In about 2 months time the new Linux kernel, 2.6.33 will be released and among its new features is a reverse-engineered driver for Nvidia graphics chipsets.

Jonathan Corbet, Linux kernel contributor, the lead author of Linux Device Drivers, and co-founder of LWN.net told Computerworld Linux kernel 2.6.33 is "pretty well along in production".

The driver has been reverse-engineered for Nvidia graphics chipsets (a major part of the desktop market uses these chipsets).
Nvidia doesn’t cooperate in terms of open-source drivers (only propiarity drivers) so the effort has involved about a dozen developers from all over the world.

"It has been a master reverse engineering effort," Jonathan Corbet said. "In the last year we’ve seen a great deal of work done on graphics drivers."

Linux kernel 2.6.33 will include dynamic ftrace, which allows a system administrator to add a probe to the system and see what's happening and answer questions about the operating system and user programs, including mission-critical applications. This is comparable to DTrace in the Sun Solaris OS.