Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

Posted Feb 18, 2008 20:37 UTC (Mon) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164)
In reply to: Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves? by tetromino
Parent article: Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

I think you missed the point of the article entirely...

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

Posted Feb 18, 2008 22:11 UTC (Mon) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link] (7 responses)

I wouldn't say that he missed the point, but that he's reflecting some good old fashioned
practicality into what was a purely philosophical discussion.

He IS missing the point

Posted Feb 19, 2008 8:22 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (5 responses)

I have nothing against nVidia and binary drivers per se: you want/need to use them - to do. No problem. But to spend a lot of resources to produce open-source drivers for nVidia looks like useless waste of time: by the time free drivers will reach maturity (year from past experience) nVidia hardware will be obsoleted anyway. And for the next 2-3 years closed-source proprietary drivers are Ok. So the only way to keep Nouveau relevant is to waste efforts forever and keep adding support for newer and newer models. And this looks like stupid thing to do. But of course there are no rush: if/when AMD's drivers will reach maturity Nouveau support will dry up. I think it'll happen automatically if free AMD drivers will be any good...

You're missing the point

Posted Feb 19, 2008 9:37 UTC (Tue) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link] (4 responses)

Strongly disagree. 

nVidias drivers are flaky and unstable in my experience. Using them makes my laptop
significantly less likely to come out of sleep mode working. There are various minor graphical
glitches when using Compiz, like window borders sometimes getting the wrong transparency level
and the mouse cursor getting the wrong color. Sometimes when switching resolution, the screen
starts to flicker, and doesn't stop until you reboot you system. On my previous desktop
machine, the computer would lock hard when using both video outputs at once. Because my
desktop machine had an old graphics card and my laptop has a low volume laptop GPU, these
issues are not prioritized by nVidia and will very likely never get fixed.

All in all, the driver is crappy, and because it is closed source, I have no other option than
to sit around and hope nVidia will accidentally fix this in a later release, which seems
somewhat unlikely.

You're missing the point

Posted Feb 20, 2008 6:04 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

> All in all, the driver is crappy, and because it is closed source, I have no other option
than to sit around and hope nVidia will accidentally fix this in a later release, which seems
somewhat unlikely.


Well, with hindsight, what you should of done was never purchase the hardware in the first
place. With these sort of things your not only paying for the hardware, but your paying for
the software.

That is without the drivers the hardware is useless (or nearly useless). Nvidia, by keeping
stuff closed, is using their software as part of the product you are purchasing. One is
nothing without the other.

That is because you bought Nvidia's hardware you are paying for them to continue to develop
closed source drivers. (In comparison how much have you paid to develop open source drivers?)


So the other course of action, right now, is sell your Nvidia stuff and buy something with
Intel on it. So if you have problems with their driver support yourself or somebody can
actually do something about it.

If you cannot do that because of the money. Oh well. Better luck next time.

If you cannot work with Intel hardware because of performance issues, then you'll never be
able to work with the open source nvidia drivers either. There will never be the developer
support or community support nessicary to get those drivers up to the same level of Nvidia's
own drivers in a timely fasion. So your screwed coming and going.

You're missing the point

Posted Feb 20, 2008 15:42 UTC (Wed) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link] (1 responses)

Your points are mostly valid, but Intel doesn't sell any desktop cards, and back when I bought
my hardware ATI where nowhere near open either, so I really had no option there. 

I really wanted to buy a laptop with an Intel GPU, but the exakt same laptop that I bought but
with Intel graphics cost a full $600 more than the one I bought. They where selling the laptop
I bought at almost half price because they had introduced the exact same model but with Vista
certification. Thanks, Micorsoft!!! While I strongly wanted to support Intel, $600 was simply
too much, and I caved in. I have some regrets.

You're missing the point

Posted Feb 21, 2008 2:17 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link]

Saving $600 is worth a few regrets.

You're missing the point

Posted Feb 20, 2008 22:20 UTC (Wed) by jayavarman (guest, #19600) [Link]

My experience has been quite different. On my laptop the nvidia driver works pretty much well
and stably. I just close the lid, the laptop sleeps and then comes back again. I can get
several days of uptime. The power management seems to also work quite well, although the
chip/driver is a bit too laggy to increase the frequency when needed.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

Posted Feb 28, 2008 21:34 UTC (Thu) by alext (guest, #7589) [Link]

Not really, he is saying that Free Software developers can't develop as good drivers with no
documentation of the hardware as people who have are informed about every essential nugget of
configuring and operating the boards to the max. If the NVidia drivers weren't the best you
really would hope they would fire the engineers!

I've thought from the start nouveau was a mistake and more so every time AMD or Intel release
spec's for hardware. My next machine won't have NVidia in it unless they are free by then and
I think this whole affair is just making people realise that others deserve their support
where they didn't know different before. I didn't. So NVidia need to react or start to lose
share.

There are practical reasons, if I can have a machine that requires no special treatment (even
with the helpful Ubuntu restricted drivers tool for example) to run at its best I will choose
it over one with just the hiccup of an extra task. That's the practical reality.