Nouveau Driver Comes to Kernel 2.6.33
Good news for anyone with a NVIDIA graphics card: the Nouveau driver goes into Kernel 2.6.33 and supports DRM.
Nouveau is the free driver mainly developed by Red Hat with 2D and partial 3D support for the NVIDIA graphics cards. The nv driver currently used for 2D support is fairly old and leaves most NVIDIA cards well below their full capabilities.
Nouveau developers have now appealed to have the code of about 36,000 lines taken up in Kernel version 2.6.33, which was not previously possible in that the driver was still comprised of proprietary code, albeit a very small part. The team around David Airlie and Ben Skeggs has since outsourced this part (the ctx_voodoo microcode) in firmware that can be subsequently loaded on the current GeForce 6 cards.
The driver will first land in the staging tree, which Greg Kroah-Hartman maintains, as the drm-nouveau-pony branch. It will then flow about one or two versions later into the main branch. With the inclusion into the kernel and DRM support, most distros will shortly switch to the Nouveau driver as the standard for NVIDIA cards. Up to now only Fedora had adopted the driver that had been long classified as experimental.
Source: phoronix.com.
Issue 244/2021
Buy this issue as a PDF
News
-
Another New Linux Laptop has Arrived
Slimbook has released a monster of a Linux gaming laptop.
-
Mozilla VPN Now Available for Linux
The promised subscription-based VPN service from Mozilla is now available for the Linux platform.
-
Wayland and New App Menu Coming to KDE
The 2021 roadmap for the KDE desktop environment includes some exciting features and improvements.
-
Deepin 20.1 has Arrived
Debian-based Deepin 20.1 has been released with some interesting new features.
-
CloudLinux Commits Over 1 Million Dollars to CentOS Replacement
An open source, drop-in replacement for CentOS is on its way.
-
Linux Mint 20.1 Beta has Been Released
The first beta of Linux Mint, Ulyssa, is now available for downloading.
-
Manjaro Linux 20.2 has Been Unleashed
The latest iteration of Manjaro Linux has been released with a few interesting new features.
-
Patreon Project Looks to Bring Linux to Apple Silicon
Developer Hector Martin has created a patreon page to fund his work on developing a port of Linux for Apple Silicon Macs.
-
A New Chrome OS-Like Ubuntu Remix is Now Available
Ubuntu Web looks to be your Chrome OS alternative.
-
System76 Refreshes the Galago Pro Laptop
Linux hardware maker has revamped one of their most popular laptops.