I just saw that the open-source Nouveau driver (http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/) is now the default NVidia driver in Fedora 11. I'm not saying most user's won't replace it with the mainstream NVidia driver, but it does show that Nouveau is far enough along for a major distribution to start using it.
(Nouveau does have a mode that lets it work with the Gallium framework, as well)
I agree with a lot of your points. Certainly an open-source driver will always be lagging behind the newest hardware, and it will take a good deal of time to provide all of the features that the vendor-supported binary drivers provide. Still, I've been wrong enough times that I've learned to avoid words like "never" and "impossible". :-)
On the other side of the coin, a lot of people bash NVidia for their lack of openness, and certain business decisions they've made. While the best of these arguments may have some merit, I for one am glad to have a major vendor that supports Linux as well as it does. Vendors like this are hard to come by, and I think NVidia deserves more support for this than they sometimes get. I'm not saying people shouldn't keep asking for open-source drivers, just that they should do it politely, and with well-reasoned arguments.
--"J" Jan Ciger wrote:
The main issue is that you cannot have open source drivers without documentation, the framework doesn't really matter so much. Reverse engineering NVIDIA hardware is perhaps possible for a highly dedicated team of experts with top notch equipment, but completely unrealistic otherwise. And NVIDIA is not keen on opening up their documentation - even after their main competitors did so. Even if the documentation was in place (ATI, Intel), that doesn't guarantee a high-quality driver. Intel driver is out in the open for a long time and it is quite terrible these days. There is also the Via Chrome driver and it is quite bad as well, despite being open source - and I am not speaking about OpenGL support here, only basic stuff like not crashing your system. Furthermore, it will always play catch up because the development can start only when the hardware is on the market already. By the time the open driver is developed, the hardware would be obsolete. So while open source drivers are a nice idea, for a market dominated by one major player that keeps everything as closed as they can it is a non-starter, in my opinion. The only way forward is to actually put economical pressure on the company - when they see that they are losing business due to their boneheaded decisions, they will do something about it. Unfortunately, stereo is such a niche market that unless a huge customer weighs in, it is not likely going to happen. And those probably do not care about GeForces - the cost of few Quadros would be a drop in the sea in the overall costs of their projects. So I am not optimistic here. Whenever developing something for stereo these days, I am focusing on passive stereo that can be done with any graphic card. It doesn't have quad buffer, but that is not such a big deal for these applications. If shutter glasses or HMD requires sequential signal, then the blue line stereo is good enough (and cheap) hack - it would be good to have it supported in OSG, btw. Regards, Jan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mandriva - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFKE/Fmn11XseNj94gRAtpuAKCdkCExklHT+57dYWWG9VcZvFj8NwCgmgb9 zTY0754C/1WEDETuGFELGKU= =3FaB -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
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