The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 0:48 UTC (Tue) by apardue (guest, #25164) [Link]

I have had very good results with nVidia drivers.
I had a problem a couple of years ago. Did not last long can't really
rember what the problem was mabie random lock-ups.

I have been very happy with they have handled their drivers.
(up to date easy installer)
Of course the only way they could be better is if they were open.

Andy

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 4:05 UTC (Tue) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

With piss-poor binary-only drivers. I eventually gave up on nVidia's crappy driver and bought an older ATI card that had support in XFree/Xorg.

As far as reliability, the nvidia drivers are as good or better than any drivers I've ever used on linux - the box simply does not crash, ever. The open source ATI drivers though, can easily lock up a box if you happen to run the wrong screensaver, or try to play the wrong 3D FPS....

There are some good GPL'd video drivers, e.g. the intel i8x0, the voodoo3, etc - but those video cards/hardware are rather modest by today's standards.

I don't really care whether my video driver is GPL'd but I do care that my OS of choice is supported. As someone who demands a lot from my computers, I tried every possible video card for Linux, and nvidia is far and away the best, including their drivers. The folks at nvidia are very linux savvy, and work hard to keep their drivers up to date - something that can't be said of any other video card vendor. ATI's half hearted, half baked linux efforts are just not in the same ballpark as nvidia, sorry.

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 7:23 UTC (Tue) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

Seconded.

There is also an Open Source nv driver, that lacks 3d support but is otherwise quite adequate.

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 7:24 UTC (Tue) by xav (subscriber, #18536) [Link]

As far as reliability, the nvidia drivers are as good or better than any drivers I've ever used on linux - the box simply does not crash, ever. The open source ATI drivers though, can easily lock up a box if you happen to run the wrong screensaver, or try to play the wrong 3D FPS....

I don't really care whether my video driver is GPL'd but I do care that my OS of choice is supported.

Then use a widely supported non-GPL OS.

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 7:40 UTC (Tue) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

Well, I have the opposite experience : one machine under Mandrake 10 with a Radeon 9200, GPL driver, which works flawlessly, and another with a Quattro, NVIDIA driver, which regularly locks with the screensaver (which is now disabled). And, in my opinion, Mandrake is not better engineered than Fedora.

I've installed and worked with hundreds of linux systems, and quite a few of those were workstations - so I've used various video cards and drivers with slackware, redhat, fedora, mandrake and suse. Over that time I've seen serious problems with 3D video and ATI cards all along, but none with nvidia in the past couple years. The early nvidia drivers had some agp issues, but that seems to be a thing of the past.

Then use a widely supported non-GPL OS.

Why do you want to dictate what OS I can run? My OS of choice just happens to be GPL'd. What do you want to do, prevent companies like nvidia from selling video cards to linux users? Sorry, I like fast 3D video with my linux, thank you very much!

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 14:58 UTC (Tue) by seyman (subscriber, #1172) [Link]

> Sorry, I like fast 3D video with my linux, thank you very much!

Then you should probably consider lobbying your card vendor for a GPL driver. That way, people will be able to send in patches if they find bugs or improvements to be made or port features to other drivers. Plus your card will actually work if you put in a Mac (or an Alpha or anything other than a ix86) and you won't need to update for every kernel upgrade your distribution issues.

Read Jon's brilliant essay on non-free drivers for more on this subject.

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 18:24 UTC (Tue) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

Then you should probably consider lobbying your card vendor for a GPL driver.

I'm happy with nvidia's drivers, they couldn't be better. The whole reason my vendor is my vendor, is that their product is far and away the best available for linux-x86. Wouldn't it be ironic if I rewarded the company who has worked hardest to win my business by giving them grief?

I agree, it sucks that they have not addressed the non-x86 linux market, but that's the main reason I'm on x86 and not ppc or sparc or other non-x86 platform. I know that if I move to ppc as a linux platform, I can say goodbye to decent video performance, so I don't go there. My hope is that IBM, since they are pushing ppc, will talk to the folks at nvidia and ati about getting some decent video support for linux/ppc.

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 15:26 UTC (Tue) by AJWM (subscriber, #15888) [Link]

As someone who demands a lot from my computers, I tried every possible video card for Linux,

Do you write ad copy for a living? This sure reads like it. "[E]very possible video card", eh? Right.

nvidia is far and away the best, including their drivers.

Sux on PPC, though.

nvidia stability

Posted Oct 5, 2004 16:57 UTC (Tue) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link]

Speaking with my gnome bugmaster hat on, for a long time, the only known scenario where gnome could hang your machine happened specifically only with the proprietary NVidia drivers. We got reports of it all the time. And we couldn't debug it, because it was proprietary. And it took nearly two years for NVidia to fix it. So, I guess you've been lucky.

nvidia stability

Posted Oct 5, 2004 18:29 UTC (Tue) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

Speaking with my gnome bugmaster hat on, for a long time, the only known scenario where gnome could hang your machine happened specifically only with the proprietary NVidia drivers.

He's mistaken, I could easily, instantly and repeatably hang a machine with an ATI video card and DRI deader than a doornail, regardless of window manager, by running some screensaver or 3D FPS...

Re: nvidia stability

Posted Oct 5, 2004 19:57 UTC (Tue) by Wills (guest, #1813) [Link]

einstein wrote:

I could easily, instantly and repeatably hang a machine with an ATI video card and DRI deader than a doornail, regardless of window manager, by running some screensaver or 3D FPS...

Please give a specific example of how you can "instantly and repeatably hang a machine with an ATI video card and DRI". Please give the names and version numbers of your applications that trigger the crash, the ATI video chipset and the ATI Linux driver. I'm calling your bluff because I don't believe it's a generic problem with ATI's Linux drivers. I have had no problems using ATI's Linux driver on a laptop with a ATI Mobility Radeon 9600.

Re: nvidia stability

Posted Oct 5, 2004 22:03 UTC (Tue) by ranger (subscriber, #6415) [Link]

Easy:

1)Install ati's fglrx 3.9.0 on a distro running XFree86-4.3 on a machine with a Radeon 9200 Mobility
2)Start X
3)Start a 2nd X (ie via KDE's "Start new session" menu entry, or via startx -- :1)
4)Change back to the first X instance (ie CTRL-ALT-F7)

Press your reset button, it's the only thing left to do. It works on every machine I've tested it on, without fail.

NVidia has never done this, neither does the open-source radeon driver from XOrg (which also performs just as well on this hardware).

Re: nvidia stability

Posted Oct 5, 2004 22:19 UTC (Tue) by Wills (guest, #1813) [Link]

ranger wrote:

1) Install ati's fglrx 3.9.0

Version 3.9.0 of the fglrx driver is really far too old. You need to get fglrx version 4.3.0 or later. Your example works fine with fglrx-4.3.0 on an ATI Mobility Radeon 9600.

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 9:01 UTC (Tue) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link]

ATI's drivers are REAL piss water could not drive a piuxel round the screen slow scabby die with no reason least Nvidia ACTUALLY WORK
more than can be said bout ati

Re: The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 20:06 UTC (Tue) by Wills (guest, #1813) [Link]

petegn wrote:

ATI's drivers are REAL piss water could not drive a piuxel round the screen slow scabby die with no reason

Judging by the appalling grammar, you are probably trolling but, just in case you really mean what you wrote, please give a specific example of the problems you had with ATI Linux drivers, giving the names and version numbers of the applications that trigger the problems, and the names and version numbers of the video chipset and the ATI Linux driver.

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 15:11 UTC (Tue) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]

If I wanted to go out and pick up a video card for a new Linux box, that was well-supported in GPL, or at least open-source, which card should I choose?

I bought an NVidia because my "shop of choice" happened to have one on sale. I'm having no problems with their drivers. but I'd like to know if there are free-software alternatives that work well with other cards.

...something that can run Tuxracer properly would be good.

The future of Linux multimedia (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 5, 2004 21:32 UTC (Tue) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

You can still pick up voodoo 3 cards very cheaply nowdays, and the GPL'd OpenGL drivers ship with any modern linux distro. A voodoo 3 isn't state of the art anymore, but it's fine for playing tuxracer, or even quake 3 arena.