Feisty won't activate proprietary video drivers by default

[Vogateer]

Looks like there will be some proprietary drivers for wifi by default, but hopefully that's about it. Looks like Ubuntu will be supporting the Nouveau project, too.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6395384305.html

The recent upgrade to the 2.6.17-11 broke my nvidia driver, reaffirming my desire for an open source graphics card. I still don't know what to think of Intel. They have the open sourced video drivers for their graphics cards, but I believe they keep their wireless drivers closed and the specs secret.

[Patrick]

The recent upgrade to the 2.6.17-11 broke my nvidia driver, reaffirming my desire for an open source graphics card. I still don't know what to think of Intel. They have the open sourced video drivers for their graphics cards, but I believe they keep their wireless drivers closed and the specs secret.

Ditto. I've been thinking the same exact thing lately.

[CptnObvious999]

I don't know if this is true or not but I heard they had or were going to open source their kernel drivers but not the Xorg which would makes things a LOT easier since installing kernel modules is a huge HITA but not so much with Xorg drivers. Anyone know if this is true?

[Tsuroerusu]

Before I say anything, I just wanna say that proprietary kernel drivers is a GPL violation. Some people will argue that it isn't, but I think the people, the FSF, behind the GPL knows it better than anybody else.
I know a lot of people don't care about whether things are proprietary or free software/open source, but chew on the follow thought for a moment.
Lawyers these days are some of the most sneaky bastards (Eben Moglen and Red Hat's lawyers are an exception) you will ever see, and proprietary software companies will use every trick in the book to steal code from the free software.
So say some bastard company takes some GPLed code and puts it into their proprietary application, don't tell anybody and do not comply with the license terms. Say somebody somehow finds out that they're stealing GPLed code, sends it to gpl-violations.org and a lawsuit is initiated to make the bastard company comply. Now, think about this, since people are not enforcing the GPL onto proprietary drivers, the lawyer from the company violating the GPL could argue that by the "open source people" themselves going against the terms of the GPL, they are granting an exception to certain terms, and then everybody is free to go violate the GPL depending on what the judge says.

This might be a little far out, but it's not something I consider impossible.
Also, if you wanna go beyond theories, I can say that I agree with all of what the OpenBSD developers have been saying, FOR YEARS, about binary blobs.

Looks like there will be some proprietary drivers for wifi by default, but hopefully that's about it. Looks like Ubuntu will be supporting the Nouveau project, too.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6395384305.html

They say "supporting Nouveau", but what it really is, is that they'll be including the driver when it's stable enough, I seriously doubt Mark is gonna sponsor the Nouveau guys so they can work full time on the project.

The recent upgrade to the 2.6.17-11 broke my nvidia driver, reaffirming my desire for an open source graphics card. I still don't know what to think of Intel. They have the open sourced video drivers for their graphics cards, but I believe they keep their wireless drivers closed and the specs secret.

Intel release open source drivers for their integrated graphics adapters, to date, they don't yet have an actual graphics card product.
In terms of wireless support for Linux specifically, Intel has been supporting projects to create GPLed WiFi drivers, however it's written by people who have signed NDAs to be able to get the spec for the WiFi chipsets as far as I know. Also, their binary WiFi firmware is very restrictively licensed.
If you wanna know more about Intel's "trick", we just need to listen to what the OpenBSD developers are saying, a good place to start is this article on KernelTrap: OpenBSD: Intel Accused Of Being "An Open Source Fraud"
Another is this interview on BSDTalk with OpenBSD developer Jason Wright, who has been doing a lot of device driver development: http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bs ... alk082.ogg

The recent upgrade to the 2.6.17-11 broke my nvidia driver, reaffirming my desire for an open source graphics card. I still don't know what to think of Intel. They have the open sourced video drivers for their graphics cards, but I believe they keep their wireless drivers closed and the specs secret.

Ditto. I've been thinking the same exact thing lately.

And people still ask me why I am such an AMD fan!
(http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html)

It's gonna be interesting to see how the ATi Linux "support" is going to look in the future, I'm not expecting AMD to come out and throw both specs and source code in our faces, but I think things can only improve.

I don't know if this is true or not but I heard they had or were going to open source their kernel drivers but not the Xorg which would makes things a LOT easier since installing kernel modules is a huge HITA but not so much with Xorg drivers. Anyone know if this is true?

This is absolutely NOT true! Chris of The Linux Action Show seemed to think the same thing, before I sent him an email and corrected him. Since I own the copyrights for that email, here it is:

Code: Select all

I've been noticing a couple of times that you said NVIDIA has GPLed their 
kernel module for their proprietary driver. Dude, THIS IS NOT THE CASE!!

NVIDIA's kernel module is under NVIDIA's own proprietary license. The reason 
that the source code is available, is only because you can't compile a module 
a module on say Red Hat Enterprise 3 and use it on SUSE Linux 10.1.

if you don't believe me on this, download NVIDIA's installer to your home 
directory, pop open a terminal and run: sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9629-pkg1.run 
-x
It will then extract  the contents to a folder called 
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9629-pkg1, in which you will find a folder structure 
representing /usr.

Go into ~/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9629-pkg1/usr/src/nv, here you'll find the 
source code for the driver module that is loaded into the Linux kernel when 
you use the NVIDIA driver.
The first thing you will notice is kernel object file, nv-kernel.o, which as 
you know, is a binary compiled from some other source code.

OK, now open up the file nv.c, and you will find this at the very beginning of 
the file:

/* _NVRM_COPYRIGHT_BEGIN_
 *
 * Copyright 1999-2001 by NVIDIA Corporation.  All rights reserved.  All
 * information contained herein is proprietary and confidential to NVIDIA
 * Corporation.  Any use, reproduction, or disclosure without the written
 * permission of NVIDIA Corporation is prohibited.
 *
 * _NVRM_COPYRIGHT_END_
 */

You will find the same text in various other source files.

So to sum up, not only are the source files that NVIDIA do provide (So that 
you can compile a module that will work with your kernel, there is no other 
reason for this source code being available) under a non-free, very 
restrictive proprietary license, but even along that, as I mention earlier, 
that source code centered around that nv-kernel.o binary file, and ALL of the 
X components are proprietary.

ATi is very very similar. If you go and extract their driver installer, you 
will see a little bit of difference though. Since ATi's driver is based on a 
really old-ass version of the open source ATi drivers (That's my 
understanding of it) some of the code they use were under the X11 license, 
and some parts of their driver uses those parts and those are still under the 
X11 license. HOWEVER, the ATi additions to that (firegl_public.c etc.) are 
under a very restrictive EULA.

NVIDIA themselves violate the GPL, because they distribute precompiled 
binaries of their kernel module. The source code for the module is not linked 
against anything, and in reality it's just a text file, so it doesn't 
infringe on the GPL more than my school essays does (I don't know about that 
nv-kernel.o file, since that is proprietary :P).
However, the binary module that results from the process of compilation is 
linked against the Linux kernel, and is then classified as a derivative work 
of the Linux kernel, and the GPL requires a derivative work to be GPLed as 
well, whether they are directly derivitives by being based on GPLed source 
code, or linking to a GPLed program. Since the module is not under the GPL, 
the license is violated, end of story.

As far as I know, ATi, themselves, does not violate the GPL, since they do not 
distribute their kernel module (fglrx) in binary form, only in source form. 
However people distributing binaries of that module do violate the GPL, which 
is the case for Ubuntu, Mandriva, Linspire/Freespire etc. etc.
(Ubuntu includes NVIDIA and ATi's kernel modules, so far they havn't included 
their X-Window components)

This is why both Kororaa and Novell received angry letters from kernel 
hackers. Novell used to include a bunch of proprietary kernel module, such as 
the proprietary parts of the Madwifi driver, NVIDIA's kernel driver and other 
stuff. They have since they got the complaint stopped doing that stuff.

You may want to check this article on O'Reilly out: 
http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2006/08/why_binaryonly_linux_kernel_mo.html

When I tell some people this, they often start to think that the Linux kernel 
should be released under the LGPL or BSD license, because that would allow 
for proprietary binary modules. I however disagree, because that would also 
give people a free ride to integrate all sorts of stuff like TPM, DRM etc. 
into the kernel, and take us very close to a DRM doomsday scenario, which is 
exactly what the GPLv3 is designed to prevent as far as it can.

[Vogateer]

The more I think about this, the more it pisses me off. I don't want Ubuntu to support proprietary drivers. You know the main problem I ever have with Linux? The nVidia proprietary drivers. I know that must come as a huge surprise. You know what my sister has the most trouble with? Those damned Broadcom drivers, though that's improved immensely, because she doesn't have to use the blasted NDISwrapper anymore.

In fact, you know what one of the ladies who comes to the church has the most trouble with on her Microsoft XP laptop? Once again, it's the damned Broadcom drivers, and whatever update they issued hasn't seemed to help, either. It routinely drops whatever connection it has, and I couldn't download Firefox, Thunderbird, or even dependably send email, and that's using the drivers that I'm assuming Broadcom wrote. I don't want that crap mucking up the rest of the kernel, which has—with those proprietary exceptions—worked impressably well.

I don't see how people can really strongly support this. Even if you don't have an idealogical objection, surely you must have a technical one, or else you're having a very different experience than I do. It hasn't mattered what distro I use, either, with Gentoo it worked pretty well, but I always had to remember to reinstall the nVidia driver every time I updated my kernel. The most recent Ubuntu update broke the nVidia bit somehow. I don't want this enabled by default. I want freaking pcHDTV or the Open Graphics Card Project or Intel to finally release even a subpar card with open source drivers. I don't want to play games, I just want to have a few nifty compiz/beryl effects, which have grown on me far more than I expected them to. Even Dave Yates was surprisingly impressed with Beryl, given his minimalistic tendencies. I imagine quite a few here feel the same way. I didn't think I'd care for it that much, but now I find that I miss it terribly when it's gone. It's such a subtle thing, but sometimes the little things make all the difference.

[CptnObvious999]

The more I think about this, the more it pisses me off. I don't want Ubuntu to support proprietary drivers. You know the main problem I ever have with Linux? The nVidia proprietary drivers. I know that must come as a huge surprise. You know what my sister has the most trouble with? Those damned Broadcom drivers, though that's improved immensely, because she doesn't have to use the blasted NDISwrapper anymore.

In fact, you know what one of the ladies who comes to the church has the most trouble with on her Microsoft XP laptop? Once again, it's the damned Broadcom drivers, and whatever update they issued hasn't seemed to help, either. It routinely drops whatever connection it has, and I couldn't download Firefox, Thunderbird, or even dependably send email, and that's using the drivers that I'm assuming Broadcom wrote. I don't want that crap mucking up the rest of the kernel, which has—with those proprietary exceptions—worked impressably well.

I don't see how people can really strongly support this. Even if you don't have an idealogical objection, surely you must have a technical one, or else you're having a very different experience than I do. It hasn't mattered what distro I use, either, with Gentoo it worked pretty well, but I always had to remember to reinstall the nVidia driver every time I updated my kernel. The most recent Ubuntu update broke the nVidia bit somehow. I don't want this enabled by default. I want freaking pcHDTV or the Open Graphics Card Project or Intel to finally release even a subpar card with open source drivers. I don't want to play games, I just want to have a few nifty compiz/beryl effects, which have grown on me far more than I expected them to. Even Dave Yates was surprisingly impressed with Beryl, given his minimalistic tendencies. I imagine quite a few here feel the same way. I didn't think I'd care for it that much, but now I find that I miss it terribly when it's gone. It's such a subtle thing, but sometimes the little things make all the difference.

I think part of the problem is that they can't be included in the kernel by default which means you have to install them manually which as everyone knows is not exactly a walk in the park. Some distros seem to even make it needlessly hard to install because they hate anything proprietary. I don't think it is exactly fair to blame nVidia for this because with Sabayon they load the drivers up perfectly and I have never had a problem with them. I think nVidia did an awesome job with their Linux drivers and just because it is hard to get them installed under some distros because the kernel is GPL won't make me turn on them and say they don't support Linux. Sure it might be nice if they were open source but they legally can't and I think Sabayons solution is sufficient.

[Vogateer]

Right, I wouldn't say that it's impossible to get proper support. With Gentoo things usually worked pretty well. It's the matter that I don't want this to become so acceptable that it becomes a habit. Doing it just for nVidia drivers isn't too bad. Doing it for 5 or 6 components would be a nightmare in my opinion.

[snarkout]

I guess the answer is simple then - buy ati cards and use the radeon driver. IIRC it can be made to support hardware acceleration - if not I was able to get it running nearly as well as fglrx on my lappy about 6 months ago. I wish I could still find the how-to I used. Either that or buy a mobo with intel integrated graphics - Pentium Ds are pretty damn cheap now that the new Core 2 Duo stuff is out, too. There's nothing like yesterday's bleeding edge for adequate performance and a fuller wallet.

[Tsuroerusu]

The more I think about this, the more it pisses me off. I don't want Ubuntu to support proprietary drivers. You know the main problem I ever have with Linux? The nVidia proprietary drivers. I know that must come as a huge surprise. You know what my sister has the most trouble with? Those damned Broadcom drivers, though that's improved immensely, because she doesn't have to use the blasted NDISwrapper anymore.

In fact, you know what one of the ladies who comes to the church has the most trouble with on her Microsoft XP laptop? Once again, it's the damned Broadcom drivers, and whatever update they issued hasn't seemed to help, either. It routinely drops whatever connection it has, and I couldn't download Firefox, Thunderbird, or even dependably send email, and that's using the drivers that I'm assuming Broadcom wrote. I don't want that crap mucking up the rest of the kernel, which has—with those proprietary exceptions—worked impressably well.

I don't see how people can really strongly support this. Even if you don't have an idealogical objection, surely you must have a technical one, or else you're having a very different experience than I do. It hasn't mattered what distro I use, either, with Gentoo it worked pretty well, but I always had to remember to reinstall the nVidia driver every time I updated my kernel. The most recent Ubuntu update broke the nVidia bit somehow. I don't want this enabled by default. I want freaking pcHDTV or the Open Graphics Card Project or Intel to finally release even a subpar card with open source drivers. I don't want to play games, I just want to have a few nifty compiz/beryl effects, which have grown on me far more than I expected them to. Even Dave Yates was surprisingly impressed with Beryl, given his minimalistic tendencies. I imagine quite a few here feel the same way. I didn't think I'd care for it that much, but now I find that I miss it terribly when it's gone. It's such a subtle thing, but sometimes the little things make all the difference.

http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39
"Blobs can be 'de-supported' by vendors at any time.
Blobs cannot be supported by developers.
Blobs cannot be fixed by developers.
Blobs cannot be improved.
Blobs cannot be audited.
Blobs are specific to an architecture, thus less portable.
Blobs are quite often massively bloated."

The more I think about this, the more it pisses me off. I don't want Ubuntu to support proprietary drivers. You know the main problem I ever have with Linux? The nVidia proprietary drivers. I know that must come as a huge surprise. You know what my sister has the most trouble with? Those damned Broadcom drivers, though that's improved immensely, because she doesn't have to use the blasted NDISwrapper anymore.

In fact, you know what one of the ladies who comes to the church has the most trouble with on her Microsoft XP laptop? Once again, it's the damned Broadcom drivers, and whatever update they issued hasn't seemed to help, either. It routinely drops whatever connection it has, and I couldn't download Firefox, Thunderbird, or even dependably send email, and that's using the drivers that I'm assuming Broadcom wrote. I don't want that crap mucking up the rest of the kernel, which has—with those proprietary exceptions—worked impressably well.

I don't see how people can really strongly support this. Even if you don't have an idealogical objection, surely you must have a technical one, or else you're having a very different experience than I do. It hasn't mattered what distro I use, either, with Gentoo it worked pretty well, but I always had to remember to reinstall the nVidia driver every time I updated my kernel. The most recent Ubuntu update broke the nVidia bit somehow. I don't want this enabled by default. I want freaking pcHDTV or the Open Graphics Card Project or Intel to finally release even a subpar card with open source drivers. I don't want to play games, I just want to have a few nifty compiz/beryl effects, which have grown on me far more than I expected them to. Even Dave Yates was surprisingly impressed with Beryl, given his minimalistic tendencies. I imagine quite a few here feel the same way. I didn't think I'd care for it that much, but now I find that I miss it terribly when it's gone. It's such a subtle thing, but sometimes the little things make all the difference.

I think part of the problem is that they can't be included in the kernel by default which means you have to install them manually which as everyone knows is not exactly a walk in the park. Some distros seem to even make it needlessly hard to install because they hate anything proprietary. I don't think it is exactly fair to blame nVidia for this because with Sabayon they load the drivers up perfectly and I have never had a problem with them. I think nVidia did an awesome job with their Linux drivers and just because it is hard to get them installed under some distros because the kernel is GPL won't make me turn on them and say they don't support Linux. Sure it might be nice if they were open source but they legally can't and I think Sabayons solution is sufficient.

Devon, I think there's something you fail to realize here. Even if NVIDIA released their kernel module under the GPL, I seriously doubt the kernel developers would incorporate it into the mainline kernel. First of all, it will be extremely hard, if not impossible to debug problems, because all of a sudden you have absolutely no idea what could be causing the problem. NVIDIA doesn't tell anybody how their driver works, and doesn't show anybody what functions of the kernel it uses. Already today, if you submit a bugreport to the Linux kernel developers, if you are using a proprietary driver, the kernel developers will tell you to disable it and resubmit your bugreport before they take it seriously. Given this, I seriously doubt they would include NVIDIA's module, it's only making their lives harder. If you think back a month or two, there were that whole thing with a few Linux developers trying to put a ban on proprietary drivers, one of the reasons Greg Kroah-Hartmann went down that road, was because he was tired of people trying to get him to fix something he couldn't fix, because oh XYZ party was using some stupid-ass, poorly written blob SCSI driver or something.
The reason Debian didn't want Mozilla's trademarked icons in their distro was because then everytime they changed their Firefox package (Maybe they added a security patch) they'd have to go ask Mozilla "Can we still call this Firefox?", which would have been a huge pain in the ass. Similarly, if you were to put include NVIDIA's kernel module in the mainline kernel, everytime there was a problem, you'd have to go talk to NVIDIA and say "Guys, is this a problem your driver is causing?" and it might take them a while to figure out. One of the big strengths of open source, is that development is moving very rapidly, if you want to stifle that, go ahead, but don't blame me when we can't do crap to improve our software.

I guess the answer is simple then - buy ati cards and use the radeon driver. IIRC it can be made to support hardware acceleration - if not I was able to get it running nearly as well as fglrx on my lappy about 6 months ago. I wish I could still find the how-to I used. Either that or buy a mobo with intel integrated graphics - Pentium Ds are pretty damn cheap now that the new Core 2 Duo stuff is out, too. There's nothing like yesterday's bleeding edge for adequate performance and a fuller wallet.

If you're gonna buy an ATi card and use the radeon driver, DO NOT BUY the Radeon X1300, or higher, cards they only work with the VESA driver. You need something that uses an R300 chip, which could be X800 for example, however I'd probably prefer to go for a slightly older card, and save some cash at the same time. For AGP folks, like myself, a Radeon 9500/9550 would be pretty good, for PCI-Express people, well, X300 and I believe X600, would do OK.

[shopRatt]

Do the site mods think we could a cap on how many words Thor can put into a reply? I think I am getting carpal tunnel from scrolling down the page in my index finger.

Just kidding 'T'.

sorry about the off topic on the thread. Just wanted to razz 'T' a little bit .

[allix]

Do the site mods think we could a cap on how many words Thor can put into a repy? I think I am getting carpal tunnel from scrolling down the page in my index finger.

Just kidding 'T'.

sorry about the off topic on the thread. Just wanted to razz 'T' a little bit .

T is the unadulterated forum keeper , master of the gpl bible , openbsd promoter of the eradication of blobs

[Tsuroerusu]

Do the site mods think we could a cap on how many words Thor can put into a reply? I think I am getting carpal tunnel from scrolling down the page in my index finger.

Just kidding 'T'.

sorry about the off topic on the thread. Just wanted to razz 'T' a little bit .

Shoprat, you better watch it or I might turn on ratpoison!

T is the unadulterated forum keeper

Somebody has to keep CptnObvious999 from spreading FUD!

master of the gpl bible

The GPL is not a bible, it's a philosophy implemented as a software license.

openbsd promoter of the eradication of blobs

It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it!

[CptnObvious999]

Devon, I think there's something you fail to realize here. Even if NVIDIA released their kernel module under the GPL, I seriously doubt the kernel developers would incorporate it into the mainline kernel. First of all, it will be extremely hard, if not impossible to debug problems, because all of a sudden you have absolutely no idea what could be causing the problem. NVIDIA doesn't tell anybody how their driver works, and doesn't show anybody what functions of the kernel it uses. Already today, if you submit a bugreport to the Linux kernel developers, if you are using a proprietary driver, the kernel developers will tell you to disable it and resubmit your bugreport before they take it seriously. Given this, I seriously doubt they would include NVIDIA's module, it's only making their lives harder. If you think back a month or two, there were that whole thing with a few Linux developers trying to put a ban on proprietary drivers, one of the reasons Greg Kroah-Hartmann went down that road, was because he was tired of people trying to get him to fix something he couldn't fix, because oh XYZ party was using some stupid-ass, poorly written blob SCSI driver or something.
The reason Debian didn't want Mozilla's trademarked icons in their distro was because then everytime they changed their Firefox package (Maybe they added a security patch) they'd have to go ask Mozilla "Can we still call this Firefox?", which would have been a huge pain in the ass. Similarly, if you were to put include NVIDIA's kernel module in the mainline kernel, everytime there was a problem, you'd have to go talk to NVIDIA and say "Guys, is this a problem your driver is causing?" and it might take them a while to figure out. One of the big strengths of open source, is that development is moving very rapidly, if you want to stifle that, go ahead, but don't blame me when we can't do crap to improve our software.

I never said it would be easy nor did I say it wouldn't be better if it were open source. I am saying that in the REAL world they are proprietary and the situation would be much better if distros were to support it more and for those that do it is not that bad.

T is the unadulterated forum keeper

Somebody has to keep CptnObvious999 from spreading FUD!

I am happy with Nvidia supporting Linux as much as they do, you are not. I am simply stating my opinion. And yes I guess in your world saying that Nvidia supports Linux is considered FUD but not in mine.

[Vogateer]

Yeah, Troels, I think you throw around the term FUD very loosely. I've never seen anything on this forum that even remotely resembled FUD, and would prefer that the word be reserved for the real thing, thereby maintaining its impact and meaning.

I bought the nVidia card because nVidia supports Linux better than any other card maker at the moment, and I'll continue to support them right up until I find something better. I'm just sick of the problems that would be completely avoidable if the drivers were open source.

[Tsuroerusu]

I am happy with Nvidia supporting Linux as much as they do, you are not. I am simply stating my opinion. And yes I guess in your world saying that Nvidia supports Linux is considered FUD but not in mine.

Yeah, Troels, I think you throw around the term FUD very loosely. I've never seen anything on this forum that even remotely resembled FUD, and would prefer that the word be reserved for the real thing, thereby maintaining its impact and meaning.

I bought the nVidia card because nVidia supports Linux better than any other card maker at the moment, and I'll continue to support them right up until I find something better. I'm just sick of the problems that would be completely avoidable if the drivers were open source.

GUYS! What's you you guys sounding like old-fart UNIX people all of a sudden! It was a freaking joke referring to some of Devon's "explanations" on what GPLv3 does, it was not in any way referring to NVIDIA or ATi being proprietary!