Opinion:

I don’t usually write pure ‘op/ed’ pieces, but this situation – I think – warrants further comment…

I am becoming concerned at the apparent inability of NVIDIA to adequately support Linux..    In the past, the company was able to very quickly produce a driver version that supported the latest changes to the Linux kernel, but not any more, it seems..

The 3.11 kernel has been out for very nearly two months, now, and there is still no official released version of a NVIDIA Linux driver that supports it.    The recent release of driver version 331.17 was an embarrassment, and only patched some of the code (for kernel 3.12 support) and missed the trivial change needed for kernel 3.11 and 3.12 support.

The infrequent posts from NVIDIA staffers on the DevZone forum made reference – in the past – to a ‘Kernel Guru’, but if this is true, then that person must be busy on ‘Special Projects’, as they seem to have had no input  on driver releases for some time now..

Assuming that someone at NVIDIA is still monitoring the Linux section of their DevZone forum, one can only hope that they get the messages of frustration that are appearing there…    Now that there is a real probability that high-end mainstream gaming is coming to the Linux platform (thanks to Steam, and others) one would think that Linux kernel support would be a high priority – more so now, than in the past!

Robert Gadsdon.   October 30, 2013.