
Open source Linux driver supports 3D acceleration with all GeForce GPUs - w1ntermute
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Open-source-Linux-driver-supports-3D-acceleration-with-all-GeForce-GPUs-1776089.html
======
cookiecaper
For those familiar with Linux development, the whole article could basically
be summed up with: "Nouveau can now generate firmware for all GeForce GPUs on
the market, including Fermi and Kepler SKUs". Yay! This is good progress, but
not really earth-shattering; it would have been expected.

~~~
primitur
Its earth-shattering because its an entirely volunteer project, where once
there was nothing but proprietary blobs for us to run. This is significant
because 3D-acceleration has been an Achilles heel in the Linux desktop world
for ages .. and now the community has sorted it. This is GREAT news!

~~~
cookiecaper
It's not earth-shattering. This is nothing new; several older models have gone
through the same process over the years. It has been happening for a long
time. This article is just exaggerating the real news item: firmware can be
supplied by nouveau for all available SKUs, including Kepler/Fermi chips.

nouveau is an awesome project, but this is _not_ a huge thing. It's not going
to make Linux gaming explode overnight. It's just normal iterative progress,
which, don't get me wrong, is great and all, but it's not a _big deal_ like
this article suggests.

------
binarycrusader
For some definition of "supports". The last two or three releases of Ubuntu
have used the Nouveau driver by default for the LiveCD, which causes my system
to hardlock (known, unresolved issue for almost two years now) so I've had to
pass special kernel boot flags to disable it and use the VESA driver instead
to install and then switch to the nVidia driver afterwards.

Realistically though, I don't think it's ever going to be practical to use the
Nouveau driver. No Cg support, no CUDA support, and performance will always be
a fraction of nVidia's driver.

That isn't to say that I don't wish them well, I do. But I still think it's
foolhardy at best to ever expect this to be truly competitive with nVidia's
proprietary drivers.

~~~
nodata
Did you bug report this in launchpad?

~~~
aviraldg
What do you think "known, unresolved issue for almost two years now" means?

~~~
nodata
I don't know. That you read someone else's bug report? Can you link to it?

~~~
EvilLook
Here's the bug that affects me! Newly reported, but similar to all previous
issues I've had with nouveau:

<https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43562>
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-
video...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-
nouveau/+bug/689507)

(Gee, thanks Ubuntu for expiring this bug. It's not like there's been no
activity because NOBODY IS FUCKING WORKING ON IT or anything!)

------
beagle3
Very impressive.

(Still no fan control; and a few other features missing - but great progress
has been made)

~~~
w1ntermute
I have an Intel graphics chipset in my new laptop, and it makes a WORLD of
difference being able to use open source drivers. They run on first boot, and
even on live CDs. And no more funny pieces of software for configuring
graphics-related stuff - all the DE/WM standard stuff can be used.

~~~
akurilin
What's the most compatible high-performance graphics card for Linux these
days? Would that be something by Intel based on their recent effort to provide
OSS drivers?

~~~
dmm
The "radeon" driver supports everything up to the "Northern islands" series
very well. Check out <http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature> for details.

Support for the "Southern island" series should be coming soon. And AMD is
working to make future driver releases coincide with the hw releases.

The free drivers are still a little slower than the proprietary drivers but
they have more features such as KMS.

EDIT:

To answer your question directly, the Radeon HD 6970 or 6990 are the fastest
northern islands cards and are well supported by the radeon xorg driver. I
don't know if the driver can use both of the gpus in the 6990 though.

The southern island chips should be supported very soon though, which are the
HD7750 - HD7970 .

~~~
vacri
I made the mistake of not confirming the vid card in my new work PC and it's a
southern island chipset (Pitcairn). I use two 1920x1200 monitors and the open-
source drivers can do that with no hardware acceleration. But if I use the
proprietary drivers... I am limited to a total resolution of 1920x1920. That's
not a typo, that's the limit it gives me - a square resolution I've never
heard of in my life.

I am looking forward to the open-source support and it can't get here fast
enough - running a compositing desktop puts the eight cores of the i7 at ~50%
CPU :) (though I live mostly in terminals, so I don't feel it beyond a touch
of UI sluggishness sometimes)

~~~
dmm
The proprietary drivers suck because AMD is focusing on the open source ones.
Big changes are coming for the OS driver. They've been making vertical changes
that don't break down into small releases well.

------
lifeguard
"The open source Linux drivers from AMD and Intel can also use the 3D
capabilities of almost any graphics chip."

Does anyone know if this will be true for the Mali-400 GPU in the ARM branch?

~~~
wmf
I think what was meant was that the AMD driver supports almost any ATI/AMD GPU
and the Intel driver supports almost any Intel GPU. For Mali you can try the
lima driver.

~~~
lifeguard
Excellent info! Thanks.

------
mbell
Have they fixed re-clocking yet?

Last I knew nouveau couldn't change the clock speed on many GPUs leaving them
either locked at a very low clock, performing poorly, or locked at max clock,
chewing through power.

~~~
GICodeWarrior
The article says, No.

"Furthermore, the driver can't switch between the various graphics chip and
memory speeds with many current cards and often causes the graphics hardware
to run at the slowest operating speed..."

------
EvilLook
It still doesn't work on my card. Hurray for "progress".

~~~
dignan
Please write something useful. Do you have a card that is supposed to be
affected by this change? Are you running the right software/software version?
Have you filed a bug report? Or do you just enjoying typing and negativity
that much?

~~~
EvilLook
There has already been a bug filed on the bugzilla for nouveau. I'm not going
to file another and spam their bug tracker. That's my positive contribution -
making sure it's reported and verifying that the error the bug reporter sees
is what I see. So stop being such an unhelpful, assuming asshole. You won't
advance the cause of free software that way.

<https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43562>

