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Author Topic: [EN] could you include the nvidia driver on the siduction?  (Read 11753 times)

mirix

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[EN] could you include the nvidia driver on the siduction?
« Reply #15 on: 2011/12/21, 14:01:08 »
Hello,

I have already mentioned this several times in the sidux and aptosid fora: There is people out there for whom using the proprietary drivers is not optional, it is a must. First, there is people for whom the Nouveau drivers do not work at all. Second, there is people who need the functionality that the proprietary drivers provide. For instance, 3D acceleration is not just required for playing games. I am a scientist and I need need 3D acceleration for visualising biomolecules. I guess this is also the case for architects and many engineers and graphical artists, for instance. The proprietary driver is also required for GPU (Cuda) computing. There is an increasing number of code that run on GPUs (which are more powerful than CPUs). We have computers with 4 and 5 GPUs (3 Teslas and 1 Quadro) and we do a lot of number-crunching on the GPUs.

A distribution in which the proprietary drivers are an issue is clearly not for me. Of course, I do not plan to install any Sid-derivative in production machines. However, I often use my laptop as a test bench and therefore I need the proprietary drivers there as well.

Kind regards,

Miro

Offline towo

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could you include the nvidia driver on the siduction?
« Reply #16 on: 2011/12/21, 14:05:36 »
What do you want to say?
Besides the point, that we can't include binary blob like nvidia or fglrx because it's not allowed by the vendors, we can't include such drivers, because siduction is following the dfsg.
Ich gehe nicht zum Karneval, ich verleihe nur manchmal mein Gesicht.

Offline devil

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could you include the nvidia driver on the siduction?
« Reply #17 on: 2011/12/21, 14:45:43 »
mirix,
you are perfectly right about user needs and of course the right of the user to use what he payed for in an appropriate way. So, we will do our best to help users get their hardware working with proprietary drivers. But, as towo pointed out, we cannot include them.

greetz
devil

mirix

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could you include the nvidia driver on the siduction?
« Reply #18 on: 2011/12/21, 14:46:51 »
I wanted to say exactly what I said. Sometimes developers speak of the binary drivers as if their need was just a caprice of the user rather than a practical need. What I wanted to say was that in my case and many others we just can not work without them. I also support free software, but no matter how strongly I support it, I need to get my work done with the existing tools. And the fact is that the hardware market is controlled by a few providers most of which are not interested in providing free (in the sense of libre) drivers. It is not my fault, it is not your fault, it is just how it is. Then there is the legal stuff and so on, but it is also true that some distros facilitate user's life more than others. Some people in certain fora even seem happy when people inform about binary blob-related system breakages. I respect very much their opinion, but I cannot afford using a distro for which those breakages are too frequent and developers just do not care about it because they use their computers in a different way. Happily, the grandeur of the free software community is that there is quite a lot of choice.

Offline michaaa62

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could you include the nvidia driver on the siduction?
« Reply #19 on: 2011/12/21, 14:53:02 »
Quote from: "mirix"
Hello,

I have already mentioned this several times in the sidux and aptosid fora: There is people out there for whom using the proprietary drivers is not optional, it is a must. First, there is people for whom the Nouveau drivers do not work at all. Second, there is people who need the functionality that the proprietary drivers provide. For instance, 3D acceleration is not just required for playing games. I am a scientist and I need need 3D acceleration for visualising biomolecules. I guess this is also the case for architects and many engineers and graphical artists, for instance. The proprietary driver is also required for GPU (Cuda) computing. There is an increasing number of code that run on GPUs (which are more powerful than CPUs). We have computers with 4 and 5 GPUs (3 Teslas and 1 Quadro) and we do a lot of number-crunching on the GPUs.

A distribution in which the proprietary drivers are an issue is clearly not for me. Of course, I do not plan to install any Sid-derivative in production machines. However, I often use my laptop as a test bench and therefore I need the proprietary drivers there as well.

Kind regards,

Miro
What is your point?
Complain to Nvidia, if they do not move along Sid!

Anyone could start siduction using the vesa generic driver to install to harddisk, later you could easily install the proprietary driver the debian way ( using apt, dmks and nvidia-source) not the *.run from Nvidia.
This will keep your system supportable, because experienced people (like towo) would know what works and what not.

There is no way, any dev could correct errors in nvidia stuff, because they prohibit that with their license.

Offline ReinerS

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could you include the nvidia driver on the siduction?
« Reply #20 on: 2011/12/21, 15:02:04 »
@mirix:
Im an longtime-user of the nvidia and ati proprietary drivers andprobably will continue with that as long the free drivers do not fulfill what I need.
But I have no problem to start with an free driver and  add the necessary proprietary driver after that.

For reasons that towo and devil already explained those drivers cannot be included on an siduction iso.
But (unlike some other wellknown distros) with siduction there will be as much help as possible to allow you to install these drivers in an secure way onto your machine.
So give it a try when it arrives :lol:

regards

Reiner
slackware => SuSE => kanotix => sidux => aptosid  => siduction

mirix

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could you include the nvidia driver on the siduction?
« Reply #21 on: 2011/12/21, 15:30:06 »
I have no problem starting with free drivers. Right now, I have Debian stable installed in all my machines (including those of my friends and relatives). I always use the netinstall image so, as you know, I end up with an almost 100 % free software system (well, in certain machines, this is not possible and workarounds are required). I am not asking to have the proprietary drivers in the installation CD.

The question is that some distros, before releasing any upgrade, try to take into account all kinds of situations, including the users with proprietary drivers installed. Others, follow the philosophy of "we just don't care about you because you are not representative/pure/knowledgeable enough for our standards".  

To be honest, I am happy enough with Debian Stable. Only every so often I need a new feature that is only available in more recent versions of a program. If there are few, non-essential dependencies, I just pull the new version from Sid repos. Otherwise, I compile it from source. The problem is that, towards the end of the release cycle, Stable is really old and so you end up with a hybrid (stable-unstable) system. Another, related, problem is that certain developers use only the most recent version of libraries (even development versions), which forces you to be always current in order to compile their code. That is why I would be interested in a Sid-based distro which is stable enough so that you can spend 99.90 % of the time working and only 0.10 % fixing regressions and other issues after upgrades. But maybe this is impossible and a hybrid system actually offers the best trade-off. This is what I would like to find out.

Offline michaaa62

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could you include the nvidia driver on the siduction?
« Reply #22 on: 2011/12/21, 17:02:22 »
Quote

 Others, follow the philosophy of "we just don't care about you because you are not representative/pure/knowledgeable enough for our standards".

Yes that is the way Debian Sid works :(
Quote

That is why I would be interested in a Sid-based distro which is stable enough so that you can spend 99.90 % of the time working and only 0.10 % fixing regressions and other issues after upgrades

The best approach seems to be just let others make their hands dirty and delay your dist-upgrade a couple of days, when it comes to xserver-, nvidia- or kernel-related upgrades.

Offline DeepDayze

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could you include the nvidia driver on the siduction?
« Reply #23 on: 2011/12/26, 21:36:19 »
maybe there can be an option to install fglrx or nvidia blobs within the installer if the user selects it?

mystika1

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could you include the nvidia driver on the siduction?
« Reply #24 on: 2012/01/26, 06:14:43 »
Quote from: "DeepDayze"
maybe there can be an option to install fglrx or nvidia blobs within the installer if the user selects it?

I have used several distros that have this option and it did work well. It is a nice option. It is however.. very simple to follow the siduction guide to install the non free drivers if you need them. Either way is pretty simple.(when I was new to linux however..I didn't understand what I was doing and it was frustrating)
I was a long time proprietary driver user...
I would like to add that I decided to give the ibgl1-mesa-dri-experimental driver a chance when I installed siduction lxde. I use gcompmgr to enable compositing. I am very impressed. My machine is heavily used for school but pretty much doubles as a media center. I have xmbc installed and this driver works without problems.(hulu and all of my other videos play flawlessly) My card is a bit dated.(nvidia 8800gtx)I also added the blue ray addon in xmbc today and it actually worked! Now I don't have to worry about reinstalling drivers for kernel updates.

If you are running lxde or you don't use compiz..give the free drivers a try. They won't work for everyone but it is a nice alternative.

Penny :D