Re: nvidia driver on ppc. problems
On Mon, 2005-10-03 at 17:58 +0000, josep29@casal.upc.edu wrote:
> Last june 2005 I've bought a fine powerbook G4 12", and I did subestimate the
> problems from the nvidia FX GeForce 5200 grafic card under GNU/Linux. It seems
> the nv driver doesn't support yet:
First, are you talking about the kernel nvidiafb (or the older rivbafb)
or X "nv" driver ?
> 1.- external vga/dvi output (can't use a bigger screen or TV)
Yes, none of the nvidia "free" drivers supports dual head at this point.
Those _are_ supported by the HaikuOS driver it seems so it would be
possible to use it as an example and implement the support in X.org if
you volunteer ... :)
> 2.- GPU doesn't sleep (when close the laptop, it keeps eating battery)
If you put the laptop to slepe, it won't. The GPU will be powered off.
However, it will also fail to wakeup since we never had wakeup code for
nvidia chips, partially due to the lack of specs from nvidia.
> 3.- 3D acceleration (not so important at the moment)
There is no free 3D driver for nvidia, same reason as above: total lack
of specs. Some people did reverse engineer bits & pieces, for example,
the haikuOS (again) driver seem to have some bits, and Lars Knoll from
the KDE team has been working on an EXA render acceleration hook afaik,
using the 3D engine on those.
> .. and the propietary nvidia driver is not available for ppc architecture.
> So I ask: which is the nv present and future? is there the possibility some day
> this things are going to work? is there some any other project for the drivers?
Everything is possible. Wether it's likely or not is a different matter.
There isn't anybody that I know actively working on the free "nv" driver
except Lars recent work on EXA. I suppose I may give a try to the
suspend/wakeup stuff again one of these days using the iMac G5 though I
can't guarantee I'll figure it out.
> .. or should I sell it and buy an Ibook?
An ATI based laptop will have sleep support, will have 3D acceleration
(though if it's based on r300 or later, which I think is the case of the
latest ibooks will need the reverse engineered 3D driver which is still
fairly new and doesn't accelerate as much as the r200 one. Still
proabbly enough to play quake). External output should work (though the
X radeon driver still has some issue with external flat panels) and TV
output will not work right away though there are people working on it.
> suggestions?
>
> Thanks.
>
> My system:
> Powerbook G4 12" 1'5GHz
> Debian Sid
> Kernel 2.6.12
>
>
>
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