2004-09-04 00:17:27

by Sid Boyce

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

The NVIDIA Linux Discussion forum has a patch that works with 2.6.9-rc1-mm3
http://gentoo.kems.net/gentoo-x86-portage/media-video/nvidia-kernel/files/1.0.6111/nv_enable_pci.patch
Regards
Sid.

--
Sid Boyce .... Hamradio G3VBV and keen Flyer
=====LINUX ONLY USED HERE=====


2004-09-04 06:28:19

by Prakash K. Cheemplavam

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

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Sid Boyce wrote:
| The NVIDIA Linux Discussion forum has a patch that works with
2.6.9-rc1-mm3
|
http://gentoo.kems.net/gentoo-x86-portage/media-video/nvidia-kernel/files/1.0.6111/nv_enable_pci.patch

|
| Regards
| Sid.
|

It was posted here at lkml by Terende Ripperda, one of Nvidia's driver devs.

bye,

Prakash
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2004-09-04 09:19:36

by Dominik Karall

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Saturday 04 September 2004 02:17, Sid Boyce wrote:
> The NVIDIA Linux Discussion forum has a patch that works with 2.6.9-rc1-mm3
> http://gentoo.kems.net/gentoo-x86-portage/media-video/nvidia-kernel/files/1
>.0.6111/nv_enable_pci.patch Regards
> Sid.

this patch only fixes the "routeirq" problem, or? because i can't see any
changes for pci_find_class.

regards,
dominik

2004-09-04 09:32:13

by Sid Boyce

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

Dominik Karall wrote:

>On Saturday 04 September 2004 02:17, Sid Boyce wrote:
>
>
>>The NVIDIA Linux Discussion forum has a patch that works with 2.6.9-rc1-mm3
>>http://gentoo.kems.net/gentoo-x86-portage/media-video/nvidia-kernel/files/1
>>.0.6111/nv_enable_pci.patch Regards
>>Sid.
>>
>>
>
>this patch only fixes the "routeirq" problem, or? because i can't see any
>changes for pci_find_class.
>
>regards,
>dominik
>
>
Looking at nv.c, I had already changed all instances of pci_find_class
to pci_get_class some time ago, so this patch is the other missing
piece. I didn't have a problem until 2.6.9-rc1-mm2, but it seems other
encountered it back at 2.6.8.1-rc1-mm2 and the patch appeared then on lkml.
Regards
Sid.

--
Sid Boyce .... Hamradio G3VBV and keen Flyer
=====LINUX ONLY USED HERE=====

2004-09-04 09:36:06

by Christoph Hellwig

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 01:17:12AM +0100, Sid Boyce wrote:
> The NVIDIA Linux Discussion forum has a patch that works with 2.6.9-rc1-mm3
> http://gentoo.kems.net/gentoo-x86-portage/media-video/nvidia-kernel/files/1.0.6111/nv_enable_pci.patch

This is offtopic for lkml.

2004-09-04 09:55:53

by Tim Fairchild

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Saturday 04 Sep 2004 19:36, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 01:17:12AM +0100, Sid Boyce wrote:
> > The NVIDIA Linux Discussion forum has a patch that works with
> > 2.6.9-rc1-mm3
> > http://gentoo.kems.net/gentoo-x86-portage/media-video/nvidia-kernel/files
> >/1.0.6111/nv_enable_pci.patch
>
> This is offtopic for lkml.

Is it? Pity. The nvidia module compiles fine with the non mm kernel but will
not compile with the mm patches for me. So I guess I will have to join the
nvidia forum to keep up with problems with the mm patch and nvidia... Thanks
anyway for the person being off topic so I knew about the problem :)

It's been driving me nuts and I figured it was just me.

tim

2004-09-04 09:58:59

by Christoph Hellwig

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 07:54:04PM +1000, Tim Fairchild wrote:
> On Saturday 04 Sep 2004 19:36, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 01:17:12AM +0100, Sid Boyce wrote:
> > > The NVIDIA Linux Discussion forum has a patch that works with
> > > 2.6.9-rc1-mm3
> > > http://gentoo.kems.net/gentoo-x86-portage/media-video/nvidia-kernel/files
> > >/1.0.6111/nv_enable_pci.patch
> >
> > This is offtopic for lkml.
>
> Is it? Pity. The nvidia module compiles fine with the non mm kernel but will
> not compile with the mm patches for me. So I guess I will have to join the
> nvidia forum to keep up with problems with the mm patch and nvidia... Thanks
> anyway for the person being off topic so I knew about the problem :)
>
> It's been driving me nuts and I figured it was just me.

lkml is not a support forum for random binary only modules..

2004-09-04 19:56:23

by Lee Revell

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sat, 2004-09-04 at 05:54, Tim Fairchild wrote:
> The nvidia module compiles fine with the non mm kernel but will
> not compile with the mm patches for me.

The nvidia module is binary-only. You are not compiling it, AIUI the
installer fetches the binary module from the nvidia site and builds some
wrappers. Even if this process were to succeed the result would almost
certainly not work. This is the reason you need open source software.

Judging from all the tainted-kernel OOPS'es that get posted here, it
would appear that the majority of Linux users are perfectly willing to
buy hardware that requires binary-only drivers. People do not seem to
understand that there is absolutely NO incentive for vendors to open
their source if you would buy it just the same with a binary driver!

I bet 99.9% of the people who signed that stupid petition already own
freaking ATI hardware. The people yelling the loudest seem to be those
who didn't realize the hardware wasn't Linux compatible when they bought
it, when it would have taken 10 seconds to find out. Why should they
give you an open source driver now, when you were perfectly willing to
buy it without one? Because you threaten not to buy another?
Bwahahahahaha.

The only kind of democracy hardware vendors understand is voting with
your wallet. Personally I don't care, all the drivers I use are open
source, but the whining is getting tiresome.

Lee

2004-09-04 21:02:44

by Tim Fairchild

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sunday 05 Sep 2004 05:56, you wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-09-04 at 05:54, Tim Fairchild wrote:
> > The nvidia module compiles fine with the non mm kernel but will
> > not compile with the mm patches for me.
>
> The nvidia module is binary-only. You are not compiling it, AIUI the
> installer fetches the binary module from the nvidia site and builds some
> wrappers. Even if this process were to succeed the result would almost
> certainly not work. This is the reason you need open source software.

Well, sure, there is a binary part, but there is also a source module which
compiled fine and ran well once I found how to patch it for the mm kernels. I
only wanted to do this for some testing and now gone back to a more standard
2.6.9 snapshot which works fine with the default nvidia driver without
patching (still must compile of course).

> Judging from all the tainted-kernel OOPS'es that get posted here, it
> would appear that the majority of Linux users are perfectly willing to
> buy hardware that requires binary-only drivers. People do not seem to
> understand that there is absolutely NO incentive for vendors to open
> their source if you would buy it just the same with a binary driver!

Users are in a difficult area here. They just want a working system and the
nvidia binary driver (for example) is easy to install and works very well.
You simply run a shell script which will either download a kernel module to
suit or compile a module to suit, and load the binary portion. When there is
a major change, as in the move to 2.6 kernel, then we might need a new binary
driver from nvidia. Even fairly clueless users can be walked through the
nvidia driver installation.

I know the binary driver does not sit well with all and I fully understand
that, but users just want 3D support (and better 2D) and the nvidia binary
driver does that for them and generally the support is quite good in
producing up to date drivers. linux is really a bit screwed without this at
the moment as far as users who want 3D on cheap accessable nvidia hardware
goes... Users don't really care about open and closed source. They just want
to play quake 3 (etc).

And with the competition still hot in the video market I don't see nvidia or
ati openning up too much, tho I would think the real secrets were in the
hardware and firmware and not the silly little driver software - but hey,
these guys are in a cut throat business so I guess they feel they are just
trying to survive as many before them have not.

I've never had an oops that was specifically caused by the nvidia module, tho
I suppose it does happen. Generally when I get an oops I remove the driver
and recreate the situation with an untainted kernel.

tim

2004-09-04 21:17:06

by Dominik Karall

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

so which (in this case) graphic card should we buy? i bought my nvidia card,
because i knew that nvidia hands out linux drivers, even if they are binary
only, but i knew that they do, so i didn't want to buy another card and
realize afterwards that it absolutely isn't supported under linux.

regards,
dominik


On Saturday 04 September 2004 21:56, Lee Revell wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-09-04 at 05:54, Tim Fairchild wrote:
> > The nvidia module compiles fine with the non mm kernel but will
> > not compile with the mm patches for me.
>
> The nvidia module is binary-only. You are not compiling it, AIUI the
> installer fetches the binary module from the nvidia site and builds some
> wrappers. Even if this process were to succeed the result would almost
> certainly not work. This is the reason you need open source software.
>
> Judging from all the tainted-kernel OOPS'es that get posted here, it
> would appear that the majority of Linux users are perfectly willing to
> buy hardware that requires binary-only drivers. People do not seem to
> understand that there is absolutely NO incentive for vendors to open
> their source if you would buy it just the same with a binary driver!
>
> I bet 99.9% of the people who signed that stupid petition already own
> freaking ATI hardware. The people yelling the loudest seem to be those
> who didn't realize the hardware wasn't Linux compatible when they bought
> it, when it would have taken 10 seconds to find out. Why should they
> give you an open source driver now, when you were perfectly willing to
> buy it without one? Because you threaten not to buy another?
> Bwahahahahaha.
>
> The only kind of democracy hardware vendors understand is voting with
> your wallet. Personally I don't care, all the drivers I use are open
> source, but the whining is getting tiresome.
>
> Lee

2004-09-04 21:22:23

by Lee Revell

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sat, 2004-09-04 at 17:02, Tim Fairchild wrote:
> Users don't really care about open and closed source. They just want
> to play quake 3 (etc).
>

I have never understood why these people don't just run Windows. I have
also never understood why people make so much noise about having to use
a closed source driver to play A CLOSED SOURCE GAME! What's next, a
petition to open the UT2004 source? Sheesh...

> I've never had an oops that was specifically caused by the nvidia module, tho
> I suppose it does happen.

And I have never seen one either. I am just using the OOPS'es as an
indication of how many Linux users use this driver. It's WAY more than
I expected. The open source nv.o module works fine for me, I don't see
how the 2D would need to be faster, or how you would even tell the
difference.

I suspect many of these users are ricers who tweak CFLAGS and compare
benchmark scores all day, and cannot bear to use the open source driver
if it will make their machine 1% slower. I was surprised to find that
apparently there are open source ATI 3D drivers after all but some
people are petitioning ATI anyway because these 'aren't as good' as the
binary ones. So fix it already, this is open source, and if you can't,
then please learn to write code or STFU.

Lee

2004-09-04 21:25:01

by Lee Revell

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sat, 2004-09-04 at 17:22, Dominik Karall wrote:
> so which (in this case) graphic card should we buy? i bought my nvidia card,
> because i knew that nvidia hands out linux drivers, even if they are binary
> only, but i knew that they do, so i didn't want to buy another card and
> realize afterwards that it absolutely isn't supported under linux.
>

Intel and VIA release 3D drivers with source. Of course, you won't have
the highest framerate on the block, but TANSTAAFL.

Lee

2004-09-04 22:09:54

by Tim Fairchild

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sunday 05 Sep 2004 07:22, Lee Revell wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-09-04 at 17:02, Tim Fairchild wrote:
> > Users don't really care about open and closed source. They just want
> > to play quake 3 (etc).
>
> I have never understood why these people don't just run Windows. I have
> also never understood why people make so much noise about having to use
> a closed source driver to play A CLOSED SOURCE GAME! What's next, a
> petition to open the UT2004 source? Sheesh...

Why not run windows? Because linux does it better. It's nice to have a few
desktops full of apps, then crank up Q3 or UT for a half hour to blow off
steam, then close it and keep using the apps you had open. Maybe XP can do
that these days, but the 9x's never could. And my son runs both XP and linux
and he claims XP can't really support as many open apps as linux does and
play a game at the same time and all the rest. I'll have to take his word
since I'm linux only these days...

>From a users point of view, linux is starting to look good at the moment. They
have a huge range of open source apps, plus they can easily run many games
either ported or through winex/wine and they can even run MS Office and so
forth through crossover/wine if they wish. They don't care about how they do
it or what licence is involved or whether it's open source or whatever. They
don't care that the video driver is closed. They certainly don't care that
MSOffice is closed source... They just know "windows sucks, I might try
linux".

tim

2004-09-04 23:45:50

by Paul Jakma

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sat, 4 Sep 2004, Lee Revell wrote:

> I bet 99.9% of the people who signed that stupid petition already own
> freaking ATI hardware. The people yelling the loudest seem to be those
> who didn't realize the hardware wasn't Linux compatible when they bought
> it, when it would have taken 10 seconds to find out.

Urm... the ATi R1xx and R2xx cards *are* open-source supported
(thanks weather channel!). The R2xx ATi FireGL is the fastest
open-driver DRI card..

regards,
--
Paul Jakma [email protected] [email protected] Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
I don't have any use for bodyguards, but I do have a specific use for two
highly trained certified public accountants.
-- Elvis Presley

2004-09-05 01:12:48

by Christian Kujau

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [OT] NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

Lee Revell wrote:
> also never understood why people make so much noise about having to use
> a closed source driver to play A CLOSED SOURCE GAME! What's next, a

i am not aware of any *good* open source ego-shooter a la UT/Q3 nor do i
have the skills to write one :-(

> I suspect many of these users are ricers who tweak CFLAGS and compare
> benchmark scores all day, and cannot bear to use the open source driver
[..bla...]

why do you think that? could you possibly image that some users just
have to deal with the hardware they get? i was *given* (read: it was a
2nd hand gift) a nvidia card. so i took the card, knowing that i have to
deal with nvidia's linux-drivers for myself.

> binary ones. So fix it already, this is open source, and if you can't,
> then please learn to write code or STFU.

yes, exactly. but nobody was complaing about anything here in this
thread but you.

thanks,
Christian.
--
BOFH excuse #171:

NOTICE: alloc: /dev/null: filesystem full

2004-09-05 01:52:20

by Lee Revell

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [OT] NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sat, 2004-09-04 at 21:12, Christian Kujau wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> > binary ones. So fix it already, this is open source, and if you can't,
> > then please learn to write code or STFU.
>
> yes, exactly. but nobody was complaing about anything here in this
> thread but you.

Apologies for the off topic rant. Must have thought I was on some other
list...

Lee

2004-09-05 02:42:37

by Horst H. von Brand

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

Lee Revell <[email protected]> said:
> Tim Fairchild <[email protected]> said:

[...]

> > Users don't really care about open and closed source. They just want
> > to play quake 3 (etc).

> I have never understood why these people don't just run Windows.

Some run Linux because it _works_, and also want to play.

> I have
> also never understood why people make so much noise about having to use
> a closed source driver to play A CLOSED SOURCE GAME! What's next, a
> petition to open the UT2004 source? Sheesh...

8-D

> > I've never had an oops that was specifically caused by the nvidia
> > module, tho I suppose it does happen.

> And I have never seen one either.

How do you know?

> I am just using the OOPS'es as an
> indication of how many Linux users use this driver.

How do you know the OOPSes aren't caused (indirectly) by nVidia? Sure, the
incidence seems to have gone down, and perhaps lusers have learnt not to
post OOPSes for tainted kernels...

> It's WAY more than
> I expected.

Now you confuse me... you see _many_ OOPSes with nVidia, but know for
_sure_ nVidia has nothing to do with it?

> The open source nv.o module works fine for me, I don't see
> how the 2D would need to be faster, or how you would even tell the
> difference.

Try using a 1280x800 screen (wide notebook screen, as on Toshiba M30), nv
says that is incorrect and gives you a (very distorted) 1024x768. Up to
here, the binary module is the only way out for me (and I don't care for 3D
or high-performance 2D).

> I suspect many of these users are ricers who tweak CFLAGS and compare
> benchmark scores all day, and cannot bear to use the open source driver
> if it will make their machine 1% slower. I was surprised to find that
> apparently there are open source ATI 3D drivers after all but some
> people are petitioning ATI anyway because these 'aren't as good' as the
> binary ones. So fix it already, this is open source, and if you can't,
> then please learn to write code or STFU.

Right.
--
Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513

2004-09-05 03:32:30

by Lee Revell

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [OT] NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sat, 2004-09-04 at 22:03, Horst von Brand wrote:
> > > I've never had an oops that was specifically caused by the nvidia
> > > module, tho I suppose it does happen.
>
> > And I have never seen one either.
>
> How do you know?
>

I don't know for sure. In the past week or two I saw two
OOPS-with-tainted-kernel posts, and in both cases the user was able to
reproduce the problem with an untainted kernel. But that was not my
point, I should have used a better example.

> > I am just using the OOPS'es as an
> > indication of how many Linux users use this driver.
>
> How do you know the OOPSes aren't caused (indirectly) by nVidia?

I don't, see above. But, this is offtopic.

> Sure, the
> incidence seems to have gone down, and perhaps lusers have learnt not to
> post OOPSes for tainted kernels...
>

Eh, I wouldn't call them lusers, posting an OOPS is complicated for a
non-geek, you can't expect everyone to get it 100% right the first time.

> > It's WAY more than
> > I expected.
>
> Now you confuse me... you see _many_ OOPSes with nVidia, but know for
> _sure_ nVidia has nothing to do with it?

I meant that the number of people using the nvidia driver was way more
than I would have thought. There are a *lot* of people gaming on Linux
these days, I had no idea. This is great.

Lee



2004-09-05 05:29:27

by Tim Fairchild

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [OT] NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sunday 05 Sep 2004 13:32, Lee Revell wrote:

> I meant that the number of people using the nvidia driver was way more
> than I would have thought. There are a *lot* of people gaming on Linux
> these days, I had no idea. This is great.

I knew what you meant, and yes, it's cool. The 2.6 kernel is looking better
than ever for gaming IMO...

tim

2004-09-05 05:57:36

by Lee Revell

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [OT] NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sun, 2004-09-05 at 01:29, Tim Fairchild wrote:
> On Sunday 05 Sep 2004 13:32, Lee Revell wrote:
>
> > I meant that the number of people using the nvidia driver was way more
> > than I would have thought. There are a *lot* of people gaming on Linux
> > these days, I had no idea. This is great.
>
> I knew what you meant, and yes, it's cool. The 2.6 kernel is looking better
> than ever for gaming IMO...
>

Some guy showed up on one of the linux-audio lists with a question about
installing the voluntary preemption patches. Turned out he was a gamer
who had been using the Linux audio distros because they gave him the
best latency.

Man, would I be scared to run into that guy on a UT server.

Lee

2004-09-05 06:27:42

by Sid Boyce

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

Paul Jakma wrote:

> On Sat, 4 Sep 2004, Lee Revell wrote:
>
>> I bet 99.9% of the people who signed that stupid petition already own
>> freaking ATI hardware. The people yelling the loudest seem to be those
>> who didn't realize the hardware wasn't Linux compatible when they bought
>> it, when it would have taken 10 seconds to find out.
>
>
In this game, I tend to leave it up to the individual and groups to
fight for whatever they want as it's sometimes a bit of concerted action
that yields results. It can be a protracted exercise, but nothing
ventured, nothing gained. The situation has improved as far as vendor
support is concerned, it started at zero, but still not all we would
like and may never be, so it's a case of eating what you have on your
plate and asking for more - no bones broken.

> Urm... the ATi R1xx and R2xx cards *are* open-source supported (thanks
> weather channel!). The R2xx ATi FireGL is the fastest open-driver DRI
> card..
>
> regards,

It's users of that calibre and vendors with the clout of IBM, Dell, HP
etc. that can help and the fact that Linux will rapidly be a good
revenue stream for the most open of manufacturers. Today in Linux we are
not where we were 10 years ago and 10 years from now we won't be where
we are today and the signs are good.
Regards
Sid.

--
Sid Boyce .... Hamradio G3VBV and keen Flyer
=====LINUX ONLY USED HERE=====

2004-09-05 12:05:05

by Giuseppe Bilotta

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

Lee Revell wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-09-04 at 17:02, Tim Fairchild wrote:
> > Users don't really care about open and closed source. They just want
> > to play quake 3 (etc).
> >
>
> I have never understood why these people don't just run Windows. I have
> also never understood why people make so much noise about having to use
> a closed source driver to play A CLOSED SOURCE GAME! What's next, a
> petition to open the UT2004 source? Sheesh...

There are 3D open source games (e.g. Trackball, Neverball,
BZFlag).

--
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

Can't you see
It all makes perfect sense
Expressed in dollar and cents
Pounds shillings and pence
(Roger Waters)

2004-09-05 13:07:15

by Alan

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sad, 2004-09-04 at 22:22, Lee Revell wrote:
> I have never understood why these people don't just run Windows. I have
> also never understood why people make so much noise about having to use
> a closed source driver to play A CLOSED SOURCE GAME! What's next, a
> petition to open the UT2004 source? Sheesh...

Because a lot of them happen to like running things on Linux, or having
the webserver still work while they are blasting aliens. You could ask a
few of them. Thats a rather good idea when you don't understand why
people do something. They also play a lot of open source games - bzflag,
cube, flightgear (which does need a high end video card to do well),
gl-117, neverball etc. Take a look at the happypenguin website some day.

> I suspect many of these users are ricers who tweak CFLAGS and compare
> benchmark scores all day, and cannot bear to use the open source driver
> if it will make their machine 1% slower. I was surprised to find that

There is certainly a strong Gentoo gaming contingent.

> apparently there are open source ATI 3D drivers after all but some
> people are petitioning ATI anyway because these 'aren't as good' as the
> binary ones. So fix it already, this is open source, and if you can't,
> then please learn to write code or STFU.

The source code ones only go for R2xx series, not R300/R400. A browse of
the documentation would have told you that. Whether this will change
nobody knows. Perhaps as R3xx ceases to be leading edge ATI will be nice
to us.

Alan

2004-09-05 13:39:34

by Grzegorz Kulewski

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sun, 5 Sep 2004, Alan Cox wrote:

> On Sad, 2004-09-04 at 22:22, Lee Revell wrote:
>> I have never understood why these people don't just run Windows. I have
>> also never understood why people make so much noise about having to use
>> a closed source driver to play A CLOSED SOURCE GAME! What's next, a
>> petition to open the UT2004 source? Sheesh...
>
> Because a lot of them happen to like running things on Linux, or having
> the webserver still work while they are blasting aliens. You could ask a
> few of them. Thats a rather good idea when you don't understand why
> people do something. They also play a lot of open source games - bzflag,
> cube, flightgear (which does need a high end video card to do well),
> gl-117, neverball etc. Take a look at the happypenguin website some day.

Yes. Also Linux has often better performance and is way more smooth than
Windows. I am running vanilla-rc-bk with -ck patches (and some others) and
I can download or compile something and play my favourite game (at the
same time) without any problems.

Also not everybody have enought money to buy Windows (and all legal
applications that every normal Windows user must have).

And when I am using Linux I can forget about the treat that somebody will
find my IP and will (automatically) compromise my system and install some
worm (for example to send spam to LKML) in it. Games often have security
holes too and if I run them on Linux on my user account I am sure that, in
the worst scenarion, somebody will gain my normal user rights (or my
normal game user rights) instead of "root" in Windows.

>> I suspect many of these users are ricers who tweak CFLAGS and compare
>> benchmark scores all day, and cannot bear to use the open source driver
>> if it will make their machine 1% slower. I was surprised to find that
>
> There is certainly a strong Gentoo gaming contingent.

I am running Gentoo. I have very conservative CFLAGS and I am not
benchmarking my system and comaring results with friends. I am using
Gentoo mainly because it has very big amount of software "packaged", I can
choose what software I am installing on my box (nobody will force me to
install esd - not needed with ALSA and often harmful - just because 1000
apps in my distribution are compiled with it), software is compiled from
sources (its open*_source_* not openRPM or openDEB), and new versions
of apps are appearing constantly not with 6 months release cycle. Also
Gentoo has very good (but can-be-better) installer/deinstaller.

Yes, I am using nvidia binary only modules. But there was some time when
nvidia binary module was not supporting 4k stacks in kernel. And I was
using some -bk kernel that had this option and I turned it on. So I tried
the nv X driver and later framebuffer driver. Both were absolutelly
useless. One was freezing my box constantly and the second also had some
mayor problems. And the quality of picture in both of them was worst than
bad. One of them displayed some "moving background" on search
subpages of lkml.org instead of normal background with nvidia binary
drivers - this can yield to epilepsia or other illness in very short time.
Of course I was unable to play my favourite tuxracer (OPENSOURCE). So I
was forced to return to nvidia binary only driver as soon as they provided
fixed one.

And I am using nvidia binary only driver for nearly 4 years on my GeForce
2 and I have seen only 2 or 3 oopses caused by this driver. And I am using
very experimental (-mm or -vanilla-bk) kernels with strange patches from
time to time. Nearly all ooopses were reproductible with untainted kernel.


Grzegorz Kulewski

2004-09-05 14:37:41

by Sid Boyce

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

Grzegorz Kulewski wrote:

> On Sun, 5 Sep 2004, Alan Cox wrote:
>
>> On Sad, 2004-09-04 at 22:22, Lee Revell wrote:
>>
>>> I have never understood why these people don't just run Windows. I
>>> have
>>> also never understood why people make so much noise about having to use
>>> a closed source driver to play A CLOSED SOURCE GAME! What's next, a
>>> petition to open the UT2004 source? Sheesh...
>>
>>
>> Because a lot of them happen to like running things on Linux, or having
>> the webserver still work while they are blasting aliens. You could ask a
>> few of them. Thats a rather good idea when you don't understand why
>> people do something. They also play a lot of open source games - bzflag,
>> cube, flightgear (which does need a high end video card to do well),
>> gl-117, neverball etc. Take a look at the happypenguin website some day.
>
>
> Yes. Also Linux has often better performance and is way more smooth
> than Windows. I am running vanilla-rc-bk with -ck patches (and some
> others) and I can download or compile something and play my favourite
> game (at the same time) without any problems.
>
> Also not everybody have enought money to buy Windows (and all legal
> applications that every normal Windows user must have).
>
> And when I am using Linux I can forget about the treat that somebody
> will find my IP and will (automatically) compromise my system and
> install some worm (for example to send spam to LKML) in it. Games
> often have security holes too and if I run them on Linux on my user
> account I am sure that, in the worst scenarion, somebody will gain my
> normal user rights (or my normal game user rights) instead of "root"
> in Windows.

I threw out Windows many years ago and have seen light ever since. I've
even installed Linux on my daughter's machine and the one time she
wanted to switch back to Windows was when she couldn't figure out how to
delete files, then I showed her how to do it in konqueror and she's been
happy ever since, even with the games. I came in for some stick when I
first used Linux for doing everything at work, mainly because they had
an old mailer which used to throw up several pages of preamble for
anything from Netscape mail, later, I was one of a small bunch that used
only Linux proudly even for Cisco VPN connection from home using cable,
wiping smiles and snide remarks away.
When we had a small but active contingent using Linux on the UK TCP/IP
hamradio network, we took some awful flack, especially from one guy who
had never seen Linux but got bent out of shape at the mention of it, he
stopped abruptly when he discovered he was the main recruiting seargeant
for Linux, by then he'd gained us more users. One guy comically (no pun
intended) referred to Linux as "Boy's Own Unix", I assume apology to
"Boy's Own Comic".
I knew we were in great shape the first day Bill Gates mentioned Linux -
greater things are yet to happen, lots of little pieces of a jigsaw
puzzle eventually paint a whole picture.

>
>>> I suspect many of these users are ricers who tweak CFLAGS and compare
>>> benchmark scores all day, and cannot bear to use the open source driver
>>> if it will make their machine 1% slower. I was surprised to find that
>>
>>
>> There is certainly a strong Gentoo gaming contingent.
>
>
> I am running Gentoo. I have very conservative CFLAGS and I am not
> benchmarking my system and comaring results with friends. I am using
> Gentoo mainly because it has very big amount of software "packaged", I
> can choose what software I am installing on my box (nobody will force
> me to install esd - not needed with ALSA and often harmful - just
> because 1000 apps in my distribution are compiled with it), software
> is compiled from sources (its open*_source_* not openRPM or openDEB),
> and new versions of apps are appearing constantly not with 6 months
> release cycle. Also Gentoo has very good (but can-be-better)
> installer/deinstaller.
>
> Yes, I am using nvidia binary only modules. But there was some time
> when nvidia binary module was not supporting 4k stacks in kernel. And
> I was using some -bk kernel that had this option and I turned it on.
> So I tried the nv X driver and later framebuffer driver. Both were
> absolutelly useless. One was freezing my box constantly and the second
> also had some mayor problems. And the quality of picture in both of
> them was worst than bad. One of them displayed some "moving
> background" on search subpages of lkml.org instead of normal
> background with nvidia binary drivers - this can yield to epilepsia or
> other illness in very short time. Of course I was unable to play my
> favourite tuxracer (OPENSOURCE). So I was forced to return to nvidia
> binary only driver as soon as they provided fixed one.
>
> And I am using nvidia binary only driver for nearly 4 years on my
> GeForce 2 and I have seen only 2 or 3 oopses caused by this driver.
> And I am using very experimental (-mm or -vanilla-bk) kernels with
> strange patches from time to time. Nearly all ooopses were
> reproductible with untainted kernel.
>
>
> Grzegorz Kulewski
>
Ouch!! The 4k-stacks and nvidia bit me twice, once when I didn't know
about it and once when I built a new kernel and forgot to reverse the
patch - 2 new rebuilds had to be done, it had corrupted my hard drive
beyond reach and reclaim by reiserfsck.
Regards
Sid.

--
Sid Boyce .... Hamradio G3VBV and keen Flyer
=====LINUX ONLY USED HERE=====

2004-09-05 23:20:31

by J.A. Magallon

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix


On 2004.09.05, Horst von Brand wrote:
> Lee Revell <[email protected]> said:
> > Tim Fairchild <[email protected]> said:
>
> [...]
>
> > > Users don't really care about open and closed source. They just want
> > > to play quake 3 (etc).
>
> > I have never understood why these people don't just run Windows.
>
> Some run Linux because it _works_, and also want to play.
>

and why do people think that a fast 3d card is only used to play ?
I'm involved in graphics modelling, 3d simulation, 3d realtime and so on.
Try to run softimage on top of software GL...
Or run a lighting simulation of a building on top of the nv+mesa combo.

--
J.A. Magallon <jamagallon()able!es> \ Software is like sex:
werewolf!able!es \ It's better when it's free
Mandrakelinux release 10.1 (RC 1) for i586
Linux 2.6.8.1-mm4 (gcc 3.4.1 (Mandrakelinux (Alpha 3.4.1-3mdk)) #8


2004-09-05 23:29:48

by Chris Wedgwood

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sun, Sep 05, 2004 at 01:04:55PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:

> The source code ones only go for R2xx series, not R300/R400. A
> browse of the documentation would have told you that. Whether this
> will change nobody knows. Perhaps as R3xx ceases to be leading edge
> ATI will be nice to us.

Having fill specs doesn't buy much, the amount of work required to get
a high-performance workable driver is enormous. I suspect any open
effort along these lines would take so long at to be uninteresting.

I'd much rather have ATI help work with the community in finding a
solution to opening up their drivers (in whole or in part). The same
applies to nvidia of course, but much I'm much less optimistic there
(which is a shame, because both vendors could gain a lot by working
with the community rather than what feels like against it at times).


--cw

2004-09-06 00:23:30

by Lee Revell

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

On Sun, 2004-09-05 at 19:20, J.A. Magallon wrote:
> On 2004.09.05, Horst von Brand wrote:
> > Lee Revell <[email protected]> said:
> > > Tim Fairchild <[email protected]> said:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > > Users don't really care about open and closed source. They just want
> > > > to play quake 3 (etc).
> >
> > > I have never understood why these people don't just run Windows.
> >
> > Some run Linux because it _works_, and also want to play.
> >
>
> and why do people think that a fast 3d card is only used to play ?
> I'm involved in graphics modelling, 3d simulation, 3d realtime and so on.
> Try to run softimage on top of software GL...
> Or run a lighting simulation of a building on top of the nv+mesa combo.

These users I would expect to use a 3D card with open source drivers,
since correctness is more important than performance in these
situations.

I am more interested in using hw-accelerated 3D for GUIs for audio
apps. It's by far the cheapest way to update banks of meters, etc. A
binary only 3d driver is out of the question, it's hard enough to get it
all to work when you have the source...

Lee

2004-09-06 20:54:33

by Alessandro Sappia

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: NVIDIA Driver 1.0-6111 fix

Horst von Brand wrote:
> Lee Revell <[email protected]> said:
>
>>Tim Fairchild <[email protected]> said:
[...]
>>I suspect many of these users are ricers who tweak CFLAGS and compare
>>benchmark scores all day, and cannot bear to use the open source driver
>>if it will make their machine 1% slower. I was surprised to find that
>>apparently there are open source ATI 3D drivers after all but some
>>people are petitioning ATI anyway because these 'aren't as good' as the
>>binary ones. So fix it already, this is open source, and if you can't,
>>then please learn to write code or STFU.
>

I've just discovered that open source driver for ATI exists.
I hope you mean driver for chipset R300+ (which ATI refuses to
give out information of). I already know there are open source driver
for <=R250.
If you know where to find R300+ driver (supporting 3D) i would be glad
to you to point me to them, googling i found nothing.

Thanks a lot

Alessandro Sappia

--
Alessandro Sappia