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Torvalds was angry about Tegra, not GPU drivers.

by hapless 14y ago

Symmetry 14y ago
There's also the Optimus "We have no plans to support Linux" situation.
exDM69 14y ago
It was mostly about desktop GPU drivers and he said nothing about them specifically. And it was most certainly not targeted at Tegra drivers. Tegra kernel parts are mostly open sourced (not the user space, though) and the Tegra kernel team is doing a lot of work that is important to running Linux on ARM SoC's, not just Tegra specific parts.
coldpie 14y ago
Possibly, but their GPU drivers are also frustrating crap. Yes, AMD/ATI's drivers are far worse, but nvidia is still dropping the ball. Binary blobs in your kernel are bad for everyone. Kernel developers are often rightly uninterested in kernel problems that occur in environments that are "tainted" by black-box code. Nvidia's driver doesn't play nicely with the Linux GPU stack and ecosystem. Consider their "twinview" nonsense, requiring a legacy xorg.conf, and duplicating functionality present in the standardized xrandr 1.2. Fullscreen programs are an iffy proposition at best with nvidia's drivers, made even worse if you have multiple monitors, as a result of their refusal to work with the community and the standard tools. A game developer as important as Valve officially supporting Linux has the potential to force nvidia to finally start playing nice, or even better, get their head out of their asses and just open-source their drivers and get them into the kernel. That way every nvidia user on Earth can benefit from an officially supported, open, community-driven driver. Slim chance, but I would've said the same about native L4D2 if you'd asked me 2 months ago.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Add this to your /etc/environment SDL_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_DISPLAY=1 SDK_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_HEAD=1 Will fix the dual monitor/twinview issue for some programs.
- hapless 14y ago
  The nvidia driver codebase is HUUUGE, much of it is valuable proprietary information, and much of it is third party. It would be extremely challenging for nvidia to open source it, from both legal and business perspectives. I do hold out hope for nvidia gaining full xrandr and kms support at some point. The latest beta drivers have significantly increased xrandr support.
- aidenn0 14y ago
  Twinview is an implementation of Xinerama, which predates RandR and was standardized for X11 6.4. When nVidia released twinview, it was using (at the time) the standard way to achieve this functionality. They haven't moved to RandR or KMS, which is a bit of a pain granted, but that's a case of being stuck on older tech, not a case of ignoring what's out there.

Torvalds was angry about Tegra, not GPU drivers.

by hapless 14y ago

Torvalds was angry about Tegra, not GPU drivers.

Symmetry 14y ago

There's also the Optimus "We have no plans to support Linux" situation.

exDM69 14y ago

It was mostly about desktop GPU drivers and he said nothing about them specifically. And it was most certainly not targeted at Tegra drivers. Tegra kernel parts are mostly open sourced (not the user space, though) and the Tegra kernel team is doing a lot of work that is important to running Linux on ARM SoC's, not just Tegra specific parts.

coldpie 14y ago

Possibly, but their GPU drivers are also frustrating crap. Yes, AMD/ATI's drivers are far worse, but nvidia is still dropping the ball. Binary blobs in your kernel are bad for everyone. Kernel developers are often rightly uninterested in kernel problems that occur in environments that are "tainted" by black-box code. Nvidia's driver doesn't play nicely with the Linux GPU stack and ecosystem. Consider their "twinview" nonsense, requiring a legacy xorg.conf, and duplicating functionality present in the standardized xrandr 1.2. Fullscreen programs are an iffy proposition at best with nvidia's drivers, made even worse if you have multiple monitors, as a result of their refusal to work with the community and the standard tools. A game developer as important as Valve officially supporting Linux has the potential to force nvidia to finally start playing nice, or even better, get their head out of their asses and just open-source their drivers and get them into the kernel. That way every nvidia user on Earth can benefit from an officially supported, open, community-driven driver. Slim chance, but I would've said the same about native L4D2 if you'd asked me 2 months ago.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Add this to your /etc/environment SDL_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_DISPLAY=1 SDK_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_HEAD=1 Will fix the dual monitor/twinview issue for some programs.
hapless 14y ago
The nvidia driver codebase is HUUUGE, much of it is valuable proprietary information, and much of it is third party. It would be extremely challenging for nvidia to open source it, from both legal and business perspectives. I do hold out hope for nvidia gaining full xrandr and kms support at some point. The latest beta drivers have significantly increased xrandr support.
aidenn0 14y ago
Twinview is an implementation of Xinerama, which predates RandR and was standardized for X11 6.4. When nVidia released twinview, it was using (at the time) the standard way to achieve this functionality. They haven't moved to RandR or KMS, which is a bit of a pain granted, but that's a case of being stuck on older tech, not a case of ignoring what's out there.