Nvidia to drop support for the 'nv' driver....
 

It would appear Nvidia are to drop support for the 'nv' driver,recommending using the Vesa driver instead until you install their proprietary driver.
Read the article here:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...kills_nv&num=1

No worries, nouveau is almost stable enough to use.

Let's hope so.
Also just found that Debian has nouveau in the Experimental repository:

http://packages.debian.org/experimen...-video-nouveau

Well, "almost". I believe it has been included in Fedora, but then Fedora is an experimental distro anyway.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=NzE3OA

Yes, i agree.
I think it says something that nouveau isn't even in Unstable/Sid yet.

Nouveau is certainly more stable than the proprietary nvidia driver

It probably is, although I haven't tried it yet.

Can't say i have had any problems with the proprietary driver.
I can't comment on nouveau,i've not tried it yet
Do you have anything to substantiate this?.

It's open source, and the nvidia driver is almost always unstable. No hard proof, I wonder how one would get such proof.

This nouveau driver - it's been popping up in discussions about nvidia. I haven't had a chance to look into it yet. Does it support 3d acceleration? If so, and if it does that well - I can see no reason for staying with the proprietary nvidia one. Mind you, I've never had any serious issues with the binary blob, but obviously if the two of them are equally good, I'd always go for the open source one.

I'd say currently,no.
The following comes from the nouveau wiki:

http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/

Looks like we'll be using the proprietary driver for a while yet......

It's a pity, but, well, I've been using the proprietary driver for the last 5 years, I can still wait a few more.

FWIW, a couple points addressed from my own experience & reading, and some opinion/thoughts (and a bit of a rant?):

1) The blob driver (for me) has never been unstable. Quite the opposite, it's been reliable pretty much 100%, as in, it causes me no stability problems that I've known of, over 3+ years now.

1.5) The nv driver on the other hand, when I have used it, is crap anyhow. Crippled crap, with very minimal functionality (i.e. the bare minimum) and it is crashy (maybe not for everyone..). VESA driver works better for me than nv driver.

2) Gallium (if I remember what I've read) is the 3D acceleration component of Nouveau. It may or may not work for you. As for "not supported" RE Gallium, it means, "If it doesn't yet work for you, do not complain to us yet -- we're still developing it and we're fully aware it may not work for you."

2.5) For clarity: The driver nvidia is dropping (to whatever extent) is the 'nv' driver, not the blob driver. They want us to use the blob (but first use VESA driver while limping to their website, begging to get blobbed).

3) I REALLY hope the best for Nouveau. I would love for it to replace my blob one day. As yet, it would be totally unfair for me to comment about Nouveau specifically, as I have not yet gotten it to work for me (as yet unknown reasons).

4) Blob does *some* things very well, and others not so well or not at all:
-- blob is a rather huge download -- nouveau is not so much.
-- blob is very fast -- nouveau will get there (some reports indicate on certain hardware it is VERY close to the same)!
-- blob lacks RandR support; I expect nouveau will support it fully.
-- blob handles multiple monitors (though not via RandR); nouveau, I can't say, but expect it will with RandR.
-- blob handles multiple cards, but for reasons unknown to me, this support has holes in it (RandR again?).
-- blob is closed source blob; nouveau is OSS.

I believe Nouveau has a ways to go yet before they have a really good cross-section of what blob currently provides, combined with what drivers for other hardware provide for their respective hardware-- but go go go for it!! Development is steady and making great strides.
I for one have a fair amount of invested $$$-wise in nVidia, and I like my hardware. I would really like to see FOSS fully-functional driver system. And many others surely do too.
If you have nvidia hardware, and like your hardware, and want it to work for you like everyone else's hardware works, then test nouveau on your stable OS and provide them feedback.

It has been shown many times over the years that nVidia (the corporation) is not interested in supporting OSS development efforts of drivers for their hardware, and/or is not interested in providing a working OSS solution. Linux market share (those running Linux, using nvidia hardware, and wanting OSS drivers) is too small for nVidia to care about in this regard, and also too small for any type of boycot (i.e. take your $$$ elsewhere) to have the desired effect-- they prefer to obfuscate code & protect "IP and patents". So, Nouveau is our best (only) way to get what we want. Support Nouveau as best you can.

Sasha

+1
As I mentioned before, I didn't have problems with the nvidia binary blob (the same can't be said about my laptop and the ATI driver) so I'm generally happy with its performance. Mind you, I don't do any proper graphics stuff.
On the other hand, as you pointed out, we invested some money in nvidia hardware and you'd expect something in return (ie. proper support), wouldn't you? If nvidia doesn't see us as a 'worthy' market, so be it.
We have to hope that one day the nouveau folks treat us to a fully functional and stable driver.

I've been flamed for saying this before, but I'll say it again. I like the NVIDIA proprietary driver. It works very well for anything I've ever needed to do with it. While Nvidia going full open source on the driver and getting it into the kernel may be a good thing, I don't see it as imperative. I don't think it can be said that NVIDIA doesn't consider linux to be an important market sector. They provide a very good (if closed source) driver to support their hardware. They maintian that driver and they update it regularly. What do you call that if it's not "support"? The way I see it, Nvidia has the right to do whatever they want with their hardware, and they've chosen to support linux/unix with a well performing proprietary driver. I'm glad that they've at least done that. As for the nv driver, it was broken anyway.