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NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver
Historically, NVIDIA developed and maintained the xf86-video-nv X driver,
primarily as a very minimal driver that works "well enough" to give
users accelerated X rendering from the time they install their Linux
distribution until the time they install the NVIDIA driver available
from nvidia.com [1].
The xf86-video-nv driver intentionally has a very small feature set, both
to minimize the maintenance cost of this driver, and to minimize
exposure of any IP NVIDIA might consider sensitive.
However, the rendering needs of a modern X Window System desktop have
changed drastically in recent years to rely heavily on the X Render
extension, which is not well accelerated in the nv driver. At this point,
on a modern X desktop the nv driver does not offer much beyond what is
provided by the stock VESA X driver. Providing proper Render acceleration
in the nv driver would be a substantial task, and would require diverting
significant engineering resources away from NVIDIA's nvidia.com driver.
For this reason, NVIDIA is dropping support, on new GPUs, for the
xf86-video-nv driver.
Details:
- NVIDIA will continue to support the existing functionality and
existing level of acceleration in the nv driver for existing GPUs,
on existing, and (within reason) future, X server versions.
- NVIDIA will not support the xf86-video-nv driver on Fermi or
later GPUs.
- NVIDIA will not support DisplayPort, on any GPU, in the
xf86-video-nv driver.
Our advice to owners of NVIDIA GPUs running Linux is to use the VESA X
driver from the time of Linux distribution installation until they can
download and install the NVIDIA Linux driver from their distribution
repositories or from nvidia.com.
We believe that focusing our Linux driver engineering efforts exclusively
on the NVIDIA driver, in order to leverage NVIDIA's cross-platform
graphics driver code base, is the optimal route for the best possible
user experience for NVIDIA Linux users.
Thanks,
Andy Ritger
[1] http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
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Archives: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg
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NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 27, 2010 21:48 UTC (Sat) by mosfet (guest, #45339) [Link] Good riddance!
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 27, 2010 21:52 UTC (Sat) by sahko (guest, #54088) [Link]
Noone even bothered to reply to the announcement...
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 27, 2010 23:39 UTC (Sat) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] This makes sense; Nouveau's going into the kernel, so going forward, people will want to run either Nouveau or nVidia's proprietary driver. There's no reason to keep spending resources on xf86-video-nv.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 20:29 UTC (Sun) by xav (subscriber, #18536) [Link]
Sure, but I find their way of recommending VESA over Nouveau (on which a lot of the community is working right now) disturbing, to say the least. In fact that's quite aggressive.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 0:15 UTC (Mon) by wblew (subscriber, #39088) [Link]
If they mentioned Nouveau as the alternative, the assumption would be that
they support Nouveau.
However, Nouveau is a clean-room implementation, yes? Thus, it is not in
As I (vaguely) recall: they once addressed the issue of an open source driver
A pity really...
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 6:34 UTC (Mon) by xav (subscriber, #18536) [Link]
Whatever. We already got the NDA excuse for the WiFi drivers, and guess what it was just that: an excuse. NVIDIA just think they've got an edge with their pretty good unified driver, and don't want to opensource it.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 12:19 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
It's a valid excuse.
All it is is that these companies enter into cross-licensing agreements that would cost money
AMD put a huge amount of cash and time into getting ATI and such as open as it currently is.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 13:28 UTC (Mon) by dmaxwell (guest, #14010) [Link]
It's a valid excuse not to open their drivers. It's an invalid excuse not to provide the register level information necessary to create a driver. It's also an invalid excuse to obfuscate a formerly open driver. The nv driver is no great loss anyway as they have been running it through an obfuscator for years. It was little more open then their binary open drivers.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 18:01 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] It's a valid excuse not to open their drivers. It's an invalid excuse not to provide the register level information necessary to create a driver.Your probably assuming that all their hardware design is their's 100% andthey have not entered in agreements were they sell tech to other companies. and none of their patent/contract agreements cover how the drivers interact with the hardware. Also your possibly assuming that they don't have contractual obligations to keep the hardware interfaces somewhat secret in order to comply DRM requirements from Microsoft and friends. I would think that all those assumptions are wrong. Why do you think that the 'secret sauce' is all in the software and has nothing to do with the hardware or how the software interacts with the hardware? if there was a financial reason for them to open up the hardware then they would probably do so. It certainly would cost them quite a bit to open up and they have no reason to do so. That is all there really is to it. What is the upside for Nvidia to be open? They make a crapload of money based on the fact that they are the only ones with decent 3D drivers for Linux... why would they want that to change? Linux users buy their stuff left and right regardless of the hardware documentation or anything.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 30, 2010 5:48 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Why do you think NVidia is special and unlike every other hardware vendor?
Why do you think their hardware interface is incredibly special? I've never heard of a hardware company that were hamstrung in releasing programming interface specs to their own hardware by 3rd parties.
What evidence is there for any of these arguments? No more than speculation
NVidia also kept the drivers for their ethernet and audio chipsets
The evidence is that NVidia simply have a blanket policy of not providing
NVIDIA turns its back on OSS Posted Mar 27, 2010 23:44 UTC (Sat) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]
Nice way for NVIDIA to show that they are working with the open source community instead of against it.</sarcasm>
NVIDIA turns its back on OSS Posted Mar 28, 2010 0:11 UTC (Sun) by Adi (guest, #52678) [Link]
nv wasn't much more useful than vesa anyway.
For me, it's clear that they deprecated nv because nouveau is far better today - they don't have to say it publicly.
NVIDIA turns its back on OSS Posted Mar 28, 2010 22:43 UTC (Sun) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
They might have as well.
It would probably counted as points in their favour for honesty. ;)
NVIDIA turns its back on OSS Posted Mar 29, 2010 9:30 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
In my experience it is very rare for corporations large enough to have a marketing or legal department to be honest. Pretty lies are what they have the marketing department *for*, and the legal department will prevent them saying any truths that might be potentially risky (e.g. admitting that they ever made a mistake).
If you want honesty, talk to individual human beings. Their record for truth is pretty awful too, but at least you have the *possibility* of it.
NVIDIA turns its back on OSS Posted Apr 15, 2010 17:49 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
They might as well, but they'd better not. It's better not to be on record as recommending something that could be infringing on patents that they have licensed from corporate partners for use in their own stuff, or which could become a competitor, or which does not promote nVidia the corporation by its very existence.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 1:00 UTC (Sun) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link] This is great! Now when I tell my friends that they should buy video cards using chips from vendors that support open source software (e.g., AMD and Intel), they no longer can point at that lame nv driver and claim that NVidia does support open source.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 4:34 UTC (Sun) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]
... did anyone ever actually do that? _really_ ?
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 3:36 UTC (Mon) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link] Yes, I've heard quite a few people try to claim that NVidia supports open source software, and point to the nv driver. I'm not sure if they were confused, or dissembling.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 4:40 UTC (Sun) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
Nice, Debian will finally be able to close #383465. I'm hoping nouveau is up to the job of replacing xf86-video-nv, last time I tried it, it couldn't render text on my old GeForce2.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 5:31 UTC (Sun) by djzort (guest, #57189) [Link]
perhaps someone can make good video hardware with open specs? anyone? ati perhaps? of maybe intel can make a decent card? or matrox a card not designed for 16 monitors?
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 13:54 UTC (Sun) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
ATI is helping with development of the Xorg Radeon open-source driver by providing specifications
and some pieces of source code. And that driver works quite well now (even supporting 3D) on all of the cards except the absolute latest series, the RadeonHD 5xxx cards. On those, it only works at a basic unaccelerated level of functionality. (but hopefully that'll be corrected soon!)
http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 14:27 UTC (Sun) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] Well there is the open graphics project.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 15:12 UTC (Mon) by rgoates (guest, #3280) [Link]
Sadly, there doesn't seem to be much going on recently with the open graphics project.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 7:13 UTC (Sun) by Imroy (guest, #62286) [Link]
Who needs the nv driver to download nVidia's binary diver from their website? I've never had a problem using Lynx or Links from a text console to download it from the URL they give.
I'm hoping Nouveau and the Open Source ATI/AMD driver(s) soon rival or even surpass the performance and feature set of their closed-source counterparts. I've actually been quite happy with nVidia's binary driver, but it is still a pain to install it separately.
Move to Nouveau Posted Mar 28, 2010 11:14 UTC (Sun) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
Unless you desperately need 3D, you really should give Nouveau a try. I am now free of non-free drivers on my laptop, and have a 1280x800 resolution in my consoles. And DPMS in the console works a treat.
Move to Nouveau Posted Mar 28, 2010 12:29 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
3D works pretty good for lots of users in Fedora 13. You will just have to
install mesa-dri-drivers-experimental package and that's it. It's been getting updates frequently too.
Move to Nouveau Posted Mar 28, 2010 14:51 UTC (Sun) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]
3D also works for Ubuntu, with the X.org edgers PPA. But remember: only OpenGL 1.5, and it's experimental. It does occasionally break.
Move to Nouveau Posted Mar 29, 2010 17:22 UTC (Mon) by tetromino (subscriber, #33846) [Link]
> Unless you desperately need 3D
Take a look at the calendar; it's 2010. 3D is no longer an optional feature; rather, lack of 3D is a crippling bug. Using a system that does not support 3D (which means, at the absolute minimum, OpenGL 2.1 + useful extensions) is not something to be proud of; it is, IMHO, something to quietly cry about in the privacy of one's home.
Move to Nouveau Posted Mar 29, 2010 20:49 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Oh really? What do you need 3D for? I'm curious, honestly.
Move to Nouveau Posted Mar 30, 2010 0:07 UTC (Tue) by MarkWilliamson (guest, #30166) [Link]
Personally I find having 3D composited window management is useful, when it works. My
favourite feature is a KDE KWin plugin called "thumbnail aside". I find it hard to explain because people sometimes get distracted by similar features in other WMs. I've not seen anything else quite like it though: it lets you pin translucent thumbnails of important windows on top of everything else. Because they're translucent and scaled down they don't disrupt my other work too much (you can click through them too, they're not interactive in any way). But it's enough to keep an eye on a video window or a compile whilst I'm working primarily on something else.
I like having a "present windows" / "expose" type feature, that's somewhat useful though I could
I've found translucent windows useful in the past, though don't use them much now. Adding up
Also nice to have 3D available for occasional games; even some games with primarily 2D
Move to Nouveau Posted Mar 29, 2010 23:01 UTC (Mon) by efexis (guest, #26355) [Link]
I leave my computer date set to 2009, that way I can continue to code, audio edit, write music, watch movies/tv, email, facebook, read lwn 'n other websites, all without being crippled by a lack of 3D. Occasionally when I want to experience 3D, I bend my laptop screen backwards a little, or sometimes close one eye and pretend to myself that I have no depth perception.
The noughties were a good decade Posted Apr 3, 2010 16:13 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Thanks for the good laugh. Frankly most of the time I am not sure if I am using 3D acceleration or not, except when I try the opengl mode of mplayer (and usually go back to xv anyway due to ugly artifacts).
The noughties were a good decade Posted Apr 3, 2010 19:28 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
On many (most?) modern video cards, Xv is implemented by means of 3D
texture-mapping.
The noughties were a good decade Posted Apr 3, 2010 21:11 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] So I'm using 3D without knowing it... it seems likely, as xvinfo saysAdaptor #0: "Intel(R) Textured Video"But it's a good compromise, not having to deal with opengl directly.
Move to Nouveau Posted Mar 30, 2010 8:03 UTC (Tue) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
Please don't start trolls, Nouveau is under development and thus is expected not to have all the features available yet.
If you need 3D, you can use the proprietary nVidia drivers for now, until Nouveau has caught up.
If you need 3D _with_ Nouveau, some posters have given some options. Also, you can contribute to the project to help these guys out.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 9:27 UTC (Sun) by russell (subscriber, #10458) [Link]
There has been a lot of work on graphics lately, and this seems to be accelerating. So, I'm wondering how long will take to catch up to the specs ( such as opengl 4 ) and windows? What is the delta? This would make a good story, hint, hint :).
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 13:49 UTC (Sun) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link]
I agree that examining the state of FLOSS graphics drivers would make a good story! This, plus patented codecs and Flash, are the main issues today for using FLOSS on the desktop.
But I don't think there's been "a lot of work on graphics lately". Instead, I think people have been working on this for years. I think the issue is that it takes a long time to "lay the foundations", to get to the point where much works... and that once a "minimum" works, it takes less time to get further.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 17:52 UTC (Sun) by Thalience (subscriber, #4217) [Link]
So, basically, they won't be telling us how to set display modes on their next generation of chips.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 18:32 UTC (Sun) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
They are already doing that in the VESA BIOS :)
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 19:08 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
For that matter, ATI don't tell us how to set display modes. They tell us
how to write an atombios interpreter to ask the card how to do it.
This is so obviously the Right Way that I'm amazed it didn't catch on
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 22:13 UTC (Sun) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
One problem is when hardware is broken. See also ACPI.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 0:00 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
The Windows drivers use the same scripts, as does the x86 BIOS (these days it's actually mostly
an ATOM interpreter). Putting incorrect data in there is likely to result in it failing on all platforms. The problems we have with ACPI now are generally cases where the behaviour of Windows is the de-facto spec, and providing bug-for-bug compatibility takes a while.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 1:38 UTC (Mon) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
"The Windows drivers use the same scripts, as does the x86 BIOS (these days it's actually mostly an ATOM interpreter)."
What do you mean by "scripts" here? atombios code?
"The problems we have with ACPI now are generally cases where the behaviour of Windows is the de-facto spec, and providing bug-for-bug compatibility takes a while."
Well, it's a similar situation in one respect: you have two main interpreters of ACPI instructions: MSFT and INTL. What you're saying is that we have two atombios interpreters: ATI's and Xorg's Well, three, if you include the BIOS.
Perhaps the salient difference is that DAAMIT is being an honest actor and trying to just sell more hardware instead of trying to "knife [Xorg's] baby."
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 10:14 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Yes. A piece of ATOMBIOS code is known as a 'script' because, well, it's a script: like ACPI, it's fed to an interpreter in the driver and executed by it (the general result being to frob a lot of ports and mess with a lot of card state, just like old-style modesetting used to be).
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 15:33 UTC (Mon) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
Thanks! I'm not trying to really argue anything as much as understand (although the "honest actor" part is perhaps an argument)
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 14:17 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
The Linux implementation of the ATOM interpreter is based on the Windows one, rather than
being written to a spec.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 15:32 UTC (Mon) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
"based on" how? Like sharing snippets of code or a cleanroom reimplementation?
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 15:51 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
AMD provided their implementation. It's since been modified somewhat to resemble kernel code
rather than CamelCased Hungarian notation misery, but it should be functionally equivalent.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 17:31 UTC (Mon) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
Ah, awesome. :)
"StudlyCaps", please Posted Apr 1, 2010 2:24 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
The standard term for that is "StudlyCaps", not "CamelCase". The latter is too inderise; i.e., it lacks derision.
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 6:47 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
There's a difference between BIOS writes being incapable of writing simple
scripts (they're hardware geeks, mostly) and video card manufacturers being incapable of writing simple scripts (they write some of the most complex driver code known to man already, this is not beyond their ken).
Also, these scripts run with a quiescent video card in a known state, with
(Also also, as mjg59 points out, if these scripts are broken, the Windows
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 28, 2010 23:59 UTC (Sun) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Nvidia do use a script-based approach to modesetting. There are various significant design
differences to AMD's, but the fundamental concept is pretty similar. Take a look at drivers/gpu/drm/nouveau/nouveau_bios.c
NVIDIA deprecates the xf86-video-nv driver Posted Mar 29, 2010 6:44 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Exactly my point :)
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