Back in March an announcement came out of NVIDIA as they were getting ready to launch the GeForce GTX 400 "Fermi" graphics cards that they would be dropping support for the xf86-video-nv driver.

The next version of Linux is not only the first to offer the Nouveau KMS graphics driver for NVIDIA graphics hardware, it also comes with a multitude of improvements for the two AMD/ATI and Intel graphics drivers which support Kernel-based Mode Setting (KMS).

As we shared a few days ago, Fedora 13 will provide OpenGL acceleration support for NVIDIA graphics cards via the Nouveau driver when installing the Mesa DRI experimental drivers package. There is finally 3D acceleration for NVIDIA graphics cards using an open-source driver on Linux without having to depend upon NVIDIA's official binary driver.

Nvidia announced a few days ago, on its forum, a new version of its proprietary driver for the Nvidia graphics cards. Nvidia 195.36.24 adds support for new GPUs, and fixes a few issues. But the most important thing is that Nvidia 195.36.24 has support for X Server 1.8.

AMD just announced that its upcoming Catalyst 7.9 drivers for Linux will not only finally provide support to HD 2000 series on the OS, but it is also claimed to host the most significant series of enhancements ever for Linux users. As far as AMD graphics drivers are concerned, that is.

One month ago Nvidia released their 180.22 video drivers for Linux OSes, which brought initial support for Linux kernel 2.6.28. Last night (February 11th) Nvidia proudly presented yet another improved version of their proprietary video driver for the Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris open source operating systems.

Prior to launching their next-generation graphics processors, NVIDIA dropped their obfuscated open-source driver and have said they will not provide any open-source support at all for their GeForce GTX 400 "Fermi" series as they just recommended their customers use the X.Org VESA driver until they can install the official binary Linux driver.

While there is now DRM support in the Linux 2.6.33 kernel for the Nouveau driver that carries the bits for kernel mode-setting, 2D (EXA) acceleration, and other fundamental functions on NVIDIA graphics processors, the Gallium3D driver still is incomplete. However, a new Mesa DRI driver has emerged for Nouveau that provides *working* 3D support for older NVIDIA hardware.

Linux developers demand open drivers, docs and development processes, NVIDIA refuses to open their drivers, arguing that the technical quality is not a problem, and that the driver contains intellectual property they wish to protect. ATI/AMD has shown the intellectual property argument is at least not universally applicable to graphics hardware. Let's also clear up a misconception about the technical quality of closed NVIDIA drivers.