Free Software Linux

Sparking a heated Sunday afternoon debate, NVIDIA's Aaron Plattner had commited a trivial change to the X Server that resulted in several key open-source X developers becoming disgruntled. Ultimately, this NVIDIA-spawned patch ended up being recalled just hours later.

They have even criticized Nvidia specifically for not releasing free drivers. Nvidia responded. read more

Linux kernel developers issue a statement signed by about 100 developers that they find non-free kernel modules to be undesi read more

Linux developers demand open drivers, docs and development processes, NVIDIA refuses to open their drivers, arguing that the technical quality is not a problem, and that the driver contains intellectual property they wish to protect. ATI/AMD has shown the intellectual property argument is at least not universally applicable to graphics hardware. Let's also clear up a misconception about the technical quality of closed NVIDIA drivers. read more

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate by example the strengths and weaknesses of the open source development model versus the binary driver one.

Since openSUSE 11.0 has just gone gold, Stefan Dirsch has created NVIDIA RPMs for openSUSE 11.0, so they are now all available via 1-Click-Install. See the wiki page for the link and details (it’s the same YMP for openSUSE 10.3).

Fixed the hibernate on my openSUSE 10.3 / nvidia / compiz box opensuse nvidia Added the following line to /etc/X11/xorg.conf Option "NvAGP" "1" in the "Device" section, after the line 'Vendor Name "NVidia"' Added a blacklist line to the modprobe /etc/modprobe.conf.local blacklist sis_agp Hibernate when idle: Also fixed/changed the gnome powermanagement that it the machine hibernates when idle