Linux 6.6 To Better Protect Against The Illicit Behavior Of NVIDIA's Proprietary Driver

[NotMine999]

Welcome to another chapter of the neverending Linux--NVIDIA Arms Race.

One of these days I will swap out my "daily driver PC" for a system that uses Intel CPU-based graphics. That will fit my needs just fine...not being a gamer. No need for the lousy Nouveau driver that refuses to behave properly on a Linux 6.x kernel - in my case. No need for the proprietary NVIDIA driver (and it's hassles) and watching it "black screen" my existing hardware when trying to run Linux 6.x kernels. I would like to move forward and run a Linux 6.x kernel system. An AMD-based APU & motherboard would be an alternative, but I already have the replacement hardware and it runs Linux 6.x kernels just fine; I just need to repurpose it.

[NotMine999]

Maybe because they made Linus mad back in the day? It's a revenge

Nah. Just NVIDIA trying to do a bad imitation of Marie Antoinette where she tries to have her cake and eat it too!

[flower]

Well you could read the article for instance. TLDR: proprietary, closed source blobs do nasty things, and you have very little idea to what extend until you really dig in. See chinese android tv boxes for a nice primer.

this also affects eg zfs.
i thought linux is about choice.

[WizardGed]

I really don't understand why Linux has such "defense lines" in the first place.

Failing to do so could lessen the foundations ability to legally defend the kernel from bad actors that might seek to restrict/reduce the ability for developers to contribute to the kernel. Any example that the community was OK with not enforcing the license gives more room and precedence for others to do the same.

[rhavenn]

this also affects eg zfs.
i thought linux is about choice.

No, it does not. The one you can load into Linux is OpenZFS which is open source. The license is, arguably, not compatible with GPL or GPL isn't compatible with CDL (take your pick), so it can't be pre-compiled on Linux and distributed as a binary, but the source code is wide open. Here's the github: https://github.com/openzfs/zfs

The version Oracle maintains is closed source, but no one uses that unless you're running Oracle Linux or Solaris still.

Personal opinion is the "kernel" should make a licensing exemption for distributing pre-compiled OpenZFS modules because it's clearly an open source project now and the CDL issue is purely one born from SUN's Solaris vs. Linux fight which just isn't an issue anymore. Oracle swallowed SUN and has long ago forked ZFS to be closed source completely. OpenZFS is just forced to maintain the CDL as their license because that's the way it is.

As a enterprise COW filesystem ZFS just has no competition.

[RejectModernity]

This is the sort of hostility that makes me want to avoid Linux. This also affects other open source projects like ZFS constantly. This hostility is unnecessary

Yeah, nobody likes you Jensen, you're free to go play somewhere else.

[rhavenn]

Well you could read the article for instance. TLDR: proprietary, closed source blobs do nasty things, and you have very little idea to what extend until you really dig in. See chinese android tv boxes for a nice primer.

Sure, but this more about licensing and keeping the "taint" of the nvidia driver away from the kernel and potential legal issues. Nvidia is using compile flags and symbols that are explicitly marked for GPL use only by including them in a "open" library that nvidia maintains and then re-exporting them to their binary blob.

[Grinness]

This is the sort of hostility that makes me want to avoid Linux. This also affects other open source projects like ZFS constantly. This hostility is unnecessary

no, this is copyright infringement by NVIDIA (proprietary driver).

See:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.en.html

As such it needs to be stopped -- or copyright infringement is only valid for closed-source software?

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Nvidia will eventually endure the same fate as divx and adobe flash. Quite annoying meanwhile, just like those 2 were back then...

The amount of stupid in this forum related to any article about NVIDIA is staggering. Let's look at some market caps.

• NVIDIA: $1.2T USD
• AMD: $171.13B USD
• Intel: $143.69B USD

Guess who is absolutely crushing revenue expectations?

[avis]

[root@zen nvidia]# pwd
/usr/src/nvidia-535.104.05
[root@zen nvidia]# grep -r symbol_get; echo $?
1

Not sure what this patch is about. symbol_get() is seemingly not used in any shape or form. Maybe the blob contains it in some obfuscated form, I don't know.

Looks like the commit is about removing the "bad" feature, not about breaking the NVIDIA driver:

This is a good reminder to us that symbol_get() is just a hack to address things which should be fixed through Kconfig at build time as was done in the later patches, and so ultimately it should just go.

It's sad to see the 100500th confrontation between the people who have never contributed to the kernel, yet they want to deprive others of using their existing GPU with Linux and instead force them to buy a new GPU. This screams of of being elitist and haughty but I just don't care any longer. Too tired of hatred, aggression, animosity and verbal attacks. This has really propelled Linux, oh, wait, it's only shown what kind of people represent Open Source.