NVIDIA 495.44 Linux Driver Released With GBM Support

[birdie]

That's funny, because that's not an Nvidia problem, it's an X11 problem. Intel and AMD behave like this as well.

If you never noticed, maybe you are using Xfce without any compositor?

That's correct. Using compositing increases both my CPU and specially GPU power consumption. It looks fancy but it's mostly an annoyance and power costly at that.

Under Windows it's quite the opposite: compositing reduces both CPU and GPU utilization and power consumption.

[sarmad]

Done, it's done. Xorg officially dead

Not so soon. There are still other issues to iron out: reverse prime not working under Wayland (with nVidia at least), screen sharing not yet properly supported by many screen sharing apps.

[birdie]

Linus knows what you should do with it.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...tem&px=MTEyMTc

I would say sell it on Ebay and get an AMD or (when they are released) Intel Arc card so you can live free from the constraints of the closed driver.

The absolute majority of people who quote this didn't watch the actual clip. You may watch it for a change and get to know what it was about.

So here's the story for ya:

At the time when Optimus was not really supported or advertised at all, including any Linux compatibility, a young woman who felt intrepid, went ahead and intalled Linux on it. She complained to Linus why it didn't work. Imagine for a second someone buys a laptop to install HaikuOS on it and the OS doesn't support the hardware. Would any of lead HaikuOS developers say "F you Company_X" to any of OEMs involved? That would look weird to put it mildly.

Of course, lots of very vocal people in the Linux community treat Linus as their idol, God and a second father, and of course many started parroting the phrase. If anything it says nothing about NVIDIA but says a ton about Linus and his followers.

Does parroting this sentence make Linux better? Does it make the community look better? Does it make other unrelated people feel better about the Linux community? No! They think the Linux community is made of haters/lunatics who slander a successful company for no reasons and they might not be wrong. Again we are back to the question that too many people believe NVIDIA owes to the Linux community. This has never ceased to amaze me.

It's akin to joining some cult then going to a random bank and demanding money because you believe your cult is from God. You'll be arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned at best or shot dead at worst.

One of the main reasons why Linux/GNU is where it is is because too many fans of it are very vocal, spiteful and have humongous demands while doing nothing for open source. I can imagine many Phoronix or r/Linux readers are talented programmers, engineers, lawyers, etc. from the US - why don't you go to work for NVIDIA to try to change the company from the inside? Make them change their stance about Open Source? Nah, I guess it's too difficult. Saying "F you NVIDIA" is all so easy only it says nothing about the company but shows who you are. Even if Linus said it, it doesn't make it the right thing to say. He's been wrong, he's just a human being, not some ultimate entity with universal knowledge.

Remember, supporting Linux costs money.

Releasing open source drivers is even costlier. Both AMD and Intel have two separate teams of developers to develop their drivers: one is developing closed source, another open source drivers. NVIDIA decided against that.

[Myownfriend]

Of course, lots of very vocal people in the Linux community treat Linus as their idol, God and a second father, and of course many started parroting the phrase. If anything it says nothing about NVIDIA but says a ton about Linus and his followers.

Literally nobody thinks that. That's your conspiracy brain talking again. I remember arguing with a guy who believed in the world government and his response to anyone that tried to explain how that doesn't make any sense was to say "You LOVE the government." That's you right now with that take. They can't just be against something, they're the heroes in an epic war with religious cultists.

Does parroting this sentence make Linux better? Does it make the community look better?

Do you make anything better when you spend most of your time on forums defending Nvidia's bad moves, frequently spreading misinfo about Wayland and X, or acting like devs were assholes to you for kindly correcting you?

They repeat "Fuck Nvidia" because they agree with it and at least in their minds, they feel like they're pressuring Nvidia to improve and making it known that they're unhappy with Nvidia. What's your goal?

Does it make other unrelated people feel better about the Linux community? No! They think the Linux community is made of haters/lunatics who slander a successful company for no reasons and they might not be wrong.

Yes, all the non-Linux users that visit Phoronix. That make-believe demographic.

Again we are back to the question that too many people believe NVIDIA owes to the Linux community. This has never ceased to amaze me.

I've never seen anybody claim Nvidia "owes" the Linux community anything. They're speaking out of frustration not entitlement.

It's akin to joining some cult then going to a random bank and demanding money because you believe your cult is from God. You'll be arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned at best or shot dead at worst.

"ANTIFA IS COMING US! THEY'RE THAT EVIL SOCIALIST JOE BIDEN'S ARMY!" - birdie

[oiaohm]

Just until recently modesettings driver was Linux only invention, what were the point of supporting it if the rest of supported systems require non-modesetting driver?

Except that not the case. X11 x.org modesetting driver is a generic KMS/GBM driver.

https://freebsdfoundation.org/project/gem-kms-and-dri-support-for-intel-drivers/

If you call being 10 years old recently. Linux kernel got KMS/GBM in 2009 and the BSD got it basically 2 years latter.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/kernel_mode_setting

Note: The proprietary NVIDIA driver (since 364.12) also implements kernel mode-setting, but it does not use the built-in kernel implementation and it lacks an fbdev driver for the high-resolution console.

Yes 2016 Nvidia adds to their driver for Linux and FreeBSD kernel modesetting but then does not use the generic Linux/freeBSD kernel mode setting interfaces.

Windows requires kernel mode setting as well. There is not a OS that Nvidia supports that does not require modesetting.

The problem here is Nvidia has not wanted for Linux and Freebsd provide a driver providing the generic interfaces all other graphics drivers provide.

Sorry until recently claim absolutely does not hold water. Reality here Nvidia has been a brat who need to be pulled kicking and screaming to play nicely with everyone else on the Linux and BSD platforms.

Nvidia with wayland is being forced to provide generic API/ABI. The reality is these generic API/ABI are 10 years old on BSD platforms and 12 years old on Linux platforms.

Please nvidia unix binary drivers only support 3 platforms Linux, freebsd and Solaris. Linux for KMS/GBM is 2009 Freebsd for KMS/GBM is 2011 and Solaris for KMS/GBM is 2006. Yes those KMS interfaces are all based on Solaris one. Blacknova modesetting was not a Linux invention but a Solaris one.

Yes Nvidia told Solaris no in 2006 then Linux no in 2009 then no in 2011 to freebsd then hell we are doing our own thing in 2016 now finally 2021 we have to start conforming due to redhat and others say we are putting our foot down we are going Wayland and if you don't work stuff you Nvidia.

So basically 10 years of the three platforms of Unix drivers Nvidia supports all being on the same page with modesetting and Nvidia not playing ball.

Reality blacknova the until recently claim was not based in fact. 10 years is not recent.

[blacknova]

Reality blacknova the until recently claim was not based in fact. 10 years is not recent.

Ok, I was not aware solaris provided KMS, sure I know they had framebuffer interface, but how close it to current KMS I don't know. And I assumed that actually working KMS on FreeBSD was provided by their most recent push to adopt linux DRM and drivers, which is 3 or 4 years old.

[Myownfriend]

One of the main reasons why Linux/GNU is where it is is because too many fans of it are very vocal, spiteful and have humongous demands while doing nothing for open source. I can imagine many Phoronix or r/Linux readers are talented programmers, engineers, lawyers, etc. from the US - why don't you go to work for NVIDIA to try to change the company from the inside? Make them change their stance about Open Source? Nah, I guess it's too difficult. Saying "F you NVIDIA" is all so easy only it says nothing about the company but shows who you are. Even if Linus said it, it doesn't make it the right thing to say. He's been wrong, he's just a human being, not some ultimate entity with universal knowledge.

The best way to pressure a company is to support and work for large corporations where you won't have any say about what the company does anyway. /s

Also you literally bitch about things all day long without doing anything about them. Your big attempt to improve Wayland was to open an issue on it's Gitlab, say it should work like X11, and then complain when one person didn't agree with you. Did you propose an protocols? No. Of course not.

Remember, supporting Linux costs money.

Everything does. You need to pay programmers. That being said, it cost them money to support create and support EGLStreams. They had to write and maintain the EGLStreams backends for Mutter, Kwin, and XWayland... but they did it anyway. Nvidia has the money and they'll happy spend that money to be petty and proprietary because they feel it benefits them. Had they supported GBM a long time ago then they could have reaped the benefits of other people maintaining GBM and the backends that support it.

That being said. Nvidia has entire development platforms based around Linux and they supported GBM on those for awhile. That same platform is used in self-driving cars. Linux is a huge platform for Nvidia.

Releasing open source drivers is even costlier. Both AMD and Intel have two separate teams of developers to develop their drivers: one is developing closed source, another open source drivers. NVIDIA decided against that.

Accept it's not necessary for them to have two teams, that would be a company decision to make those two teams completely seperate. The nouveau driver also exist. It's not good but the project at least show that there's a ton of people who would contribute to an open source Nvidia driver that would offset some of the additional costs for Nvidia. Even providing documentation about their GPUs would have done a lot to help Nouveau improve and run at proper clock speeds but they couldn't even do that.

That being said, I don't want to shit on them now. Good on them for finally supporting GBM. Hopefully they support EGL_NATIVE_RENDERABLE in their next driver so that Nvidia users can use OBS in Wayland.

[oiaohm]

Imagine for a second someone buys a laptop to install HaikuOS on it and the OS doesn't support the hardware. Would any of lead HaikuOS developers say "F you Company_X" to any of OEMs involved? That would look weird to put it mildly.

https://dev.haiku-os.org/wiki/HardwareInfo

The answer is Yes and they have in the past notice the open source Nvidia driver is missing from HaikuOS supported hardware because Nvidia was too big of a jackass on providing firmware and other things to use their hardware legally so Nvidia could go F themselves was the answer from the developer in charge of the HaikuOS graphics stack as well. Yes user who puts HaikuOS on unsupported hardware and its Nvidia will be told the same things.

Linux lead Linus Torvalds is just the biggest that have been blunt with Nvidia and he got media coverage but he is not the only one. Yes you did pick a OS where the lead in-charge of graphics said the same thing 5 years before Linus did. There has been a general lack of cooperation from Nvidia with alterative OS.

Remember, supporting Linux costs money.

Releasing open source drivers is even costlier. Both AMD and Intel have two separate teams of developers to develop their drivers: one is developing closed source, another open source drivers. NVIDIA decided against that.

This is true to a point. Remember OS's like HaikuOS were not after Nvidia to write the open source drivers. Just for Nvidia to provide the firmware and other items to legally be able to write and ship their own drivers.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=valve-intel-vulkan-driver

Developing drivers for Linux costs money is true but important question is who money. Reality here is for AMD and Intel their open source drivers does not cost them as much as their closed source drivers because they are not footing the complete bill. Companies like Valve are directly involved in open source driver development. So AMD and Intel share common code in Mesa as well as get developer time from other companies working on the open source drivers.

Why is it worth AMD and Intel having two teams? this is a good question. birdie why would Intel and AMD be doing something that does not make them profit some how.

Please remember early on Intel did not write the drivers for Linux instead just threw the documentation of their hardware over the wall and left it to third parties to develop the driver. Open Source driver made by third parties started out doing Intel closed source driver. Then Intel decide it would be a good idea to have their own team working on the open source driver. The open source driver lets Intel try things and put it before users that they could not with the binary driver.

So open source drivers get AMD and Intel extra developers for R&D work from companies like Valve who have direct access to the source code of up coming games and software. Question how much is that worth?

Total cost of open source driver development for AMD and Intel might just be pure profit to AMD and Intel due to the issues their closed source driver gets to avoid by having closer interaction with companies like Valve.

Think about this as well birdie why are all consoles these days AMD based and we might see Intel based ones in future and there is absolutely no plans at all for Nvidia ones. Open source drivers allows hardware makers to see what features AMD and Intel hardware has as well so ask about customisation lot more simply.

Do you think AMD would have been able to keep on selling GPU to apple if they had not been willing to hand over the development specifications documents? Yes the legal audit AMD did on it development documents to be able to release them for open source development to make sure they did not contain stuff under NDA was also required to be able to share those documents with Microsoft, Apple and Sony as well.

Do you think AMD would have got to sell chips to Valve for the steam deck if they did not have decent Linux support? Valve liked AMD for steam deck due to decent performance and the fact they could be sure to keep on supporting it due to having the source code to the drivers.

Yes Nvidia deciding against supporting open source drivers even a little bit might in fact be hitting them in the hip pocket. Birdie yes paying developers and legal team to make open source drivers and hardware documentation for public does have a cost but so does marketing so you can sell your product. Old saying you have to spend money to make money. Nvidia could be failing to spend the money they should to be able to make all the money they should.

[ezst036]

NVIDIA decided against that.

In reality, these were the only four words you needed to post. The rest falls into line exactly where it needs to be.

Remember, supporting Linux costs money.

Releasing open source drivers is even costlier. Both AMD and Intel have two separate teams of developers to develop their drivers: one is developing closed source, another open source drivers. NVIDIA decided against that.

Actually, you're flat wrong. Red Hat employs some of the Nouveau developers. Even before Red Hat hired some of the Nouveau crew, they were doing this work for free. Nvidia could easily release documentation and they would get tons of free developer time that they don't have to pay one cent for. But guess what?

NVIDIA decided against that.

They don't want the free developer time. They want you buying more Nvidia products. Forced obsolescence. That's all this is. There's no other reason for the lack of even a partial dump of documentation. A partial! For hardware they have no more interest in! Nvidia is entirely a stonewall here.

It's no different than their years long stubbornness on GBM. NVIDIA decided against that. Well, guess what. In the end our developers won and Nvidia lost and released a GBM driver.

[Leopard]

The absolute majority of people who quote this didn't watch the actual clip. You may watch it for a change and get to know what it was about.

So here's the story for ya:

At the time when Optimus was not really supported or advertised at all, including any Linux compatibility, a young woman who felt intrepid, went ahead and intalled Linux on it. She complained to Linus why it didn't work. Imagine for a second someone buys a laptop to install HaikuOS on it and the OS doesn't support the hardware. Would any of lead HaikuOS developers say "F you Company_X" to any of OEMs involved? That would look weird to put it mildly.

Of course, lots of very vocal people in the Linux community treat Linus as their idol, God and a second father, and of course many started parroting the phrase. If anything it says nothing about NVIDIA but says a ton about Linus and his followers.

Does parroting this sentence make Linux better? Does it make the community look better? Does it make other unrelated people feel better about the Linux community? No! They think the Linux community is made of haters/lunatics who slander a successful company for no reasons and they might not be wrong. Again we are back to the question that too many people believe NVIDIA owes to the Linux community. This has never ceased to amaze me.

It's akin to joining some cult then going to a random bank and demanding money because you believe your cult is from God. You'll be arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned at best or shot dead at worst.

One of the main reasons why Linux/GNU is where it is is because too many fans of it are very vocal, spiteful and have humongous demands while doing nothing for open source. I can imagine many Phoronix or r/Linux readers are talented programmers, engineers, lawyers, etc. from the US - why don't you go to work for NVIDIA to try to change the company from the inside? Make them change their stance about Open Source? Nah, I guess it's too difficult. Saying "F you NVIDIA" is all so easy only it says nothing about the company but shows who you are. Even if Linus said it, it doesn't make it the right thing to say. He's been wrong, he's just a human being, not some ultimate entity with universal knowledge.

Remember, supporting Linux costs money.

Releasing open source drivers is even costlier. Both AMD and Intel have two separate teams of developers to develop their drivers: one is developing closed source, another open source drivers. NVIDIA decided against that.

Nvidia literally owns laptop market when it comes to dgpu ones.

Nvidia at that time supported both Linux and Windows.

Nvidia at that time only supported Optimus on Windows, not Linux.

All of those decisions made Linux inferior compared to Windows at that time? Yes

When proper Optimus support landed on Linux? At 2019 August

Linus's "NV fuck you" reaction happened at 2012.

So it should be obvious why that "fuck you" was well deserved.