The second pre-release of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring, code name “Neottia” is available now. This pre-release brings a near-final snapshot of KDE 4.0 (final 4.0 packages are currently being uploaded to the Cooker repositories), new NVIDIA and ATI drivers, the chance to test the experimental nouveau open source driver for NVIDIA cards, kernel 2.6.24rc7, and more.
More info about this new release can be found at here, here and here for Pulse Audio that be used on new Mandriva 2008.
Btw, you can download this second alpha of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring at here.
Showing posts with label linux driver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label linux driver. Show all posts
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Nvidia Linux Display Driver version 169.07 was released yesterday. If you own a GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GTS 512 or 8800M graphics card, you should know that this driver offers support for them.
The highlists of this release are: Added CUDA driver to .run file, Improved modesetting support on Quadro/GeForce 8 series GPUs. Fixed several X rendering issues, Fixed problems scrolling ARGB X drawables in Qt, Improved support for interlaced DVI, HDMI, and HDTV modesetting, Fixed stability problems with some GeForce 8 series GPUs, Fixed stability problems with some GeForce 6200/7200/7300 GPUs multi-core/SMP systems.
Improved hotkey switching support for some Lenovo notebooks. Fixed a problem with Compiz after VT-switching. Improved RENDER performance. Improved interaction with Barco and Chi Mei 56" DFPs, as well as with some Gateway 19" DFPs. Added an interface to monitor PowerMizer state information. Fixed rendering corruption in Maya's Graph Editor. Improved interaction between SLI AFR and swap groups on certain Quadro FX GPUs.
Fixed a bug that caused corruption with redirected XV on GPUs without TurboCache support. Improved display device detection on GeForce 8 series GPUs. Improved usability of NVIDIA-settings at lower resolutions like 1024x768 and 800x600. Improved GLX visual consolidation when using Xinerama with Quadro/GeForce 8 series and older GPUs. Added experimental support for running the X server at Depth 30 (10 bits per component) on Quadro G8x and later GPUs. Worked around a Linux kernel/toolchain bug that caused soft lockup errors when suspending on some Intel systems.
This is a a true Christmas present from Nvidia for Linux users. Now, you can download it at here or by visiting here.
Note: SUSE users should read this How-To for installing Nvidia driver.
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A new version of the ATI/AMD Linux display driver was released, for both x86 and x86_64 platforms. This release includes support for openSUSE 10.3 or openSUSE Live and Red Flag DT 6.0 Linux distributions.
Some bugs resolved in this release are: A memory leak is no longer noticed when running OpenGL applications. Running X -configure no longer results in a segmentation fault in the fglrx driver. Fglrxinfo no longer reports OpenGL Render string: as Mesa GLX Indirect on systems containing an ATI Rialto AGP series of product.
Known issues of this release are: There is no support for video playback on the second head in dual head mode. Desktop corruption may be noticed when dragging the overlay/video using dual-display mode. A black screen may be observed on some hardware when switching to the console or leaving the X window system, using a Vesa framebuffer console driver. Corruption may be noticed in the lower right corner of the display after the system is running for a long period of time. Display flicker may be noticed when the gnome screen-saver starts. Diagonal tearing may be noticed when playing a video file using a video player that utilizes the XVideo extension. Video playback may look blocky when playing a video file using a video player that utilizes the XVideo extension. Video Playback may display wrong colors and additional shadow images when cropping or expanding a video file using a video player that utilizes the XVideo extension. Connecting a display device that supports 1680x1050 to a system running Linux may result in a maximum display resolution of 1280x1024 only being available. Custom mode lines in xorg.conf may be ignored by the fglrx driver. Building RPM packages for Mandriva may fail.
In order to gain the best performance and ease of use, ATI/AMD recommends the following:
- Kernel module build environment – should include the following: Kernel source code: either the Kernel Source or Kernel Headers packages.
- ISSE Support enabled in your Linux Kernel (applies to Intel Pentium III and later CPUs only; enabled by default on version 2.4 and later kernels).
- The rpm utility should be installed and configured correctly on your system, if you intend to install it via RPM packages.
- XOrg 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2 or 7.3
- Linux kernel 2.6 or higher
- glibc version 2.2 or 2.3
- POSIX Shared Memory (/dev/shm) support is required for 3D applications.
Supported operating systems: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, Ubuntu 7.10, Red Flag DT 6.0 and openSUSE 10.3.
More info, detail and download of this new driver can be reach by visiting here.
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Whats New and changed in NVIDIA Linux Display Driver release 100.14.19?
- Added support for new GPUs: Quadro FX 290, Quadro FX 370, Quadro FX 570, Quadro FX 1700
- Improved GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap out-of-memory handling.
- Fixed a performance regression on GeForce 8 GPUs.
- Added support for a 'NoScanout' mode to the X driver, useful for high performance computing environments and remote graphics.
- Improved power management support with GeForce 8 and older GPUs.
- Improved compatibility with recent X.Org X servers.
- Improved G-Sync support with Quadro FX 4600 and Quadro FX 5600.
- Added XV brightness and contrast controls to the GeForce 8 video texture adapter implementation.
- Further improved interaction with ATi RS480/482 based mainboards.
- Fixed stability problems with some GeForce 8 GPUs.
- Fixed XvMC support on GeForce 7050 PV / NVIDIA nForce 630a GPUs with PureVideo support.
- Added support for bridgeless SLI with GeForce 8 GPUs.
- Fixed rotation support on some GeForce 8 GPUs.
- Fixed a problem causing X to render incorrectly after VT switches with composited desktops.
- Fixed a RENDER acceleration bug that was causing 2D rendering corruption in Eclipse with GeForce 8 GPUs.
- Improved VGA console restoration with DFPs and TVs.
- Fixed a bug that resulted in the generation of incorrect EDIDs on some notebooks.
- Fixed flickering corruption with SLIAA on GeForce 8 GPUs.
- Improved compatibility with recent Linux 2.6 kernels.
- Fixed a compatibility problem with some Linux 2.4 kernels.
- Improved hotkey switching support.
- Fixed an 'nvidia-installer' bug that was causing the installer to treat some of its temporary files as conflicting.
- Fixed several problems causing crashes if /dev is mounted with the 'noexec' option.
- Reduced kernel virtual memory usage with some GeForce 8 GPUs.
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There are several different drivers available for various ATI graphics cards in Mandriva Linux 2008 that may be of interest in certain situations. This entry concerns the free software set of drivers. Some notes on the proprietary drivers may be found further down this document.
By default, all ATI graphics cards up to but not including the Radeon X1xxx generation (r500 chipset) are supported by the driver in the x11-driver-video-ati package, which is version 6.6 of the X.org ati driver. This version has been determined to work reliably on the most cards.
However, if you have trouble with this driver, the alternative x11-driver-video-ati_6.7 package contains version 6.7 of the same driver. The package is available in the contrib repository. Following the instructions on the Installing and removing software page to add remote repositories and install packages, you should be able to install this package with the Mandriva software management tools.
Installing this package will automatically cause the x11-driver-video-ati package to be removed, and the 6.7 version driver will replace the 6.6 version. No further action is required except to restart the computer: the new version of the driver will then be used immediately. You can revert to the 6.6 version of the driver by reversing the procedure.
By default, X1xxx and HD 2xxx series cards (r500 and r600) chips will almost all use the X.org vesa driver, which is a generic driver that works on any graphics card by using an industry standard interface that all cards implement. This, however, makes it very slow (as native acceleration provided by the card is not used).
Two native drivers are available for these cards, but both are in a very early stage of development, so we chose not to use them by default in Mandriva Linux 2008 for most cards.
Three particular cards that have been tested by users and reported to work well will use the avivo driver by default. This driver is contained in the x11-driver-video-avivo package. The avivo driver was the first free software driver to be developed for the r500 and r600 chips - it actually supports only r500 cards. Development on the avivo driver was recently stopped in favour of a new driver, radeonhd.
The radeonhd driver is based on specifications provided to its authors by ATI / AMD. It is also available in Mandriva Linux 2008 in the x11-driver-video-radeonhd package. As it was initiated very late in Mandriva Linux 2008 development, there was no time to test it to see if it could be used by default on any cards.
If you have an r500 or r600 chipset-based card and would like to experiment with the avivo or radeonhd drivers, you may install the packages if necessary (they will likely be installed already on a default installation) and use the drakx11 graphics card configuration tool to select the driver, which you will find in the Xorg category at the bottom of the list.
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Fully-functional video drivers -- ones capable of handling 3-D acceleration -- remain one of the weak points of free software. The Free Software Foundation has declared them a high-priority project. Meanwhile, some distributions and even more users have resorted to using the proprietary drivers offered as free downloads by card manufacturers. One of the main projects attempting to provide complete, free drivers is focusing on developing the Avivo driver for the R500 and R600 cards from AMD/ATI, so-called after a specification first introduced in this line of cards. According to Jerome Glisse, who coordinates the development of the driver, progress is being made in the project, and "maybe by the end of this year, we might have some 3-D acceleration."
The community of graphics experts in free software is a small one. Like many in the community, Glisse got his start in the now-defunct R300 project, which was designed to study 3-D acceleration in ATI cards. Although the project never produced stable drivers, many of those involved in the project have gone on to related work in Mesa, the free software implementation of the OpenGL specification for delivering 3-D graphics, or DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure), or the Nouveau project, which is developing free drivers for Nvidia cards. Glisse himself chose to continue giving attention to ATI largely because "I didn't think there were many people working on this card."
Glisse and the three or four other people in the project (the number varies at any given time, Glisse says) began working on the Avivo driver at the start of 2007. However, serious work only began a couple of months ago, and the first official release of the driver is still in the future.
As might be expected, much of the work involves reverse-engineering the fglrx driver, the GNU/Linux binary released by ATI, and drawing on information learned in the R300 project. "What chipmakers often do," Glisse explains, "is reuse things from previous releases. So you can find things for the Avivo in the R300. The differences between them are very slight. It looks like we could save a lot of time."
Currently, the Avivo driver is in an extremely basic state, unsuitable for general use. "The driver is actually only capable of setting the mode," Glisse says. More specifically, the project's developers have learned to program hardware specifications such as DAC (digital to analog converter), LVDS (low-voltage differential signaling), and TMDS (transition minimized differential signaling) that allow a computer to communicate with a video card. This, as Glisse says, "is the basic you need to get something on the screen."
Of course, to make the driver actually useful, more is needed. Glisse is reasonably confident that the project knows enough to work in the near future upon card initialization with such functions as suspend and display, under- and over-clocking cards, and accessing on-board RAM.
Much of the remaining work, Glisse hopes, can be ported directly from work done by the R300 project, including XAA acceleration needed for the blit function for 2-D display under the X Window System. Speaking for the project, he also says that its members know enough to make "an educated guess" that the "3-D engine is very much like the one which the R400 [driver] supports. The major differences lie in the fragment shader [the function that calculates display on a pixel-by-pixel basis], and I believe that some freely available documents from AMD give a quite insightful description of this part of the graphical processing unit."
However, Glisse adds, "I am personally a bit reluctant to do that work" immediately. Glisse suggests that upcoming changes to Mesa's and DRI's architectures makes the use of OpenGL to achieve 2-D and 3-D acceleration directly within Xorg, making the work on individual drivers redundant. For this reason, he considers porting the 2-D and 3-D acceleration in its current form a "partial waste" and would prefer to focus on the card initialization features first.
Eventually, Glisse would like to see the Avivo project's work ported to other Unix-based systems, such as the BSDs and Solaris, although he worries whether their implementation of Direct Rendering Manager, which is needed for 3D acceleration, is sufficiently advanced.
In addition, although AMD acquired ATI more than a year ago and has shown no sign yet of wanting to encourage free drivers, Glisse has not yet ruled out the possibility that corporate involvement in the Avivo project might simplify its members' work methods.
"They know that we exist, because I've talked with a few people," he says. "And AMD may be wanting open source drivers."
If it does, he believes that Avivo and related projects may play an important role. "If you really want open source drivers, then you have to go outside the company. If you don't, you won't get the support of the community and everything that goes with it. I believe that AMD right now is trying to change how it works, because if you look at what it's doing on motherboards and other things like that, it's really starting to work with the community. So we're hoping that AMD will change its mind and decide that the best thing to do is work with the community. I hope it's sooner than later."
Meanwhile, while hoping for the best, the Avivo project continues preparing for the worst by inching towards the goal of traditional drivers on its own efforts. More people could help, Glisse says, but they need to be people with experience in graphic drivers and a willingness to make a long-term effort. "I think it's one of the few places left in open source where there is still plenty of room for new people."
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