On Tuesday October 17 2006 12:52, Ira Abramov wrote:
> Quoting Michael Vasiliev, from the post of Tue, 17 Oct:
> > A beta of the next version of nvidia drivers is available from Nvidia
> > website, that supposedly fixes that bug, they somehow failed to properly
> > release the release notes. ;)
>
> is it closed? I seem to recollect it compiles itself to whatever kernel
> you have and only drops a binary driver for Xorg.
"Links", not "compiles". It's a 5.3MB .o binary blob under a
proprietary "nvidia" license, that uses the usual kernel symbols, as all
external modules do, wrapped around with some C that provides the linking
layer against your kernel version. Obviously, by loading the module, you
taint your kernel.
With the kernel driver you get a set of closed source GL libraries that you
have to install to use the 3D acceleration and enjoy X lockups, kernel oopses
and "random" crashes resulting in serious data loss.
Switching to a new ABI in X.org 7 broke the glyph rendering for almost 6
months.
The libraries are compiled without -fPIC, so prelink is out of question for
your X and most of the programs that link against it.
The documentation is scarce and scattered to say the least, though there was
some degree of improvement in recent versions. Still, you have to spend some
quality time if you plan on configuring the card in some way other that the
default decision of the driver.
On some chipsets, driver forces AGP 1X even if the card and motherboard are
capable of more due to some incompatibility issue I can find nothing about.
Recent horror story: "My computer crashes at nights, when I'm not around".
Turned out the users have a healthy habit of switching the AC off and opening
a window when leaving the workplace. Combined with the 39C temperature
outside and some cards are simply overheating with these drivers, and require
replacement of the liquidated thermal conducting paste, swapping a heatsink
for a larger one and adding a fan.
All that drives you to degree of desperation you never reached, that's from
personal experience both as a sysadmin and a user).
Did I mention that there is an open-source "nv" X driver available (no 3D
though), as well as open-source nvidia framebuffer kernel support?
I'll stick with that unless I don't have a choice. The idea of watching a
system getting stuck in an infinite loop of gettimeofday(2) calls doesn't
sound that appealing to me. The hardware may be great, but I can't tell, as I
never saw the code that runs it.
--
Sincerely Yours,
Michael Vasiliev
"Without the wind, the grass does not move.
Without software, hardware is useless."
-- Tao of Programming
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