Proprietary Video Drivers

[Shador]

About putting them on the CD, I don't think so because it's proprietary drivers and we try to provide a free system.

We have to, as far as I'm informed, because otherwise we wouldn't be allowed to host it on sourceforge.

- 3 generations of nvidia proprietary drivers as regularly nvidia drop some cards.
- 2 processors target (486 and x86_64).

You forgot the different kerneles:
- on x86:
* generic
* generic-smp
* huge
* huge-smp
- on x64:
* 2.6.29.6-2
o generic
o huge
* 2.6.29.6-3
o generic
o huge

Three drivers for each this means ~24 packages. As probably 2 versions on x64 are temporary, still 18.
I for my part could build the stable most recent version (for x64). My only nvidia machine works fine with recent releases and is x64 only, so I'm a bit undecided if it's a good idea to package x86 without having hardware to test it on.

[woodsman]

Do I understand that you offer you help in this area?

Nope. I'm reviewing and helping the developers, not wanting to become one.

If you want to remain free you could always use vesa if your material is not supported by the free nv driver.

Philosophically true but impractical for most people. Vesa only supports a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768. As far as I know, the generic nv driver only supports a maximum of 1280 x 1024. As I mentioned, the nv driver does not support many motherboards. Additionally, many people today have wide screen monitors. Without the proprietary drivers being easily available many people are unlikely to support Salix.

[JRD]

not wanting to become one

Well, I'm afraid that if you don't want to package it, we don't have resources for it as Shador points out that it's not about building only one or two packages.

Without the proprietary drivers being easily available many people are unlikely to support Salix

It's not about Salix but about the Linux community. This is a choice to buy material that is not well supported by free drivers and not our fault if there is not a super free driver that works good for now. 1024x768 is still a good resolution and you have a working computer. You could have better things with the proprietary driver but it's proprietary and if you just want to have things that works and don't mind about freedom, Mac OS X or Windows would just suit your needs.

[thenktor]

As far as I know, the generic nv driver only supports a maximum of 1280 x 1024.

Afaik the current nv driver runs widescreen and high resolutions, too. Either I had configured something wrong or I've run it for some weeks at 1920x1200

[JRD]

I run the nv driver for a long time in high resolution (1600x1200) with no problem at all but I trust woodsman who said he had problem on a specific hardware.
I unfortunatly had to switch to the proprietary one when I wanted to use the dual screen with twice the resolution (sort of xinerama). With two different xorg screens or two xorg servers, no problem, but with one big screen, the nv driver cannot do it (yet). But it was MY choice to use the proprietary driver.

[Shador]

woodsman wrote:
not wanting to become one

Well, I'm afraid that if you don't want to package it, we don't have resources for it as Shador points out that it's not about building only one or two packages.

Even if we had the ressources, we needed testing. As I said I only could provided limited testing for x64. Even if there were reliable testers available we needed them for any supported scenario and if we provide one scenario, people soon request all. Apart I don't like the idea of packaging a bunch of drivers, which I can't test myself. This makes it highly complicated and we might just end up alone without testers.
I think a wiki entry about nvidia would be a good idea though and could try to write a wiki entry, when I find some spare time for it.

[laprjns]

Question:
In Slackware, the normal method is to build the package. Yet that method requires having the kernel sources installed, which Salix does not provide out-of-the-box. Thus a pre-compiled package is necessary.

Why can't Slackware provide the kernel-header package "out of the box" with the needed headers to be able to compile both nvidea drivers and virtualbox drivers.? Back when I was on Zenwalk I was able to compile both of these with just the kernel-header package prior to the 2.6.28 kernel. Then apparently there was some "structure" changes in the 2.6.28 kernel which made this no longer possible. After a lot of googleing I was able to find a fixed to this: http://support.zenwalk.org/viewtopic.ph ... nk#p124044. But the problem kept on coming back with every 2.6.x update after that. From researching of this problem, I know that other distributions have solve this problem with their equivalent of a header file.
Rich

[JRD]

The kernel-headers package in slackware is missing some files that are only in the kernel-sources package. It's an error, that maybe will be corrected for the next version... Maybe ask Pat about it...

[thenktor]

Yes, please report it to Pat!

[zenballer]

I am intrigued.
I'm not that tech-savvy, and all this time all I have to do to display dual screen (one in my laptop and one in my overhead projector) is to use nVidia setting tool.

I haven't been able to do that using nv. I love nv but I also have the need to use my class' overhead projector (I believe it's InFocus) in giving my lecture.
Can someone explain to me how?

Thanks!