"Silly" nVidia question.

[Shan]

I'm currently waiting for the postal service to deliver my new (to me) 12" AluBook with the nVidia GPU, and I've been wondering a few things (The following is based on speculation and a general lack of understanding in regards to PPC; which is why I'm here asking questions )

If Apple ships a unit (in this case a laptop) with an nVidia graphics card then certainly they must have drivers of some sort for it in order to have hardware acceleration; this I think is a fact even though I don't "know" it to be so; if it weren't true then having an nVidia GPU would be a pointless waste of money on Apples part. Whats also true is that OSX is based upon Darwin, a Free(?)BSD kernel, which from my understanding is fairly compatable with the Linux kernel.

So whats stopping us from using the driver that ships with OSX?

My guess(es)?

* Darwin isn't binary compatable with Linux; akin to how Windows isn't compatable with Linux (Speculation, I've never touched a BSD and all my knowledge of it is heresay).

* "Severe" integration within OSX making it hard or impossible to extract and be useable.

* Licensing restrictions that either prevents this from happening entirely (EG "Must be used with OSX") or would require a license to OSX; either of which don't (technically speaking) make it impossible, just morally wrong or only useful for people who use both OSX *and* Linux.

Lastly (and somewhat unrelated but still concerning nVidia); is there an open-source project actively working on 3D capabilities with nVidia cards? I know Xorg has the 2d "nv" driver, and at one point there was a SF project working on riva/tnt/early geforce (I think?) support; and ATi has an opensource implimentation as well as official, but is there an nVidia one? I knew when I bought the laptop that it was unlikely I'd have linux 3d acceleration and I'm okay with that, I'm just wondering if there are alternatives available for me to play around with; even if they're rough around the edges.

[JoseJX]

Your guesses aren't bad. :p You would have to port all of the MacOSX driver framework and its graphic system (Quartz, not open source) to Linux. Which doesn't get you very far when you're looking for an X driver. The nv driver is intentionally obfuscated and difficult to work with (thanks nVidia) and they have not released any specs. Now, this isn't as bad as it all sounds. The nouveau project (http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/) is working to create specs to write drivers, but it's slow going. There is also a working driver for Haiku that's open source which supports up to the 6xxx series afaik. This could also be used as a mesa driver, but there are few people who have the time or the inclination to work on porting it. I guess the final word is that there isn't even really any code for you to play with right now, nouveau is the best contender and they don't have much actually written.

Sorry.

[veonline]

something MUST be done!!! i can't see anymore the eyecandy-flashing-macos-things and my poor linux suffer only for scrolling a window
i'm even disposed to buy a new graphic card, but wich one on the ppc64 arch??

[Gura]

Hello
Y have a Powerbook 6,8 with nVidia chipset. Y have a problem with hibernate-script. If I use hibernate script or echo -n disk > /sys/power/state the laptop, it suspend to disk correctly. When I boot again the laptop:
a) I use the Open Firmware Framebuffer (offb or ofonly) and the laptop hibernate and wake up correctly, but brightness control doesn't work.
b) I use nVidia Framebuffer (nvidiafb). The brightness color work, and the laptop hibernate correctly, but wake up don't work.

Code: Select all

eth0 suspending, WakeOnLan disabled

In the common.conf of hibernate-script package, I configured:

Code: Select all

DisableWriteCacheOn /dev/hda 
UnloadModules ohci1394 ieee1394 usbhid ehci_hcd ohci_hcd appletouch therm_adt746x 
LoadModulesFromFile /etc/modules 
DownInterfaces eth0

Anybody has able to suspend to disk and wake up the PowerBook 6,8 with nVidia 5200Go correctly?

Thanks, and sorry by my bad english.

[Shan]

As I understand it suspend to ram ("sleep") doesn't work at all yet with nVidia chipsets; just ATi.

[Gura]

Yes, but I ask by the suspend to disk ("hibernate"). I believe that it is possible....

I wait for opinions and suggestions

Thanks

[Gura]

Oh yeah! It is apparently solved. As it failed when initializing the graphic card, and PPC need always a framebuffer console (or not?) I deduced that the problem is /dev/fb0, created by nvidiafb driver (built-in).

I modified /etc/hibernate/common.conf and I added:

# DisableWriteCacheOn /dev/hda
IncompatibleDevices /dev/fb0

[Shan]

Sorry, I missed that at the end of your message.

Anyways, if you haven't already, you might want to look at this thread. Theres also the Gentoo-wiki