OT: nVidia driver [was: Wish list]

[Jerone Young]

On 6/7/05, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/7/05, Jerone Young <jerone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > but until then I have as of yet to see
> > anyone who can match their drviers...especially ATI.
> 
> Well duh, of course ATI isnt going to have good drivers for your nvidia card.
>
Dude I was referring to all drivers...ATI having very bad drivers (the
proprietary ones). While Nvidia having good drivers :-)

> Lame jokes aside... do you know exactly how responsible nvidia is for
> the state of nv driver development that is available as part of X?

Since I havne not actively kept up with nv development I really don't.
I don't believe they work on the nv  driver any, just pass on the
specs to someone to support the card. All nvidia cards work with the
nv driver with 2d only just fine (minus some optimized acceleration
for overlay).

> Perhaps, more than perhaps.. nv could also be claimed as their driver
> too.  Maybe the disparity in functionality between the nv driver and
> the closed nvidia driver is delibrate.

Yes somewhat. Most of the functionality is 3D related. There are also
TwinView  & other nvidiaish things that are not in the nv driver. I
don't like it,  but inspite of what people have told Nvidia. They
still do it this way.

> Maybe the developers provided
> as much functionality in the open nv driver as the feel they can do
> and its not so much a decision that the engineers are actively making
> as it is a set of legal opinions and or business decisions
> constraining their actions. 

>From posts on the nvidia linux forum the developers are held back
mainly by legal reasons. S3TC compression is patented and they can't
just give out that code without permission. Also they claim there are
a bunch of trade secrets in there code...optimized algorithms and
such. I really don't buy it all that much. I don't see why they
couldn't release the driver open source & there GL libraries closed.
But it mainly has to do with lawyers.

> Or maybe they are just twisted evil
> dwarves who like watching the drivers break as the kernel development
> churns forward.

Actually the developers are and they know it. They also know that no
one has any pity on them as Nvidia has chosen the hardest path to
follow.

> 
> -jef
>