NVIDIA Wants To Be A Better Linux Patron

[XorEaxEax]

Maybe I have my numbers wrong but my understanding is that Windows is top on servers. But all I have are IDC (non-revenue) numbers which showed Windows at 40%, Linux at 30%, and "other UNIX" at 30%.

Aren't IDC numbers ONLY revenue-based, as in servers being SOLD by companies. Given that Linux is free there's obviously tons of companies who doesn't buy a ready-made server with Linux installed but rather install it on their own hardware. And even with these numbers you cite how can you claim Linux has 'marginal' success on the server front?

Okay, you got me on the embedded sector. It's in keyboards and routers too. Credit where credit is due.

And TV's, media players/set-top units, navigation devices etc etc, Linux is huge in the embedded sector.

If one were to look at the mobile market, you can see that a Linux kernel isn't necessary for success.

And obviously neither is a proprietary OS necessary for success, what's your point?

It seems that Android success depends on its vendors protecting their IP with closed source licenses.

What makes you draw this conclusion?

Why couldn't the same reasoning apply to the desktop?

NVidia is 'protecting their IP' on the Linux desktop, so obviously that's not the problem for Linux desktop adoption, the problem is (just like it is the problem for OSX or any other OS wanting to compete on the desktop) that people get Windows when they buy a new computer and they see no compelling reason to switch as the OS is generally just something they use to launch themselves into Facebook, play games or watch movies and/or tv series they've downloaded with utorrent.

There are a lot of things I love about Linux, and some that I do not.

I can't recall you writing one positive thing about Linux, so let's just say I don't believe you at all.

I would love to see a Linux distro become the #1 desktop OS.

Personally I don't give a shit if Linux ever makes it big on the desktop, I'm using it because it works great for me, not because I 'identify' myself with it and think it's success will be my success or some nonsense. I appreciate it for working out-of-the-box, for saying no to f***ing proprietary drivers which is nothing but a artificial lock-in method and f***ing insane given that I actually PAY for the hardware and should be given every possibility to run it on any architecture/system I wish.

I also like Linux for the great performance it has together with extremely small system resource usage, that it's a developers OS where you can find just about any language/framework available and well-supported, the amazing speed in which it's developed and the great features that development brings, features which thanks to the GPL licencing makes it back to all Linux end users.

But I recognize that there are certain realities that have to be respected before that accomplishment could be met.

Bullshit, if there's anything Linux proves it's that bending over for proprietary drivers is not necessary for success. Looking past the holdout that is NVidia, companies have decided that being supported by Linux is a worthwhile investment, given that Linux is becoming so big in so many areas. Even NVidia which obviously doesn't care one lick for 'Linux' desktop users feels the need to support it with quality drivers so as not to miss out on the industry areas where discrete GPU's are in heavy use. Meanwhile I'm certain that solutions like Ivy Bridge et al will continue to shrink the desktop market for discrete GPU's until they are fundamentally obsolete amongst anything but hardcore gamers and professionals relying on their performance.

Windows 7 has shipped 600m copies alone, and that's not even a free OS. And it's a good operating system... not my cup of tea, personally... but I'll give it respect.

Again it comes with just about every computer sold, how many people actually go out and buy a copy of Windows 7? They either get it when they buy a new machine or they pirate it.

Symbian, QNX and iOS are all good operating systems. Do they not deserve respect because they're closed source?

What relevance does this have to the discussion at hand?

This forum is overflowing with bitching about NVIDIA, like somehow Linux is being held back by the company.

NVidia functionality is held back due to their refusal to provide a open source driver which can be integrated into the kernel, the functionality on other architectures than x86 which Linux supports is also held back. NVidia putting up an artificial barrier limiting the systems on which NVidia hardware can be used indeed holds back it's useability. Furthermore proprietary drivers cause problems when they cause system instability as they are black boxes and thus impossible to correctly diagnose.

If there's something I 'love' about Linux it's their no-nonsense policy on proprietary drivers which is nothing but a f***ing chore for developers and end-users alike. There's nothing magically inherent to proprietary drivers other than the full documentative support and skill of the developers behind it. If NVidia open sourced their proprietary driver tomorrow it wouldn't suddenly get worse because it's open source. It would likely be better as now it would be able to directly integrate with the Linux driver framework.

Of course this will not happen, NVidia will continue to provide a strong proprietary driver for it's industrial GPU customers running Linux while not giving a shit about the Linux desktop (optimus, heeello?).

Thankfully the Nouveau devs are doing an incredible job, improving both performance and feature compability at a steady pace.

[dashcloud]

GPU-accelerated video editing

If Nvidia could make sure VDPAU is capable of supporting GPU-accelerated video editing, that would be great.

Also, updated drivers for Tegra 2 would be great- especially for those of us with the Viewsonic G Tablet.

Otherwise, maybe open up more on their older mobile chipsets.

[crazycheese]

There is a few "major" ways they can improve linux support without opening up the hardware.
...

1. At least provide some Partial opening up of the hardware on "critical" information for Open Source Developers. This information for example could be on the power management systems. After all, the Power management system would be critical in a sense that an improper setting could cause the video cards in mass to die due to overheating because of the driver having an incorrect combination of voltages, gpu frequency, and graphics card fan settings.
   ...

I have a feeling, the reason why overclocking or frequency changing is not available in proprietary under linux for fermi and up is not really lack of time.
But its due to them not wanting nouveau devs to reverse and unlock the card full performance mode (ie reclocking).
Because this would lead to much wider usage of the nouveau. And hence nvidia cards are much less dependent on driver optimizations, than amd - nouveau performance would be very competitive with that of blob.

This is strange, but I think its the true reason they don't implement it.

[crazycheese]

NVIDIA is exploiting Linux and doesn't play by the rules.
How is it difficult to understand that lots of FOSS people doesn't like that?

First come usable performance, then come opensource-ness.
This is the priority list from people who actually buy mid-high cards.

This results in major (and useless) conflict between FOSS- and this group of people.
But I guess - if you don't like nvidia - don't buy it. Buy something else that you think is better.

I don't see how nvidia is exploiting linux here. Got good opensource driver on performance hardware? - you'll be swarmed by buyers instantly. Its not the case now, though.

[Xake]

There is no Linux success outside of supercomputers, marginal server success and super-proprietary Android devices.

And virtualization-servers like XEN. and embedded. and SAN-servers. And data centers overall....
No, no success at all...

[allquixotic]

And virtualization-servers like XEN. and embedded. and SAN-servers. And data centers overall....
No, no success at all...

I agree with you, and I'll add that the server success is not "marginal" at all. Today, a majority of internet-facing web servers, email servers and even gaming servers are running Linux. It's extremely well-suited to these tasks, as well as less common ones such as streaming media (icecast), serving files over ftp/bittorrent/whatever, and "compute-heavy" tasks (with or without a GPU).

I work at a large enterprise. I asked around with our server guys, and about 25% of our server infrastructure runs Linux. I asked why more of it doesn't run Linux, and they said that they're planning to move most of their existing Windows infrastructure over to Linux within 5 years, but they haven't done so yet because it requires a lot of planning and red tape. So they definitely want to embrace it but they just need time and money to break away from Microsoft's vendor lock-in. It'll be better in the long run.

[johnc]

I agree with you, and I'll add that the server success is not "marginal" at all. Today, a majority of internet-facing web servers, email servers and even gaming servers are running Linux. It's extremely well-suited to these tasks, as well as less common ones such as streaming media (icecast), serving files over ftp/bittorrent/whatever, and "compute-heavy" tasks (with or without a GPU).

I work at a large enterprise. I asked around with our server guys, and about 25% of our server infrastructure runs Linux. I asked why more of it doesn't run Linux, and they said that they're planning to move most of their existing Windows infrastructure over to Linux within 5 years, but they haven't done so yet because it requires a lot of planning and red tape. So they definitely want to embrace it but they just need time and money to break away from Microsoft's vendor lock-in. It'll be better in the long run.

Like I said... I'm open to numbers. I couldn't find much except for the ones I quoted earlier.

I would love to know what the actual market share is.

[hal2k1]

Maybe I have my numbers wrong but my understanding is that Windows is top on servers. But all I have are IDC (non-revenue) numbers which showed Windows at 40%, Linux at 30%, and "other UNIX" at 30%. I'm looking for better numbers so if you have a (reliable) source, I'll definitely correct myself.

Okay, you got me on the embedded sector. It's in keyboards and routers too. Credit where credit is due.

If one were to look at the mobile market, you can see that a Linux kernel isn't necessary for success.

Android uses Linux.

Linux has top market share in: supercomputers, embedded (e.g. TVs, media players, cameras, microwaves, GPS units, automobiles et al), infrastructure (e.g. routers, web servers, email servers), massively parallel server farms (e.g. Google, facebook), point-of-sale and mobile, and it has a major share (if not the major share) of enterprise servers.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/03/red-hat/

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-28/news/31248385_1_open-source-red-hat-jim-zemlin

Just about the only markets where Linux is not the dominant player are desktops (Windows) and tablets (iOS).

An average family might run one copy of Windows on their desktop computer, another on a laptop, one or two copies of iOS on their ipads, and perhaps a dozen copies of Linux on the remainder of their household electronics.

[hal2k1]

Like I said... I'm open to numbers. I couldn't find much except for the ones I quoted earlier.

I would love to know what the actual market share is.

Most of the consumer items which run Linux do not "advertise" the fact that they do run Linux. If a display with a graphics UI (e.g. a TV screen when you press any of the buttons on the remote) doesn't actually identify the OS, you can bet your bottom dollar that it isn't Windows, OSX or iOS, but rather it is Linux.

That makes it really hard to say what you mean by "market share", and who is doing the counting of "market share", and exactly what they are trying to achieve by their publishing of that figure.

If you are just curious, and you want to know the percentage of CPUs (which run an OS and have a graphics requirement) are those which run Linux, then my guess would be that well over 80% of the OSes running right now on the world's CPUs run a variant of Linux.

You won't find this out by reading published figures for "market share".

[V!NCENT]

Bypass the problem! Don't try to open up what can't be opened up! Instead, do something else with nVidia hardware, like supporting this:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA3OTI

What to take up to upper management:
Change CUDA from a 3dfx' Glide open source thing to a OpenGL-ish CUDA thing. What I mean by that is CONSORTIUM TO FORTIFY CUDA ACCEPTENCE BY MAKING IT AN OPEN STANDARD.

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If you can get the above two things done, that would definately improve your image in my book. In fact, I might even get interested in nVidia cards if that means having the IGP be my 3D desktop engine and nVidia my parrallel compute engine! If I can't have the open 3D nVidia acceleration, at least make me able to completely bypass it (turn it off) and make me use it otherwhise.

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It's nice to hear that there is some part inside of nVidia that wants change. You have my support if you can get the board to get behind the above.

PS: transfer the open kernel module + proprietary driver to a combination of Gdev kernel module and hook the proprietary driver into the Gdev infrastructure. Then it's solid gold. I can get the AMD Fusion to be the CPU+GPU and the nVidia card to be the 'IBM Cell' compute card'. And I could run the proprietary driver contained if need be, which must not fight against kernel components but work with them.