Finally, a Linux distribution gets proprietary drivers right.
For those of you that aren’t fully versed on GPLv2 vs GPLv3 wars, and all the other open source wars… the Linux community has been having trouble with graphics drivers and various other device drivers. Specifically, they refuse to include drivers made by NVIDIA and ATI, due to their status as closed-source drivers.
Both the driver makers say that they need to keep these drivers proprietary, because they contain code that could be exploited by the competition (in competitor’s products). So, until now, Linux has been devoid of real 3D hardware acceleration.
Ubuntu 8.04 ends that. The first time software updates are checked, a user is prompted with an offer to “Install Proprietary Device Drivers” which then installs the drivers as part of a system software update. Was that so hard?
Now if we could just start work on that packaging problem. Well, maybe not.
DId you miss Gutsy. They offered this feature in the 7.10 release and were starting to implement into 7.04.
I used both… the notification never appeared on any of my systems. Granted, I was virtualizing it much more (painless dual boot removed that need), but even when native I never saw it.
I’m sure this has been in-the-works for awhile, but this is the first version it actually worked for me.
It never came on the updates for me but it popped up with a bubble saying that you were using restricted hardware and it could download the drivers for you. With virtualizing it wont show because Ubuntu has built in alot of that stuff. But its strange that it never came up with that before when u had it natively
Yeah, I know exactly the bubble you’re talking about. Never saw it in native on 7.10.
Once you enable the restricted-license drivers, they will update/manage themselves inside of Update Manager… that’s why I was referencing the update part.