The Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Will End Out 2019 In Poor Shape Still For Newer GPUs

[DanL]

I don't know why Nvidia won't open source their device drivers

They don't even have to do that. They do need to release the firmware though.

[entropy]

They don't even have to do that. They do need to release the firmware though.

Has there been ever a clear communication from Nvidia *why* this is not happening?

[shmerl]

Time for Nvidia users on Linux to ditch it. Nvidia are one of the worst offenders.

[shmerl]

Has there been ever a clear communication from Nvidia *why* this is not happening?

No need to look for reasons. They are like Oracle - they simply don't care.

[zanny]

Has there been ever a clear communication from Nvidia *why* this is not happening?

Because they don't want to? Its their proprietary, undocumented, market-leading products.

Most corporations cooperate somewhat with free software but Nvidia is one of the few that simply don't. Its in their culture to be antagonistic towards openness when their entire business model is built on secrecy and proprietary exploitation. Fortunately we are in the position to have significant options and can support the businesses that do participate and must do so to incentivize the continued investment from AMD / Intel, hopefully to Nvidias determent. Thats the only way to prove that Nvidia is in the wrong here.

[arQon]

What's wrong with Nvidia?
Also, now Intel is going to seriously pursue desktop graphics with their upcoming Intel Xe graphics card.

No they aren't: Xe is explicitly NOT a "graphics" card.

It'll be at least another generation before Intel actually makes a real video card, and TBH it'll be a miracle if it's even competitive with the 2060 / 5700 class, let alone anything beefier.

[kpedersen]

I have quite a few people say to me that Nvidia cards are slow because even though their "out of the box" Nouveau just works, they don't realize it isn't the same thing as using the binary blob. I am fine with this, I just tell them to get an AMD instead XD

Hopefully propagation of this "misinformation" will almost force NVIDIA's hand into releasing their drivers.

For most other things (like digital preservation, old hardware and office work), the Nouveau driver is actually pretty good.

[onicsis]

In a laptop with Intel CPU+GPU and a more powerful AMD discrete GPU usually both work flawlessly with basically any Linux distribution supporting open source drivers by default. An application can choose to target between a gpu or another, configured in a right manner. Not sure if this is possible having and NVidia discrete GPU with binary blobs or even with Nouveau can be problematic.
Whatever hard to believe we will have in near feature open source drivers that just works after booting an Ubuntu ISO image and playing Steam games without any hiccups. as is now possible with AMD. Big doubts.

[ThoreauHD]

A little historical side-note. Nvidia began keying their firmware with the 970.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/nvidia-offers-30-to-gtx-970-customers-in-class-action-lawsuit-over-ram/

[starshipeleven]

if Nvidia follows the AMD-Closed-source firmware logic they could just move the complete driver into the firmware and say: DONE...

That's retarded from various standpoints, no GPU can use firmware to replace the driver.

You need a driver (code running on the CPU) as a bunch of tasks are still better done on CPU, or require significant preparation from the CPU before they can be fed to the GPU.

What you say (replace the driver with a firmware) is done for wifi chipsets where there is not much the CPU really needs to do. For example ath10k (wifi driver for Qualcomm wifi ac chipsets) is mostly a shim for the firmware blob that runs on the wifi chipset.

And also Intel's wifi chipsets too.