Re: Free software
On Wednesday 19 July 2017 18:16:16 Ric Moore wrote:
> On 07/19/2017 12:33 AM, Doug wrote:
> > All the wonderful Linux programmers
> > have had YEARS to modify it and make it better than what
> > Nvidia provides, but it seems that they haven't succeeded.
> > I am very happy with my Nvidia cards and Nvidia drivers.
> > What the devil is everybody bitching about?
> >
> > And, of course, doesn't it make sense that the company that
> > invented and produces and sells a product ought to know more
> > about how to operate it than a bunch of "de-engineers?"
>
> Amen. I paid large dollars for my dual nVidia card setup driving four
> monitors quite nicely with the nVidia supplied driver. And, over the
> many years, read nothing but complaints about AMD/Intel video which
> has provided many a evil chuckle. I agree, it comes down to if owners
> of nVidia products are complaining and everyone else minding their own
> business. More than likely the ONLY reason nvidia pays Linux users any
> attention at all is for NASA contracts. If I were them, I'd tell us to
> go to hell. Ric
The NVidia drivers have a huge problem if they are asked to co-exist with
any system that depends on real time IRQ response. This generally
included computers used for machine control. When a major screen redraw
is needed, its not uncommon for the NVidia driver to lock the machines
resources up for 400 milliseconds. If at the time this occurs, the
machine is 3 milliseconds from turning a corner, which if it doesn't
turn, will put the cutting tool in heavy contact with the part, wrecking
the part and likely breaking the tool, with a potential cost of $40 to
$400 for the tool, and several hundred more for the wrecked part, which
has to be started from scratch with a new piece of metal.
The nouveau driver doesn't do the extended machine hogging and there may
be times when the backplotted video might be half a second behind the
machine because of that, but linuxcnc itself knows exactly where the
machine is millisecond by millisecond. And the machine does precisely
what I wrote the code to tell it do do.
So we don't badmouth the nvidia cards, but we've zero use for the nvidia
drivers. I have nvidia video in 3 of my 4 metal carving machines, and
the nouveau driver runs all 3 quite satisfactorily. With down right
boring power fail to power fail stability.
The 4th machine is a 3/4 ton Sheldon lathe thats nearly 70 years old. But
with only 2 axis's to track, an r-pi 3b is getting the job done quite
nicely. The r-pi's video sucks dead toads thru soda straws, so I am
looking at a rock64 board with 4Gb of dram, no USB-2 data pipeline
bottleneck and dual mali gfx processors but its not shipping till the
first of the month & I'll give it a couple months to sort out the infant
mortality problems new boards always have. That, and getting a stretch
built with an RT-Preempt kernal. Stretch will finally ship with a
working gtk3 editor so we can make some even prettier gfx for linuxcnc.
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
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