NVIDIA R550 Linux Driver's Open Kernel Modules Performing Well On GeForce GPUs

[jeisom]

AFAIK it only exists as a reference implementation to ease nouveau's implementation efforts.

I expect them to start switching over once power management is done and any other needed feature is ready as the kernel devs keep making changes that block/interfere with non-gpl modules.

[intelfx]

Recently (this version or maybe the previous one) it was noted that to use some new CUDA features (unified heterogeneous memory) it was a requirement to be using the open kernel drivers. I don't know why or how that would be so

Probably because the DMA-BUF subsystem only exports GPL-only symbols.

[Goddard]

Is there any good reason to use it? It still requires proprietary user space and it's still out of tree module that needs to be recompiled for every installed kernel.

Why won't they include it in the kernel?

[SkyWarrior]

Seeing this article made me switch mine to kernel-open. Works perfect so far. Will continue this way probably.

[equeim]

Why won't they include it in the kernel?

AFAIK Kernel has a policy not not include code that requires proprietary userspace components, unless there is also open source alternative for these userspace blobs. So they only way this gets merged mainline kernel is by making it work with Mesa (idk of this is possible).

[sarmad]

Is there any good reason to use it? It still requires proprietary user space and it's still out of tree module that needs to be recompiled for every installed kernel.

Yes. Using it will force nVidia to keep it in good shape, and therefore will remain an up-to-date reference implementation for Nouveau developers, and an up-to-date kernel module for any future developer willing to build an open user space module to go with this open kernel module. Also, having an open kernel space module and a closed user space module is still better than having both modules being closed.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Nice, that's a really solid improvement. Last time I checked compute was fine which makes sense given that the initial focus on the enterprise cards, but 3D / gaming was a mess. If I had a new enough NVIDIA card I'd finally switch over.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Is there any good reason to use it? It still requires proprietary user space and it's still out of tree module that needs to be recompiled for every installed kernel.

One less 3rd party repo to add for some distros.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

So what's the known outlook for prominent linux distributions / repos that already routinely package the nvidia drivers, are there conspicuously known plans to offer / use open kernel module based drivers package as an option, by default, not for the near future, whatever?

foo@STRIX:~> zypper se -s g06
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S | Name                                        | Type    | Version                | Arch   | Repository
--+---------------------------------------------+---------+------------------------+--------+----------------------
  | kernel-firmware-nvidia-gsp-G06              | package | 535.86.05-3.2          | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
  | kernel-firmware-nvidia-gspx-G06             | package | 550.54.14-1.1          | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
  | nvidia-open-driver-G06-signed-default-devel | package | 550.54.14-2.1          | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
  | nvidia-open-driver-G06-signed-kmp-default   | package | 550.54.14_k6.7.6_1-2.1 | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)

SUSE / OpenSUSE had them packaged in their main repos less than a month after they were released.

https://sndirsch.github.io/nvidia/2022/06/07/nvidia-opengpu.html

[theriddick]

Someone was trying to convince me recently that you can't run ANY games with the open-source nvidia GPU driver yet....