Nouveau merged into mainline

tavianator · 2009-12-12 21:29:55

As you can see here, nouveau got merged into Linus' kernel tree about 33 hours ago, and will find its way into 2.6.33. The driver is in staging, but without the binary firmware-like ctxvoodoo files from nouveau's tree; those are not included for copyright reasons, as they were generated from mmio-tracing the blob and ownership is unclear. This means:

- DRM support for geforce < 6 series (NV04-NV30) is now in the mainline kernel!
- Newer nVidia cards are also supported if you go and get the firmware files yourself
- Maybe no more need for the nouveau-drm package? But only if Arch pulls in those firmware files with its kernel patches
- However, maybe we don't want to build nouveau with the kernel, so that we can provide a more up-to-date nouveau with nouveau-drm
- kernel26-nouveau-git still works, even with the merge onto Linus's tree enabled. This has the effect of pulling in the latest nouveau changes and the firmware files.

Also, check out the fact that Shining is in the list of Nouveau authors in that commit.

jelly · 2009-12-12 21:33:16

really nice, i cantel wait for the driver to become complete , so i can use it on my lappy

flamelab · 2009-12-12 21:39:08

Ιs the nvidia gallium 3d driver ready yet ? At least, basic 3D. If it is, i'd like to try it. If it is not...

tavianator · 2009-12-12 21:49:01

jelly wrote:

really nice, i cantel wait for the driver to become complete , so i can use it on my lappy

No reason not to now, unless you need accelerated 3D. The 2D driver is pretty solid and fast.

flamelab wrote:

Ιs the nvidia gallium 3d driver ready yet ? At least, basic 3D. If it is, i'd like to try it. If it is not...

It depends what you mean. In my experience, glxgears works, but nothing too much more complicated (don't even think of running compiz). Oh, and two glxgears instances at the same time invariably crashes my computer to the point that I have to hard-reset it (ssh, magic sysrq, etc. don't work).

But it probably depends a lot on the card. Try either nouveau-dri or a split mesa-git, and see if it works. But no complaining or bug reports or anything if it crashes and corrupts your filesystem or steals your wife.

Last edited by tavianator (2009-12-12 21:50:30)

combuster · 2009-12-13 09:45:17

You will have nouveau in 2.6.32.1 also, just popped in git10. Somehow I think it's related to Canonical announcement that they will patch 2.6.32 in lucid to support nouveau and Fedora already have it enabled I think. Linux kernel dev's have a policy that features like these can't just appear in stable kernel version but this time they broke that policy. I can't belive how much Ubuntu and Fedora dictates developement of Linux projects. Gnome developers postponed gnome-shell and zeitgeist for october (GNOME 3.0) just after Canonical announced that they will not include GNOME 2.30 in lucid.

IMHO this sukZ, I've tried gnome-shell and zeitgeist and it's true that there are many features beside these in GNOME 3.0, but they were pretty stable and could be ready for March. Instead they gave themselves a lil' breathing room till October until Ubuntu 10.10 hits the release date.

Zariel · 2009-12-13 12:46:24

Still have issues with my 8800 G80 =/

jelly · 2009-12-13 17:47:39

tavianator wrote:

jelly wrote:
really nice, i cantel wait for the driver to become complete , so i can use it on my lappy
No reason not to now, unless you need accelerated 3D. The 2D driver is pretty solid and fast.
flamelab wrote:
Ιs the nvidia gallium 3d driver ready yet ? At least, basic 3D. If it is, i'd like to try it. If it is not...
It depends what you mean. In my experience, glxgears works, but nothing too much more complicated (don't even think of running compiz). Oh, and two glxgears instances at the same time invariably crashes my computer to the point that I have to hard-reset it (ssh, magic sysrq, etc. don't work).

Well another reason i wont use it, is that it currently doesnt support acpi and powersaving stuff but when this is supported i will consider moving to an better driver

shining · 2009-12-15 12:57:03

tavianator wrote:

As you can see here, nouveau got merged into Linus' kernel tree about 33 hours ago, and will find its way into 2.6.33. The driver is in staging, but without the binary firmware-like ctxvoodoo files from nouveau's tree; those are not included for copyright reasons, as they were generated from mmio-tracing the blob and ownership is unclear. This means:
- DRM support for geforce < 6 series (NV04-NV30) is now in the mainline kernel!
- Newer nVidia cards are also supported if you go and get the firmware files yourself
- Maybe no more need for the nouveau-drm package? But only if Arch pulls in those firmware files with its kernel patches
- However, maybe we don't want to build nouveau with the kernel, so that we can provide a more up-to-date nouveau with nouveau-drm
- kernel26-nouveau-git still works, even with the merge onto Linus's tree enabled. This has the effect of pulling in the latest nouveau changes and the firmware files.

Yeah maybe it makes more sense to keep using a separate nouveau-drm package, considering it's only in staging, and nouveau development will likely keep being active and recommends up-to-date code.
But I did not talk with Andy yet, maybe he already has some plans.

Also, check out the fact that Shining is in the list of Nouveau authors in that commit.

Actually that came quite unexpected. My contribution is so ridiculous [1] I would have preferred not being listed
They just took any author that appeared in git log. So if you had just one trivial irrelevant patch, you would appear in that case. Which was exactly my case. And I am probably the only fake author in that list.

I do follow developments actively and test nouveau where I can, but I really cannot do much more than testing. It's all so complex I cannot even contribute more, even though I'd like to

[1] 23:39 < shining> btw I would rather not be in that list, the only patch I have is :
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/nouveau/lin … 775258f9ea

shining · 2009-12-15 13:05:26

tavianator wrote:

But it probably depends a lot on the card. Try either nouveau-dri or a split mesa-git, and see if it works. But no complaining or bug reports or anything if it crashes and corrupts your filesystem or steals your wife.

I was first using mesa-git but that has the downside of installing system-wide a quite unstable component.
Also it's not always obvious whether mesa is being used or not, so to avoid reporting bugs caused by gallium, it's better not to have it installed.
So now I am just following upstream instructions :
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/GalliumHowto

It's actually very easy, and no need to install, you can just change some env var to use mesa / gallium locally, so that you can select which app/games you want to try with gallium.

That said, it works rather well for me. Btw I just reported my experiences there : http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/XavierChantry

Which card do you have ?
gallium should work on nv30 nv40 and nv50. nv30 support is supposedly worse, but not too bad.

shining · 2009-12-15 13:10:27

jelly wrote:

Well another reason i wont use it, is that it currently doesnt support acpi and powersaving stuff but when this is supported i will consider moving to an better driver

Sadly the active developers do not seem very interested by this, it rarely comes up in the discussions. That's also understandable, given the amount of work in the other areas.
One user started to do some RE : http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/EmilVelikov
But I have not heard any news for a while, so probably no progress.

shining · 2009-12-15 13:21:41

combuster wrote:

You will have nouveau in 2.6.32.1 also, just popped in git10. Somehow I think it's related to Canonical announcement that they will patch 2.6.32 in lucid to support nouveau and Fedora already have it enabled I think. Linux kernel dev's have a policy that features like these can't just appear in stable kernel version but this time they broke that policy.
<snip loads of offtopic bullshit>

2.6.32-git* is the road to 2.6.33-rc1 , NOTHING to do with stable 2.6.32.*
Besides it will only be in STAGING in 2.6.33, it is not considered stable at all.
And Ubuntu/Canonical has nothing to do with that.
And it's actually Linus that complained about Fedora not pushing nouveau upstream, not the other way around :
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=126045825810972&w=4

I am impressed by the amount of misinformation in such a small post.

Dirk Sohler · 2009-12-15 13:30:20

Now it's in the kernel. Fine. Will it get ful 3D support now?

shining · 2009-12-15 15:11:09

Dirk Sohler wrote:

Now it's in the kernel. Fine. Will it get ful 3D support now?

Thanks for not reading the thread and asking the same question than SECOND comment.

The answer is NO.

3d is very early, incomplete and unstable. And unsupported. And very far from the proprietary driver.
It will certainly improves, but it might never reach nvidia level.

combuster · 2009-12-15 16:35:29

@shining

Yep, thought 2.6.32-git was patching 2.6.32 not merging features for 2.6.33 because I usually track 2.6.3X-rcX-git for the next kernel version. My mistake.

I'm impressed how nervous developers get when they are really busy ;-) Nevertheless I'm gratefull for your effort even though I have an intel igp...

tavianator · 2009-12-16 18:31:11

Looks like the nouveau guys figured out how to generate their own "firmware" for nv40 chips, so only us nv50 guys still need the ctxprog/ctxvals files.

Zariel wrote:

Still have issues with my 8800 G80 =/

What issues? Have you reported them?

Arch Linux

#1 2009-12-12 21:29:55

Nouveau merged into mainline

#2 2009-12-12 21:33:16

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#3 2009-12-12 21:39:08

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#4 2009-12-12 21:49:01

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#5 2009-12-13 09:45:17

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#6 2009-12-13 12:46:24

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#7 2009-12-13 17:47:39

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#8 2009-12-15 12:57:03

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#9 2009-12-15 13:05:26

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#10 2009-12-15 13:10:27

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#11 2009-12-15 13:21:41

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#12 2009-12-15 13:30:20

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#13 2009-12-15 15:11:09

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#14 2009-12-15 16:35:29

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

#15 2009-12-16 18:31:11

Re: Nouveau merged into mainline

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