NVIDIA Doesn't Expect To Have Linux 5.9 Driver Support For Another Month

[oiaohm]

I thought we were discussing NVIDIA's troubles with GPL obsessed kernel developers.

The hate of Nvidia is not that simple. The thing you missed is it was as the ruling in china spread though the Linux kernel developers came aware GPL separation has to be more strictly enforced.

Turns out the fact that NVIDIA wants to earn money off people who like to use their consumer products in a business environment* is a deadly sin.

If I obey that rule I cannot use Nvidia at all. There is a problem with their cards.

* And virtualizing Windows just to play games?

Its not just for games. Adobe creative cloud applications like premier and photoshop in fact use the GPU. Even MS Office excel in different places will use the GPU. Since you have not done this you don't understand what you require.

Why can't you just boot into Windows straight away?

Because this does not work in many workflows. Like you will have a case where you have drawing in photoshop that has what is wished for in server side. Of course since server side is Linux you need Linux on the bare metal to be testing. So boot into windows straight way would result in need 2 computers instead of one.

Why all the unnecessary complications and hassles?

This is because you are ignoring the complications in the work case where you are needing todo stuff on Linux at the same time as accessing stuff on windows. Microsoft is not adding WSL2 to windows 10 for no reason. Lot of us are not bitting because hyper-v is the wrong hypervisor to match up to hosting so using WSL2 will give deceptive results.

Besides virtualization incurs a performance penalty and offers less than perfect behavior.

That exactly true and it also the reason why we will be virtualizing windows inside Linux. If you end product is going to be something Linux based and your reference material is coming in on software that is Windows based the correct workflow configuration is windows virtualized inside Linux. So that imperfect behaviour of the virtual machine does not effect your end result.

The performance penalty depends on the problem. For a GPU bound program the overhead of the virtualization may not matter at all. Yes photoshop doing different things end up GPU bound.

GPU bound workflows is where the current Nvidia mix of cards falls down for use using virtual machines. Like photoshop is a good example here to show the problem. Yes it supports opencl and opengl shaders so in theory it should be just as good on consumer/desktop cards as Nvidia server and workstation cards. There is a problem the opengl shader route is better optimised than the opencl route. You Nvidia consumer/desktop and server/workstation cards have basically the same size bit if silicon inside but your mix of cores is different. Consumer/desktop have more shader cores and less compute cores and you server/workstation have more compute and less shader cores. This is one of the insane locations where if you obey the rule that you will not use consumer products in a business environment the fastest business grade card choice is a AMD pro card and of course this is going to be slower than Windows on bare metal with a Nvidia consumer gpu by a large margin with the current cards.

There are many reason why Linux users hate Nvidia. Its really simple to miss some hate is the code 43 problem. Yes code 43 is attempt to split their business and consumer clients so they can change more for the business card. That fine if the business cards in fact have an absolute equal to the consumer cards the problem is that does not exist.

The reality here is Nvidia is not giving Linux users cards that out the box are right for the Linux users needs. Why Linux users hope that Intel or AMD deliver a decent high end card is not only to go open source but also in the hope it will force Nvidia to correct their insanity by either releasing a new line of cards or removing the 43 code error.

[zexelon]

I have run nvidia consumer grade cards in VM's for a long time now. I have a dev environ running a 1070 in a vm right now and its been perfectly stable. The same machine also has a pair of M40's in it, and yes they dont require hacks to use in production and that is nice.

But to be honest, VM'ing windows with GPU pass through is 100% an edge case on desktop. I did it for about 5 years between KVM and Xen and yes it works and it has a certain "coolness" factor to it, but now I am just back to dual booting. Its just easier and more sane to maintain.

I think Error 43 wont be going away any time soon, but its more of a warning this could go baddly than anything else.

[tildearrow]

* And virtualizing Windows just to play games? Why can't you just boot into Windows straight away?

Because Windows is the slowest operating system ever made, or at least when it comes to disk operations.
Doing something simple takes too long, and sometimes even clicking takes too long.

[oiaohm]

I have run nvidia consumer grade cards in VM's for a long time now. I have a dev environ running a 1070 in a vm right now and its been perfectly stable. The same machine also has a pair of M40's in it, and yes they dont require hacks to use in production and that is nice.

But to be honest, VM'ing windows with GPU pass through is 100% an edge case on desktop. I did it for about 5 years between KVM and Xen and yes it works and it has a certain "coolness" factor to it, but now I am just back to dual booting. Its just easier and more sane to maintain.

I find windows in VM with AMD cards not a problem. Dual booting is not useful for the case you have reference files from designers using windows that you need to look at while doing the Linux work. Ok I could solve it with 2 complete computers on desk but that another form of waste but then you don't have copy past between vm to host and other useful things.

So its not just a coolness thing sometimes it the right workflow thing. The reality that code 43 by setting KVM and Xen right can be worked around. I guess you also found that the M40 with particular windows desktop applications don't perform as well as if you use a 1070 or a AMD card.

Its the hard point that desktop applications are more often designed for your consumer grade cards than you business/enterprise ones. This causes issue that you really need to provide VM at times with the card type the application was built for. This is where Nvidia is being a jackass.

Mxgpu from AMD and GVT-g from intel allows using 1 graphics card with multi VM this feature is product restricted makes sense. But saying X model cards can not be used with VM tech really does not make sense any more.

Please note nvidia code 43 has bitten those at times running WSL2 because a form of hyper-v is activated to allow WSL2 it work under windows. So code 43 is not just screwing up Linux desktop users either.

Be it a Linux Desktop or a Windows desktop some form of hypervisor is coming more and more likely so having driver fail because it detects hypervisor/virtual machine is now coming wrong.

[mdedetrich]

Too bad you didn't have logitech wireless gamepad. It was nearly impossible to make it work in crap like WIndows 7. It works out of the box in Linux.

I just had a quick look and this was due to logitech not providing a driver for Windows, so you can blame logitech here. Same problem as countless devices that don't work on Linux because it has no driver.

If you modify the generic XInput driver to work with the logitech gamepad then Windows works with it fine.

Tell this to those two freaks blind man.

I am pretty sure I know who I am speaking to.

Because Windows is the slowest operating system ever made, or at least when it comes to disk operations.
Doing something simple takes too long, and sometimes even clicking takes too long.

Actually the issue here isn't to do with NTFS, per say. The actual problem is that NTFS allows other programs to install hooks whenever a file operation happens (classic example here is anti virus) and this slows down the FS operations a lot.

Of course backwards compatibility is the problem here, if Windows fixed this then it would break a lot of programs. This issue was made very publicly visible with Node.js on WIndows 10 (node.js stores the entire dependency tree of its program in files) and there was little that could be done to solve the problem.

A fair point, but you will agree a closed driver running on top of an open kernel does not impact the kernel's future (or present) availability.

Its actually hilarious because if Linux had a Hybrid/Micro Kernel design this wouldn't even be a discussion. The NVidia blob would be sitting in userspace (or Ring 0 environment) like any other program and would communicate with the kernel via some interface.

This issue has less to do with GPL than people think, its more to do with Linux sticking with an arguably archaic technical design for their kernel (every other kernel out there that has significant usage is either micro or hybrid kernel).

[mlau]

Its actually hilarious because if Linux had a Hybrid/Micro Kernel design this wouldn't even be a discussion. The NVidia blob would be sitting in userspace (or Ring 0 environment) like any other program and would communicate with the kernel via some interface.

The issue here is that linux refuses to carry around outdated interfaces when better ones are available, and that is completely unrelated to monolithic-vs-microkernel.

[Volta]

I just had a quick look and this was due to logitech not providing a driver for Windows, so you can blame logitech here. Same problem as countless devices that don't work on Linux because it has no driver.

If you modify the generic XInput driver to work with the logitech gamepad then Windows works with it fine.

The same rule can be applied to problematic hardware on Linux. I wouldn't say countless in this case. Most of the hardware runs fine out of the box on Linux while you have spend some time to make it run on Windows. I made it work by modifying xbox driver.

I am pretty sure I know who I am speaking to.

Won't repeat myself.

[omer666]

While this discussion seems to be ridiculous, some points are being made nonetheless. I don't really have any sympathy for birdie nor do I agree with him, but I have to confess that some of the attacks that are being made about Nvidia are quite unfair.

On the other hand, there is more than just licensing issues leading to hatred directed towards Nvidia. This company is quite not consumer friendly and has never been ashamed of charging their clients a lot more, and sometimes for features barely used at the time of their release, or going overkill with cards that eat enough electricity to power a little house for a week in 2 hours of gaming.
I am well aware there is an "enthusiast" market, and it's the same people who buy extreme-series Intel Core i9, but lately it seems it's become Nvidia's only target.

The other thing that is getting on people's nerves is that Nvidia has been refusing to comply with many open source projects, the latest being Wayland's compositing protocol. I don't mind having a closed-source driver, in fact I think its quality is top-notch. I have been gaming on Linux for quite some time now and it seems people are quick to forget that something like 5 years ago, gaming with an AMD card on Linux was not even thinkable. But when it slows adoption of Wayland or when it takes years to correct a repaint bug, yeah, it's boring me.

That's why I think my next rig is gonna be AMD for both CPU and GPU. I don't trust Nvidia anymore.

[birdie]

While this discussion seems to be ridiculous, some points are being made nonetheless. I don't really have any sympathy for birdie nor do I agree with him, but I have to confess that some of the attacks that are being made about Nvidia are quite unfair.

I don't need your sympathy or your nod. Even when surrounded by Open Source fans, even while I've been using Linux for more than two decades, I still have my wits about me and I don't blindly hate companies because they have their own PoV. The only thing I cannot forgive NVIDIA for is their reluctance (which is yet to be explained) to release firmware for their GPUs in order to let nouveau work properly. Hating is stupid and counterproductive anyways.

On the other hand, there is more than just licensing issues leading to hatred directed towards Nvidia. This company is quite not consumer friendly and has never been ashamed of charging their clients a lot more, and sometimes for features barely used at the time of their release, or going overkill with cards that eat enough electricity to power a little house for a week in 2 hours of gaming.
I am well aware there is an "enthusiast" market, and it's the same people who buy extreme-series Intel Core i9, but lately it seems it's become Nvidia's only target.

Do not buy NVIDIA's products. End of story. Everyone's happy. Again, we have another disgruntled person who can buy AMD GPUs and instead of talking about GPL issues, is talking about something completely different. Speaking of "going overkill with cards that eat electricity" - AMD has released similar cards in the past and at the same time NVIDIA does release cards with modest power consumption. In fact their 12nm cards are still more power efficient than AMD's 7nm offerings, so your criticism is completely misplaced:


Much touted RX 500 series cards are horrible in terms of power consumption, thermals, noise and effectiveness.

The other thing that is getting on people's nerves is that Nvidia has been refusing to comply with many open source projects, the latest being Wayland's compositing protocol. I don't mind having a closed-source driver, in fact I think its quality is top-notch. I have been gaming on Linux for quite some time now and it seems people are quick to forget that something like 5 years ago, gaming with an AMD card on Linux was not even thinkable. But when it slows adoption of Wayland or when it takes years to correct a repaint bug, yeah, it's boring me.

Wayland is still a toy, incomplete and doesn't offer benefits for most users out there while still having rough edges. I don't understand why NVIDIA has to support or "comply" with it. What if you created a brand new yet another graphics server tomorrow? Should NVIDIA also support it?

That's why I think my next rig is gonna be AMD for both CPU and GPU. I don't trust Nvidia anymore.

That's called fanaticism and blind company allegiance. I buy products based only on their merits (for a GPU it's drivers quality, performance, thermals, price and noise), not on how fans are pitching them. I had RX 5600 XT for five months and I don't want it back.

Again, remember that the Linux desktop market share is less than 2%, so maybe Open Source fans could exercise modesty instead of screaming, threatening and showing resentment.

[cynical]

In other words, if you disregard anything that's about serious work, it's all peachy

At the same time, I see where birdie is coming from. Compared to Windows or macOS, which are all about the desktop, Linux desktop is full of papercuts.

I guess if you restrict serious work to that narrow range of activity, you have a point.

Windows and MacOS have their own papercuts. If they didn't, I would be using them instead.