nv driver for NVIDIA video and power management....

[Mike A. Harris]

Gregory Gulik wrote:
> 
> I like many people am very frustrated with proprietary drivers and I 
> will use open source drivers whenever ppossible.   However, I have a 
> couple laptops with NVIDIA video cards that I try to use the "nv" driver 
> with but I can't seem to get power management to turn off the 
> backlight.  I tried again with FC5T3 and it's still not working.
> 
> Does anyone have advice on how to get that to work so I don't have to 
> deal with the NVIDIA closed source drivers again?

Presumeably the problem is not a configuration problem, but a hardware
support problem.  The best way of dealing with hardware support problems
with the open source nv driver, is to file bugs in X.Org bugzilla and
to discuss the issue(s) on the X.org mailing lists, and then more or
less sit and wait.

Since there are no public specifications for Nvidia's hardware, and the
open source driver is fairly obfuscated, users are held hostage to
whatever support is provided by those who do have the necessary
documentation essentially, which are currently limited to a few people
inside Nvidia currently, and maybe a small handful of hackers who have
reverse engineered some of the bits and understand how some of it works.

Another option of course, would be to become one of the people who
reverse engineers Nvidia's hardware. ;o)


-- 
Mike A. Harris  *  Open Source Advocate  *  http://mharris.ca
                       Proud Canadian.