On 27/08/2013 09:14, Pandu Poluan wrote: >>>> That list is the list of kernels that nVidia supports, which is easy >>>> > >> to find. >>> > > >>> > > Where? AIUI from reading various threads about this, sometimes that >>> > > info can be found in nVidia's developer web forum, but I've never been >>> > > able to find it there. nVidia's READMEs give a minimum kernel version, >>> > > but no max. >> > >> > >> > So ask nVidia to clearly and unambiguously state in an easily found >> > place what kernels *they* support. >> > >> > Look, all issues with building the driver shim are directly the >> > responsibility of nVidia themselves, a result of *their* business >> > decisions. The correct thing to do is to make it nVidia's problem and >> > not force the community to jump through hoops trying to track down what >> > does and does not work today. >> > >> > Or, you could do the heavy lifting yourself. You test all current >> > drivers with all recent kernels and maintain a gentoo wiki page that >> > lists the info you want. > > Hmm... reading this thread makes me understand why Linus gave nVidia 'the > bird'.
I'm not so sure. I can understand nVidia's position. They make and sell hardware. They want their stuff to run on as many things as possible. They also have a huge codebase driven mostly by the primary OS of their users - Windows. Maintaining that is a large job so they'd like to re-use the bulk of it across all OSes. Business-wise this does make sense. But it does mean that they have to drop support for much built-in goodness on Linux (KMS, shipped OpenGL and more) and provide that bit themselves. No biggy - they have it all already for Windows. The kernel shim module is GPL'ed, but not in mainline, and there's this little thing about the Linux kernel - the famous stable api nonsense. So they are forever playing catch-up, and the kernel DOES rip out huge chunks of the api as and when needed. So what's nVidia to do? By and large their support for X11 is pretty good, and I've seen much worse. Yes, they are behind current kernel releases. No, they are not years behind. For the most part their code keeps up with the major binary distros. To those users who want to run whatever kernel Linux shipped today and expect nVidia to always keep up, I have an answer: get real people. nvidia support Linux, they never promised to keep up with Linus. Why do users think they have a right to demand something from a vendor that the vendor never promised to do? Why do some users think it correct and proper to demand the Gentoo maintainers jump through hoops to provide functionality that nVidia never promised, for versions they do not support *yet*? Seriously, to all the nVidia dumpers (not you Pandu), get a life people and get real. You bought hardware knowing full well what the conditions for drivers were going to be. The vendor does an OK job in the market place and if you don't like that, well that's tough. Buy different hardware. But don't expect entities to do stuff they never agreed to do. To Gentoo users who dump on this matter, when you installed Gentoo you implicitly agreed to be your own packager. There is no PPA or Yum repo and there's no paid staff member building packages. The work the packager does for Ubuntu and RedHat is now you now have to do yourself, and part of that is dealing with the times when shit don't work. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
