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View Full Version : NVIDIA Developer Talks Openly About Linux Support


OffHand
October 30th, 2009, 11:19 AM
Click here (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_qa_linux&num=1)

Interesting article!
maflynn
October 30th, 2009, 01:47 PM
Click here (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_qa_linux&num=1)

Interesting article!
Good read.

I've been disappointed in the nvidia drivers, and how difficult it is to get them to work properly and have a good untility to manage the settings. My main point of contention right now is the inability to choose between my integrated GPU and my discrete GPU. Given that apple is the only vendor to have this type of setup, I'm not overly surprised that there's a lack of functionality in this area in linux - but still, the 9600m kills my battery much quicker then the 9400m.
ve4cib
October 30th, 2009, 02:04 PM
My main point of contention right now is the inability to choose between my integrated GPU and my discrete GPU. Given that apple is the only vendor to have this type of setup, I'm not overly surprised that there's a lack of functionality in this area in linux - but still, the 9600m kills my battery much quicker then the 9400m.

I believe some of the newer IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads have a similar setup. One of my friends recently bought a Thinkpad with two GPUs in it; one high-performance battery-killer, and one more modest power-saver.
Screwdriver0815
October 30th, 2009, 02:53 PM
the first question and especially the answers are ridiculous:


Q: How does the driver team ascribe priority to what will be developed in each release?

Priority is determined through a combination of:
a) OEM customer-reported issues,
b) Input from our workstation marketing group,
c) New GPUs scheduled to be released, and
d) Hot issues as reported by NVIDIA Linux users through direct user feedback and via various Linux user forums.

honestly: they don't give a **** on user feedback. There is a bug in the driver which exists since version 173 or earlier: on Laptops the display starts to flicker randomly and you may only get rid of it by running the GPU in fullspeed-mode, if energy-saving is enabled and the GPU scales down, the display starts to flicker and you do not get rid of it. This issue is well-known to Nvidia but apparently they don't fix it.

So the result for me personally is: ATI/AMD sucks on graphics cards and drivers, Nvidia as well. Don't know about Intel but I will test them in future.