CentOS - May 2005 - Re: Dual Monitors -- "nv" v. "nvidia"

From: Richard Humphrey <rlhumphrey at gmail.com>
> Thanks that did the trick
Although nVidia does put people on the Freedomware "nv" driver,
and it can handle multiple framebuffers for Xinerama, VIVO
(video in, video out), etc...,
the Standardware "nvidia" driver is far easier to deal with for
single framebuffer (no Xinerama) multiple displays, VIVO, etc...,
in addition to adding GLX (OpenGL over X11) support.

-- Bryan

Political Notes:  

nVidia actually released the GLX code for the GeForce series
back in the XFree86 3.3.x days, and obscuficated some of the
code provided by 3rd parties (Intel's AGP trade secrets, SGI and
Microsoft patented OpenGL, etc...).  Unfortunately the community
quickly started reverting the obscuficated code to the formal
identifiers and other blocks that the 3rd parties didn't like to
see, and lawsuits were threatened.
So nVidia decided that it would no longer provide such code
on the GLX portion once XFree86 4.0 came out with the ability
to use binary drivers.
The kernel memory-AGP interface driver portions are largely
Intel's trade secrets, although it seems that is actually going
GPL as Intel no longer considers AGP a trade secret, and PCIe
(PCI-Express) is a formal PCISG standard.

ATI should be also commended for attempting to build a
"clean room" DRI/GLX implementation.  But as lack of resources
to continue to "fork" mounted along with lagging performance,
ATI had to follow in nVidia's footsteps by creating a closed-source,
but standards-driven unified driver by withholding specifications
as of the R300 series (Radeon 9500+).
Just like nVidia, the "clean room" GLX work is still available, and
might even work on newer GeForce/Radeon cards, but the newer
features of those cards are not documented.

Lastly, it should also be noted that Matrox also has closed
source drivers as well.  If there is an industry that Microsoft is
poised to strike the hardest on patents, it's OpenGL.  They've
con'd most of the graphics companies into giving them non-
exclusionary rights to them -- especially SGI, the inventor.


--
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org