Danger with NVIDIA drivers 180.29

Posted Apr 22, 2009 21:57 UTC (Wed) by mrshiny (guest, #4266)
In reply to: Danger with NVIDIA drivers 180.29 by seyman
Parent article: Danger with NVIDIA drivers 180.29

Please... you're blaming nVidia because the kernel doesn't have a stable API, and thus when users use the nVidia driver then update their kernel the driver stops working? And calling this a crash, or somehow a symptom of instability?

First, when you install third part software it sometimes breaks when you update your distro (or even just parts of your distro). Whose fault this is isn't even important, it happens, but it's certainly not a "Crash".

Second, the kernel's no-stable-abi/api nonsense is hardly nVidia's fault. Any out-of-tree drivers will have this problem. nVidia just happens to be the poster-boy for this particular issue.

Finally, the X server has been pretty pathetic about video driver selection; in Windows there are often fallbacks so that if one driver can't be loaded something else is, so that you at least get SOME display. X? zip. nothing. Just a console. nVidia's fault? hardly.

Dont' get me wrong, I can't wait for the nouveau guys to fix everything that's wrong with nVidia's driver. But "stability"? that's not one of the things.

Danger with NVIDIA drivers 180.29

Posted Apr 22, 2009 23:13 UTC (Wed) by seyman (subscriber, #1172) [Link]

> Please... you're blaming nVidia because the kernel doesn't have a stable API, and thus when users use the nVidia driver then update their kernel the driver stops working?

No, I'm blaming nVidia because they refuse to publish the source to their driver which prevents the open source community from shipping a rebuilt version along with every new kernel.

Danger with NVIDIA drivers 180.29

Posted Apr 23, 2009 11:08 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

> Finally, the X server has been pretty pathetic about video driver
selection; in Windows there are often fallbacks so that if one driver
can't be loaded something else is, so that you at least get SOME display.
X? zip. nothing. Just a console. nVidia's fault? hardly.

The console /is/ the fallback, in that case. It's the ultimate "safe
mode".

Meanwhile, I agree with Seyman, no need to blame nVidia for the kernel
policy, when they could simply release decent specs and let the community
handle it at far less trouble than they are going to (despite nVidia) with
the nouveau driver.

FWIW, I did run the nVidia driver when I first got serious about switching
to Linux, because while I had done enough pre-buy (pre-switch) research to
know nVidia had Linux drivers and that they worked with TwinView, but I
had unfortunately NOT groked the difference (again, while doing pre-switch
research still on MS Windows) between unfreedomware Linux drivers and
freedomware Linux drivers.

It didn't take me long to figure it out tho once I switched, tho, as those
separate recompiles (I was building my own kernel before I had even chosen
my Linux mail client) got old VERY quickly, and that was the last
proprietaryware needing card I ever bought (and will ever buy, if I have
anything to say about it). I very quickly decided I did NOT dump a decade
of experience on proprietaryware just to continue to be subject to the
mastery of unfreedomware on Linux, as well. If I were to subject myself
to that, what was the point of dumping all that experience to start over
again? Not much. That one taste of freedom was all it took.

Duncan (I'll close with the quote I use as a sig on the mailing lists,
that I referred to above with that "subject to the mastery of
unfreedomware" bit.)

"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman

Danger with NVIDIA drivers 180.29

Posted Apr 23, 2009 16:37 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

There is nothing at all wrong with the instability of Linux kernel internal interfaces. They refuse to have their hands tied in order to fix bugs and improve things. We all reap the benefits.

If you think this is bad (obviously), then why don't you go over to OpenSolaris or FreeBSD and stop insisting that something is wrong with Linux?

Whether or not you think it's reasonable for the Linux developers to alter the Linux kernel, it's certainly unreasonable to ship end user drivers which repeatedly fail in this environment.