NVIDIA shows signs ... [2008 - 2017]

[Silent_Buddha]

AFAICS, ATI's Linux and OpenGL drivers have been roughly on par with Nvidia for the past few years. Nvidia is still slightly faster in OGL, but it's not the disaster for ATI that it was 5 years ago.

Regards,
SB

 

[Alexko]

Damien just put up a "light" review of several professional cards from both AMD and NVIDIA: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/800-1/comparatif-10-cartes-graphiques-professionnelles.html

The English version isn't available yet, and there are quite a few caveats involved here (card A not working with driver X in application Y, or card B showing artifacts when mode Z is enabled in application T, etc.) so you might want to run this through Google Translation…

 

[rpg.314]

AFAICS, ATI's Linux and OpenGL drivers have been roughly on par with Nvidia for the past few years. Nvidia is still slightly faster in OGL, but it's not the disaster for ATI that it was 5 years ago.

Definitely not on par in case of linux drivers.

 

[BRiT]

You're right. In Linux the drivers are ahead of Nvidia, if you're interested in only true open source drivers, which you must be if you're running Linux.

 

[flynn]

You're right. In Linux the drivers are ahead of Nvidia, if you're interested in only true open source drivers, which you must be if you're running Linux.

Actually that can be very important when you are trying to troubleshoot a kernel panic. I had to toss my TNT into the trashcan and get a Radeon 7000 because Nvidia's FreeBSD drivers were so bad they were causing kernel panics 2-3 times a day on top of other issues FreeBSD 5.0 had at the time and I could never figure out when Nvidia was to blame, but most of the problems went away by switching to ATI and open source DRM/DRI drivers.

NV is the only GPU vendor who still refuses to provide documentation.

 

[rpg.314]

You're right. In Linux the drivers are ahead of Nvidia, if you're interested in only true open source drivers, which you must be if you're running Linux.

I wonder why you think amd linux drivers are better than nv. I have never seen that to be the case. And their ogl support is quite behind (by ~6 months atleast).

I am interested in drivers that let me do most with my hw with minimum of trouble.

 

[Zaphod]

I wonder why you think amd linux drivers are better than nv.

The operative words in his post were "true open source drivers".

AMD has been quite good as far as releasing register specs and code to the developer community for the past couple of years.

 

[Florin]

Actually that can be very important when you are trying to troubleshoot a kernel panic. I had to toss my TNT into the trashcan and get a Radeon 7000 because Nvidia's FreeBSD drivers were so bad they were causing kernel panics 2-3 times a day on top of other issues FreeBSD 5.0 had at the time and I could never figure out when Nvidia was to blame, but most of the problems went away by switching to ATI and open source DRM/DRI drivers.

NV is the only GPU vendor who still refuses to provide documentation.

NV is also the only GPU vendor which even provides drivers for FreeBSD. Or Solaris.

Meaning solid, feature complete drivers, which are never far behind a new generation of hardware.

But yeah for those users who feel it is very important that you can 'troubleshoot a kernel panic' yourself by inspecting the driver source code, open source drivers are a must. I suspect most users, like yourself, will actually just troubleshoot kernel panics by switching drivers and hardware around until it works, which is a remarkably similar process to what you would do on a closed source OS.

 

[Blazkowicz]

there are very good open source drivers for nvidia cards, very good in term of 2D support that is. I'm grateful to not risk being stuck in 800x600 60Hz or face other stupidity.
maybe Xorg made progress as well despite weird obfuscating of the configuration file.

now about 3D support. there's one but disabled by default in distros, for good reason.
now if it gets better (I believe it will) it would still make nvidia GPUs look bad, with bad stability, bad performance and lack of features.
open source drivers are desireable but there will still be a need for the freeware drivers when you don't want to waste most of your elaborate GPU, when you want to do better than retro-gaming or running bad open source games on the lowest end graphics cards.

 

[rpg.314]

But yeah for those users who feel it is very important that you can 'troubleshoot a kernel panic' yourself by inspecting the driver source code, open source drivers are a must. I suspect most users, like yourself, will actually just troubleshoot kernel panics by switching drivers and hardware around until it works, which is a remarkably similar process to what you would do on a closed source OS.

It's not merely a question of inspecting the lower level bits or closed-source-over-my-dead-body mentality. As someone who is not qualified enough to do the former, and someone who does not believe in the latter, I have generally found that hw/sw works best whenever it is opensource. nv drivers are about the only exception to this rule I have so far. And even their record in not 100%.

Binary stuff in foss world tends to vary between garbage and crap.

 

[Florin]

It's not merely a question of inspecting the lower level bits or closed-source-over-my-dead-body mentality. As someone who is not qualified enough to do the former, and someone who does not believe in the latter, I have generally found that hw/sw works best whenever it is opensource. nv drivers are about the only exception to this rule I have so far. And even their record in not 100%.

Binary stuff in foss world tends to vary between garbage and crap.

I can see where you're coming from, and for me personally one of the coolest things about working with Linux distributions is exactly that almost everything is included and maintained by one vendor, which means next to no compatibility concerns and, most importantly, only one update mechanism to pay attention to.

Contrast this to the typical Windows desktop environment, where garish popups from the likes of Microsoft update compete with the update mechanisms from Adobe, Apple, Java, some virus scanner, as well as countless other apps that regularly phone home.

However, I think you exaggerate when it comes to binary only (or commercial apps in general) on FOSS. Yes, Nvidia does binary only on Linux really well, but there are many other companies like VMware, Oracle, Acronis, Mcafee etc etc that maintain pretty good binary only products.

 

[BRiT]

Not to completely side-track the discussion, but you have no additional installed software packages that do not come from/with your distro of choice and never had to upgrade the kernel before the distros have it adopted? I have quite a few encoding tools and separate server packages that I have to maintain on my own, so it's not a pure 1 update fits all. Of course it is nice to launch a single package manager and update around 95% of my software packages.

That is something the Win OS side needs to improve on. Of course if Microsoft tried to maintain their own centralized software package management system, they'd be covered in lawsuits galore with all the anti-MS folks screaming monopoly abuse.

I do agree that Nvidia seems to do their Linux binary-only drivers fairly well, but that policy has caused grief within the Linux community.

 

[rpg.314]

I can see where you're coming from, and for me personally one of the coolest things about working with Linux distributions is exactly that almost everything is included and maintained by one vendor, which means next to no compatibility concerns and, most importantly, only one update mechanism to pay attention to.

Contrast this to the typical Windows desktop environment, where garish popups from the likes of Microsoft update compete with the update mechanisms from Adobe, Apple, Java, some virus scanner, as well as countless other apps that regularly phone home.

However, I think you exaggerate when it comes to binary only (or commercial apps in general) on FOSS. Yes, Nvidia does binary only on Linux really well, but there are many other companies like VMware, Oracle, Acronis, Mcafee etc etc that maintain pretty good binary only products.

VirtualBox/MySQL rule. And frankly, you don't need AV on linux. IMO, if you need AV on *any* OS, then that OS is broken.

 

[rpg.314]

Not to completely side-track the discussion, but you have no additional installed software packages that do not come from/with your distro of choice and never had to upgrade the kernel before the distros have it adopted?

So far, mostly no.

The foss world is complete enough, at least about 95% of the time.

 

[Florin]

VirtualBox/MySQL rule. And frankly, you don't need AV on linux. IMO, if you need AV on *any* OS, then that OS is broken.

VirtualBox and MySQL/Postgresql ARE awesome, but on the other hand few people would argue that they have reached feature parity with the likes of VMware workstation or an Oracle dbase. Or just equal interoperability with your/someone else's other software ecosystem. And yeah, you don't need AV on Linux itself, but that doesn't mean a warning when you're about to forward a mail containing a virus wouldn't be nice. Or that a Linux box can't make an excellent mail gateway or file server scanner.

Anyway, that's all besides the point that there is some quality binary-only software for FOSS, which is all besides the point that Nvidia is showing signs of strain, so enough said about as far as I'm concerned

 

[Kaotik]

VirtualBox/MySQL rule. And frankly, you don't need AV on linux. IMO, if you need AV on *any* OS, then that OS is broken.

While this is going offtopic, that's just simply not true, or every single OS out there is broken (as in, you could write viruses for any OS out there)
As long as it's made by humans, there's bound to be holes which can be used to infect the system

 

[itsmydamnation]

also given that most exploits evolve some kind of social engineering for privilege escalation its a pretty dumb statement. stuff like sudo/UAC wont help you if the user clicks yes.

I have been running windows 7 since RC without AV, I ran XP without AV for about 6 years lost my machine 2 or 3 times to viruses. a lot of it is about where you go and what you do.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

VirtualBox/MySQL rule. And frankly, you don't need AV on linux. IMO, if you need AV on *any* OS, then that OS is broken.

Sure, security through obscurity. It worked quite well for Apple when they didn't have enough marketshare worth exploiting. Linux is even more extreme in this case.

IMO, Linux isn't significantly more secure than any other modern OS. Then again considering the User Unfriendliness of Linux (with regards to computer illiterate people) that security model should serve them well for a long long time.

Regards,
SB

 

[rpg.314]

Sure, security through obscurity. It worked quite well for Apple when they didn't have enough marketshare worth exploiting. Linux is even more extreme in this case.

Actually, Linux is the least obscure of os'es.

IMO, Linux isn't significantly more secure than any other modern OS.

Doubtful, but even if it was, it has a better security model than Win/Mac which should hold it in good stead.

Then again considering the User Unfriendliness of Linux (with regards to computer illiterate people) that security model should serve them well for a long long time.

It's no more harder than Win/Mac for someone who's seeing the computer first for the first time. Only if you set yourself into ways of one os does the other one feel hard.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Contrast this to the typical Windows desktop environment, where garish popups from the likes of Microsoft update compete with the update mechanisms from Adobe, Apple, Java, some virus scanner, as well as countless other apps that regularly phone home.

I remember installing warez windows over legit vendor provided windows, for the nagging cruft reason.
you can get by on windows by carefully choosing software and using a mix of open source and respectful freeware. for instance I use evince as a PDF reader (same one as under Gnome) and winamp as music player.
firefox is an example of software that self updates when you run it and not annoying you in the process.

I recommend AVG as virus scanner and protection, it's decent and the only non-nagging, non-expiring AV out there it seems (besides clamwin, which is weaker and scanner only)

I always used windows without AV, then added AVG as scanner only, then found out that as of 2010, your XP get pwned by very virulent bots written by the mafia, aggressively exploiting unpatched faults (unpatched as, the update is out there but you get rooted before you've installed it)