the comparison as perfectly valid. For years we've seen proprietary software makers concede that "open source can do X, but Y is too complicated." I have no reason to believe that 3D drivers are any
Re:Nouveau (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Moreover reverse engineering being a difficult t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
NDAs and Patents Suck Life. (Score:2, Insightful)
What you say is confusing and has the smell of a well crafted lie. Can you set me straight so I can understand why Nvidia is unable to do like Intel and fully co-operate with the free software community?
Given that they make their money off of licensing IP and perhaps selling software (as opposed to selling hardware), this is highly unlikely.
That term, "IP", has confused me. I thought Nvidia made GPUs [wikipedia.org]. What would they lose by telling free software developers how to make their GPUs work?
they own
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think you misread that sentence. The "they" in that sentence is the companies that nVidia has licensed code from, not nVidia itself.
Ah, so what does that have to do with nvidia again? As I said, you would think nvidia's in charge.
Re: (Score:2)
I would guess that means that nVidia can't release the source code for the drivers because they don't actually own the rights to the code. As for nVidia being in charge, I would think that nVidia, being the far larger company that the smaller company may not be able to exist without, would have the advantage in negotiations. Then again, if nVidia said "Screw you, we'll write our own code", they'd probably get
Re: (Score:2)
It's the same reason DooM's source code wasn't released as fast as the rest of ID's projects. DooM used a licensed sound module that they had to eventually rip out of the code before they could release it.
A good example of functionality that can trip up a driver release like th
Re:NDAs and Patents Suck Life. (Score:5, Informative)
Have a look at NVidia's OpenGL specifications web-page [nvidia.com]
Every extensions comes with an IP Status field. For example ARB_color_buffer_float has the following:
IP Status
SGI owns US Patent #6,650,327, issued November 18, 2003. SGI
believes this patent contains necessary IP for graphics systems
implementing floating point (FP) rasterization and FP framebuffer
capabilities.
SGI will not grant the ARB royalty-free use of this IP for use in
OpenGL, but will discuss licensing on RAND terms, on an individual
basis with companies wishing to use this IP in the context of
conformant OpenGL implementations. SGI does not plan to make any
special exemption for open source implementations.
Contact Doug Crisman at SGI Legal for the complete IP disclosure.
OK, that Sucks Life. (Score:4, Interesting)
Thanks for the link, it clears up a lot. The site itself is a pain, so it would probably be easier to Google site:developer.nvidia.com for "IP Status".
As for the example you give, Holy Shit!
A patent on floating point raterization and framebuffers? Is that what I think it is? Yes [wikipedia.org] it is [wikipedia.org]. I can not think of anything more obvious in high quality imaging than representing the image as a floating point matrix. It may be true that there are still "fat line" patents out there [forbes.com].
Kudos to Nvidia for shining a small light on this insanity. Knowing the problem is always the first step. It would be nicer if they would put patent and other encumbering as symbos on the reference page and a link to the actual patent in the description page.
Re:SGI aren't the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
It's bloody obvious what's really happening here.. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/01/16/sgi_trans
http://www.smithhopen.com/news_briefs_display.asp
http://www.forrester.com/Research/LegacyIT/Excerp
that last is is a doozy... they want $99 for a one page article...
Microsoft has nVidia over the certification barrel... if they make the nv driver support 3D, then nVidia may find it very difficult to get their windows drivers certified... they're having enough problems at the moment...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Or they could go half way by taking all the code that they don't own and all the code that relies on 3rd party patents where the patent holder has forbidden them from releasing
Re: (Score:2)
The second suggestion is interesting, and is in principal similar to what they do now. Parts of the driver are still compiled on the host OS, although usually just the kernel interface bits now. Moving more of the code out of the binary blobs really doesn't solve much though, since the binary blobs will still be necessary for the driver to work. Binary blobs are still binary blobs no matter how small you
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Did they mention 'why' (Score:2)
Anyone?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Its the licensed code, as you mentioned, that causes the problem.
They would need permission and an agreement on license type from every single company or organisation they have licensed code from
Re: (Score:2)
black window bug (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They know it exists but my guess they are having problems duplicating it. Even if it was totally open sourced I doubt that the fix would come much sooner. Frankly until they can say "If I do X,Y, and Z I get the error" it will be very hard to track down. Frankly with the complexity of the hardware they are dealing with it would take years for opensource developers to get a grip on it.
I like FOSS but it isn't magic. Take a look at just about any FOSS project and you will see that a fe
Re: (Score:2)
Are you using XGL or running Beryl directly?
Considering (Score:5, Insightful)
I experienced a problem with the "nv" driver on my computer with dual 7600GS cards and three displays. It wasn't possible to run all three displays at all with the "nv" driver, but the binary driver from nvidia works. The part that I'm not satisfied with is the need for an alternate driver.
I haven't tried the Nouveau driver, but somebody else may. As I see it, Nvidia should release all information needed to allow others to write suitable drivers. (should apply to all HW manufacturers).
someone talk sense into this guy. I'd like ppc (Score:2)
COME ON!! PLEASE??????
NVIDIA driver team members use Debian? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Across the NVIDIA Linux Graphics Driver team, everyone has their own favorite Linux distribution as their primary desktop: Debian, [...]"
Interesting, given that Debian can't ship their driver.
Oh, I know that none of the driver team will be using a distro-bundled version of the driver anyway, but still...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I hope they don't develop video drivers on their desktops. It would be horrible to close one's email, web browsers, terminals, IM, IDE, and everything else every time one wanted to test a new driver.
I occasionally compile stuff on my Kubuntu desktop, but not anything that prompts a reboot. That's what test machines are for. Yes it's good to eat your own dogfood, but not when every crash leads to a 10 minute break in concentration while you reboot and start everything up again.
What a crazy world we live in (Score:3, Funny)
Stop the planet. I want to get off!
From now on I vow that when I code the code will be in English but the comments will be in Slovak.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Noticeable absence (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, while they certainly want to be seen as supporting Linux, they really believe their closed-source drivers give them some source of competitive advantage. That's either in clever code or what the coding reveals about the internal organization of their GPU hardware. It would have been relatively easy and palatable to say: "We'd like to release full GPU asm specs and code, but believe this will help our competitors design better hardware. So we can only provide APIs." They didn't say this, so I think they consider their actual driver code to be very clever (main competitive advantage). No such secret will last.
Yes, I know there are many other explanations for "negative knowledge" -- things that didn't happen. But when they could have and would have been easy, perhaps we need to wonder why they didn't.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll still switch.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Here's hoping.
Re: (Score:2)
There's another interview with Nvidia's... (Score:2)
Just a thought... (Score:2)
nVidia PS3/Linux Driver? (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now PS3 Linux runs all display processing on the PPC core on the Cell, which needs to do a lot of other processing to keep the complex Cell going. Meanwhile there's an RSX chip that runs at 1.8TeraFLOPS, dwarfing even the Cell's 0.2TFLOPS. But Sony's Hypervisor virtualization layer that runs Linux hides the RSX from Linux. However, the RSX is exposed in some API, otherwise PS3 Linux wouldn't display on the HDMI port out of the PS3, and sound probably wouldn't work (probably also running on the RSX somehow).
Sony doesn't want the RSX exposed to Linux apps, because then Linux apps could compete with Sony-licensed games (without paying Sony the royalty that even subsidizes over 25% of the PS3 purchase price). But can't nVidia release a driver, or some kind of specs, that expose a 2D API for running X desktops? Sony's money all comes from 3D games.
Or maybe someone else has a way.
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect the real desire is to stop things like Second Life (which competes directly with Sony's new online virtual world offering) being ported to PS3 linux. The people who are likely to use things like Second Life are more likely to have the know-how to install the otheros lo
Re: (Score:2)
What makes you think it lacks the security the rest of the PS3 has? What makes you think exposing RSX functions in a driver would expose holes in the Hypervisor, other than the access to the RSX that the driver exposes by design?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sony wouldn't be competing with "Linux games" in a "Linux gaming market". Sony would be competing with bootable CD/DVD/BD games that run on PS3, just like Sony games. The gamer wouldn't know it's a "Linux game", it would just be a game. That would be cheaper than the Sony games, because it doesn't include the Sony license (among other efficiencies).
Of course that scenario depends on the RSX working. So I don't know why you're talking about "RSX lock-out", which
Video Acceleration Suppport (Score:2)
From TFA, regarding video accell:
Q:
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Intel open source drivers are fine and all but before I abandon Nvidia for Intel I need:
- Dual dual-link DVI ports (the nvidia cards we buy have these)
- HDTV & S-video ports
Re: (Score:2)
I'm one of those people who are interested in better 2D acceleration and hardware MPEG-4/H264 acceleration. I'm a MythTV user. Nvidia's hardware does have support for such acceleration; they call it Purevideo [nvidia.com]. Unfortunately, the Linux drivers don't support it. Supposedly, it will be supported "in the future". But it's really frustrating. The ne
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, the "nv" driver doesn't support it, but Nvidia's own driver does ("it" being the XvMC extension in Xorg).
Given that you're a MythTV user, here's a link to their Wiki, which contains a page about XvMC support [mythtv.org].
Re: (Score:2)
XvMC only supports MPEG-2 (e.g. w
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, they have all kinds of great hardware features, none of which are available in Linux. As a long-time HDTV/HTPC user, I've bought my last piece of hardware based on advertised capabilities not yet available in Linux. As soon as there are Linux drivers to use it, I'll buy it, short of that I'm not interested. Even when they add new features to their drivers, I'll still be hesitant. NVidia's XvMC on their X86-64 drivers
Linux-certified hardware (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows certifies hardware, and Apple makes it clear what they support. Could it be useful for an agency of Linux developers to certify hardware that is open (standards released so drivers can be written) and well-designed enough to support the rigors of a "UNIX-like" OS?
I do not know the answer to this one. My inner four-year-old anarchist is leery of certification in anything, but even something as simple as a list of supported hardware like BSD does, with the requirement that its standards be open so drivers can be developed, might help companies market to Linux users (1 in 10 users, by my estimate) and help Linux users get their market share behind a few quality products so they can stand up and be counted.
Just an idea. Feel free to mod -1, this guy's an idealistic moron.
Last I tried the 2d "nv" driver... (Score:3, Insightful)
It could not even support a dual-head setup. If that's what he means by "NVIDIA engineers actively maintain and improve", then it is simply sabotage:
The nv-driver was my only option on FreeBSD/amd64, yet it would not drive the second monitor, so I changed the card for a Radeon. The open-source driver for ATI, at least, supports dual head and plenty of other features found on the hardware.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Sure thing, Mr. Rip Van Winckle!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A question (Score:5, Insightful)
I read & re-read the parent comment, but couldn't see them demanding anything. WTF are you talking about?
I mean, to the exclusion of actually using the software which could make their computer experience better.
Some people have quite pragmatic reasons for preferring open software - particularly kernel software. Driver crashes were one of the things that made windows (particularly in the late 90's / early 2000s) such a mess.
If you're making a hardware purchasing decision and want to run linux, of course you should try to buy from a company that supports FOSS.
Surely we haven't got that many mini-RMSes?
Finish the troll with a flourish. Nice work.
Re:A question (Score:4, Informative)
Consider Nvidia/ATI drivers on Windows or Mac OSX - these binary-only drivers are feature rich (are they more feature rich than their binary-only drivers on Linux?) and most users are quite happy. Bugs do occasionally show up, but they are normally fixed by Nvidia/ATI within a reasonable time frame.
However, I have noticed that these same manufacturers take forever to fix bugs which show up only on Linux.
That indicates to me that the reason that these binary drivers are not that stable on Linux is not because of the binary nature of these drivers but because the Linux user community matters less to Nvidia/ATI than the Windows user community.
And that is understandable - the number of windows users is roughly 93% http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_
So it is understandable that a hardware manufacturer prioritizes bug fixes for their larger user base (windows) rather than for the Linux users.
Unless Linux gains the kind of market share which will force hardware manufacturers to take it seriously, we can expect less than stellar drivers and support from them.
Re:A question (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the exact same reason that lobbying a congressman (without money) works. Once they hear it enough, they know it's important to the people that are most important to them: Their customers. (Or voters, as the case may be.)
When people don't tell a company how to behave, you end up with companies like Walmart. Walmart used to be about the country, the consumer, and the profit, in that order. They gave up on the whole 'made in the USA' thing quite a while back. They gave up on customer service even longer ago. They only care about the profit now. They do it by having cheap goods and cheap wages. For people who only care that the goods are cheap, it's a great store. For the rest of us it sucks.
nVidia has the choice of only catering to the mainstream Windows-based gamers, or also adding on a rabidly-loyal group of fanatics that are willing to work for free to make their business better. All nVidia has to do is LISTEN TO THEM and release their drivers open-source.
Yes, there was a great amount of R&D involved in their drivers, but most of the stuff that makes their drivers 'great' on windows just doesn't apply to Linux, like that massive control panel. That doesn't even exist in the binary Linux driver.
The code doesn't have to be GPL or any such. They could release it under their own license that specifically states the code can only be used for a driver for nVidia cards. The only thing necessary is the ability to improve the code at will. (I think they would find it advantageous to go to GPL later, but that's another discussion.)
nVidia really has little reason not to open their source code to the public, unless they are doing something illegal or extremely unethical in their drivers. (Cheating at benchmarks, etc.)
Re: (Score:2)
I played way too much Baldur's Gate in the past... I've read that and thought "that doesn't sound right..." I just can't imagine that saying to be anything other than 'The squeaky wheel gets the kick'. (As well as 'The bigger they are, the harder I hit').
Re: (Score:2)
And, er... 'Go for the eyes, Boo!'
Re: (Score:2)
All modern windows video drivers "cheat" in games and benchmark. The drivers fixes bugs in the games, and introduces new ones. Since the driver recognizes the game running and adapts accordingly, it would be odd to not do the same with benchmarks.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe it'll eventually be a bit like MP3 audio compression. You try to cut corners for the "resource expensive" stuff in a way that most people are unlikely to notice.
Re: (Score:2)
Which category does "not holding copyright for all the code" come under? (I'm suggesting that they've licenced third party stuff, not stolen it)
Re:A question (Score:5, Interesting)
One big problem in not releasing the source code is that they actually are not making our computer experience better: their drivers have bugs, and we will be locked to whatever features and bugs THEY want to make available to us -- so, basically we become hostages of their will, they can do whatever they want, because whithout THEIR driver, your nvidia card isn't worth its weight.
In the future, when new versions and extensions of OpenGL are released, we won't have any guarantee that they will properly update the drivers. So, you'll probably won't be able to use their proprietary drivers in 5 years for new applications (shining new wobbling effects), because these apps will need new extensions, but the driver for your specific nvidia card is arbitrarily not supported anymore by them (they want to force you to throw the old one away). Too bad for you.
On the other side, if we have access to the source code (or at least the hardware specification), we don't even need nvidia's help: we can do the updates/bug-squatting ourselves, much better than a small team at nvidia. This is something that these companies don't get: the whole world is willing to write their drivers for free and maintain them to the end of times, but they refuse the consumer this right (or maybe they get, they just want you to throw away your old card and buy a new one). We don't want a huge amount of work from them, quite the contrary! It's *way* cheaper for them to release an open-source driver: it costs nada/zero, we can build one with the bare bones of a reasonable hardware specification, a little pdf file -- how much does it cost to post a pdf file on the Internet?
There's no RMS ideology in that, only the absolute minimum someone would expect in terms of support for something you bought. Nowadays, the choice is clear: go Intel X3000/X3500 [wikipedia.org], which supports open source and you can be sure will always be up-to-date. Ignore nvidia and ati, until at least one day (I hope so) nouveau arrives.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but it's really not against their interest for hardware vendors. ATI and NVidia sell hardware, not software, so it makes little sense for them to keep their drivers closed source. They're not going to expose any IP they couldn't patent or the competition doesn't already know about.
And the reason Linux users want open source drivers is
Re: (Score:2)
Intel has already open-sourced their drivers.
Other hardware manufacturers have released data specs, and opened up drivers.
What secrets is NVidia really trying to protect?
The lack of solid, stable 3D drives in Linux is a major stumbling point for Linux gaming, and the main reason I dual-boot.
I've been buying NVidia cards because I prefer their Linux drivers, but the second AMD/ATI releases an open-source 3D drive, my 7600GT is going in the trash, and I'm buying ATI cards.
Re: (Score:2)
void voodoo()
{
user_soul* soul = get_soul_from_user();
det_list_add(soul->determinations, create_determination(det_buy, NVidia->graphics_card, _always));
???
profit++
}
Re: (Score:2)
Not exactly - that it cost them money to develop the drivers, including their own R&D into how to best squeeze performance out of their cards, and gain an edge over their competitors. This is highly sensitive information and undoubtedly cost them a lot to develop. To open source their drivers would be to give this all away to their competitors, who you can be sure would be the first to look at the code.
As good as th
Re: (Score:2)
Then NVidia no longer spends any money on Linux driver development.
The Linux community has a free-standing offer to write Linux drivers for free lest you forget.
And as far as protecting secrets, both Intel and ATI are fully open-sourcing their Linux driv
Re: (Score:2)
You're saying that it will cost NVidia (and others) money to open source their drivers.
Not exactly - that it cost them money to develop the drivers, including their own R&D into how to best squeeze performance out of their cards, and gain an edge over their competitors. This is highly sensitive information and undoubtedly cost them a lot to develop. To open source their drivers would be to give this all away to their competitors, who you can be sure would be the first to look at the code.
A highly efficient driver can get the most performance out of the hardware, but it can't make the hardware better than it is. An open-source driver might reveal some coding tricks to make better use of nVidia hardware, but that probably won't help Intel or ATI drivers, and certainly won't help their hardware. Further more, the R&D cost has already been spent, and since they don't sell the closed-source driver, they can't recoup that money except through hardware sales. I can't think of any possible
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone who pays attention to the video market knows that drivers can make or break a card, and often driver updates cause significant performance increases. Look at some of the early Detonator releases, or the alternative drivers released for 3d cards (such as OmegaDrivers). They are not simplistic or simple.
Re: (Score:2)
So you don't like the license a piece of software is released under? You think you have the right to it under a license of your choice. You don't like the DVD with ads in it. So perhaps you should "tinker, duplicate, share" it, as you put it, by removing them and spreading the DVD without them? What about the boring bit in the middle of the movie, per
Re: (Score:2)
In the meantime my nvidia graphics card works perfectly on Linux and has done since I bought my first nvidia card 7 years ago so open or closed driver or whatever I think nvidia deserves a lot of credit for that. The last I heard from nvidia they couldn't open source th
A different type of driver (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Do you know which Debian/Ubuntu packages contain the syncML plugin for Evolution, and which contain the syncML server? Or where on the Net to find tarfiles/etc?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
They are accepting bug reports of their Vista drivers too, *but* you too may wake up one day and find support is dropped. Guess they'll do this once the market has critical mass. After that, you're on your own. Well, they actually tell you to talk to your board maker (despite the fact nVidia writes the drivers, not your board maker.)
Hey now that's funny (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)