Linux Pledge drive: Help create open nvidia drivers

I'd rather download and run a quick program than recompile my kernel to update drivers.

 

I'm not quite sure the kernel works, but I guess that it would be a module that is loaded in.

But loaded in from the start, rather than being configured and installed later, which is a huge hurdle to a lot of users.

Also at a guess, and this is a guess, when you got a new kernel released, and your modern distro gets it packaged, it would be included in a normal update. I'm pretty sure most distro's now could handle a video driver update without too much trouble. (And Yes I know Ubuntu fecked up not so long ago with an x org update)

To those that are keeping an eye on it the running total is :

Fingers crossed.

I also got it slashdot'd so if you want to make your views know to a wider audience http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/07/01/09/2026252.shtml

 

Well its all done now

Now its just down to people paying up. But hopefully everyone will and we'll have the magic $10,000.

Thanks to those that signed it.

 

Maybe you should point your effort towards the chipsets that are actually unsupported, or get awfull support...

Nope... But then again it shows that you aren't a Gentoo user... Highly optimised, lightweight, cram as least possible in the kernel...

 

They keep them closed so ATi and its other competers cant find out how there GPU work. Unlike us in the linux community Nvadia are trying to make a profit and there support for linux is much better than ATI.

 

Hopefully in the future I can contribute in some way to other projects, I think that there are other causes that are just as important. It's just at the moment I want to, and I am able to help with this small part.

I have actually used Gentoo, and understand that drivers can be built into the kernel.

Most distros are trying to support as much hardware as possible out-of-the-box, there are also quite a few that want to support as much out-of-the-box using free drivers. Those distributions will benefit from this driver, and so will gentoo.

Gentoo differs that they want hardware support not out-of-the-box but from user set up. If the free drivers was integrated into the kernel, then all you would have to do to get it set up would be choose that module in your kernel menuconfig, and recompile.

I have had trouble trying to get propreitary drivers working on Gentoo, namely ATI Mobility Rage on a iBook G3. Though I made a good stab at it, it was much more difficult than the other hardware in the iBook. I don't even think that ATI released a driver for that particular graphics card on PPC, though I will be grateful if you know different and can point me in the direction of instructions to get it set up.

The wireless card on the other hand was a matter of recompiling the kernel with the appropriate module installed, because it was compaitable with the GPL I guess and could be included.

 

According to a comment on Slashdot, the actual main project site says it has no affiliation with the Pledge Drive.

 

Yup, thats correct. This is purely one guy saying "I want to help open drivers, and will try to get others to help with me".

 

But the main site is already making them, why would we want someone to duplicate the work?

 

The money from the pledge will go to Project Nouveau, theres no duplication of work being done. There is as far as I know only one project to write open drivers for nVidia cards and that is Project Nouveau.

 

That makes so little sense to me that I'm going to go away now.

 

Well, since you are looking for a project, well I have a better one, make a framework like DirectX, on Linux... More people will see the use of that.

 

Start a project page, start writing some code, and see how it goes.

If you can do it Glider, why not. It sounds like a good idea, but I personally don't want to contribute to it... yet. But who knows.