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Nvidia not so hot on Loonix anymore

Orangey

Orangey

Orangey

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http://fudzilla.net/news/graphics/37544-nvidia-is-as-open-source-friendly-as-a-great-white-shark

According to Phoronix the Linux 3.19 kernel had basic support for the new Nvidia GPUs in the open-source, community-based, reverse-engineered Nouveau driver.

But this was restricted to mode-setting and not hardware acceleration. Nvidia's move to requiring signed firmware images for their graphics processors is biting the open-source developers.

Nouveau developers had a get around for a while. This involved extracting the firmware binary blobs out of the Nvidia proprietary driver when initializing the graphics card with it and then doing an MMIOtrace. It became increasingly difficult as new hardware generations made this difficult.

Fermi, Kepler, Nouveau developers ended up writing the code so that Nouveau would be able to self-generate the GPU firmware without users having to touch the binary driver. But the new Maxwell GPUs needed signed firmware and so that method was toast.

Nvidia has yet to provide the necessary firmware to Nouveau developers and these missing signed firmware blobs is stopping Nouveau developers from moving forward in providing open-source hardware acceleration.
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Personally I wouldn't bother trying to use anything other than Intel graphics on Linux, seems like a total nightmare.
 
Can't blame Nvidia for certificated firmware, really, Open Source is great but the model is not without its foibles, Nvidia are simply protecting their hardware from Twinkie code.
 
This is the down side to nix, if you want performance you need to use the Nvidia driver, If you want oss support/driver you need a AMD card. Down side is neither the oss nor proprietary diver has the same level as NV's closed driver.

humbug said:
Can't blame Nvidia for certificated firmware, really, Open Source is great but the model is not without its foibles, Nvidia are simply protecting their hardware from Twinkie code.
Click to expand...

You've lost me on that statement?


btw Humbug. Is that you that's recently joined the phoronix forums ?
 
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