When the internal ABIs change, then it is not possible to merely fix the "glue", because nobody knows how the glue is used by the proprietary part. For proprietary drivers like nvidia.ko, it doesn't work quite the same. For open source drivers, especially those distributed with the kernel, these changes are nearly trivial to fix since the entire chain of calls between drivers and other parts of the kernel can be reviewed quite easily. These all need to work nicely together as otherwise the user might be faced with data loss (through kernel panics, X servers crashing with unsaved data in X applications) and even hardware failure (overheating and other power management related issues should spring to mind).įrom time to time, a new kernel release changes the internal ABI for drivers, which means all drivers that use those ABIs must be changed accordingly. The kernel module ( nvidia.ko) consists of a proprietary part (commonly known as the "binary blob") which drives the graphics chip(s), and an open source part (the "glue") which at runtime acts as intermediary between the proprietary part and the kernel. It builds as a module, so the kernel must support the loading of kernel modules (see below). If the system has a card that needs these drivers then it is recommended to use the nouveau driver.Īs mentioned above, the NVIDIA kernel driver installs and runs against the current kernel. Note that Gentoo does not provide legacy drivers before version 470.xx.
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