NVIDIA Looks To Have Some Sort Of Open-Source Driver Announcement For 2020

[Kamikaze]

Look up the Ryzen Microsoft Surface models. They usually have decent specs and linux support.

I had a look - they do look nice to Microsoft's credit, and I was interested, but a couple of points that turned me off in the end:
1) Price is a fair bit higher than what I paid for my existing laptop. I'd let this one slide, but:
2) Graphics performance just isn't on par with the current (or even previous gen) NVIDIA mobile GPUs. Unfortunately my 980M that I purchased over a couple of years ago still has far better performance than the Vega 11 in that laptop. I don't game a lot these days, but when I do I want it to work with current games in at least 1080p so it'd need to be an upgrade to my current GPU at a minimum.

[betam4x]

NVIDIA likely has incredible obstacles in open sourcing their existing driver. However, pressure is mounting, as they are the only PC Desktop/Workstation vendor out there that does not have an open source driver stack. I expect them to begin taking steps very soon to rectify that situation.

[betam4x]

I had a look - they do look nice to Microsoft's credit, and I was interested, but a couple of points that turned me off in the end:
1) Price is a fair bit higher than what I paid for my existing laptop. I'd let this one slide, but:
2) Graphics performance just isn't on par with the current (or even previous gen) NVIDIA mobile GPUs. Unfortunately my 980M that I purchased over a couple of years ago still has far better performance than the Vega 11 in that laptop. I don't game a lot these days, but when I do I want it to work with current games in at least 1080p so it'd need to be an upgrade to my current GPU at a minimum.

The whole mantra of looking at price is what is causing all the garbage monitors, laptops, etc. to flood the market. People need to learn to shop for qualities that are important to them. For a laptop that will likely last a number of years (mine is 4 years old), that should not include price much beyond the extent of 'less than absurd'. Once you stop looking at price, quality options suddenly start opening up. When I look for a laptop, I look at specs, including weight and battery life. I also read extensive reviews of the product. If possible, I even find a place to try it out. I don't mind paying an additional $800 for the 'same hardware' I can get in a cheaper device, provided the device is high quality and sacrifices very little.

[Kamikaze]

The whole mantra of looking at price is what is causing all the garbage monitors, laptops, etc. to flood the market. People need to learn to shop for qualities that are important to them. For a laptop that will likely last a number of years (mine is 4 years old), that should not include price much beyond the extent of 'less than absurd'. Once you stop looking at price, quality options suddenly start opening up. When I look for a laptop, I look at specs, including weight and battery life. I also read extensive reviews of the product. If possible, I even find a place to try it out. I don't mind paying an additional $800 for the 'same hardware' I can get in a cheaper device, provided the device is high quality and sacrifices very little.

You do you.

I already explained my reasoning and was pretty clear about how price factored into it when compared to performance.

[pal666]

zero reasons for excitement. they literally say it "Nouveau (the open source kernel driver". so no mesa drivers, no. and even microsoft does more linux kernel driver development than nvidia, that part can be completely ignored

[pal666]

Mesa will catch up to it, once kernel will be ironed out. So blob will become obsolete.

why mesa didn't caught up to it yet? maybe because it is hard to catch up when you have to reverse engineer it first?

[pal666]

In March? Why not let the world know now?

because it's a cry "wait, don't buy amd". in march they will tell some useless words about kernel driver

[pal666]

It will. That's how open source collaboration works. Once blob barriers are out of the way, real competition begins.

nouveau has no blob barriers, it has "no documentation and no manpower" barriers

[pal666]

Would be cool to see BSDs other than FreeBSD be well supported by a major graphics vendor.

it would be cool if *bsd would not split their tiny userbase even more

[Terrablit]

There's a lot of stuff that might influence Nvidia utilizing open source drivers. Stadia, the continued rise of streaming and Nvidia's lead on GPU-accelerated transcoding, AMD already having invested a fair amount in open-source drivers (both proving the sky didn't fall and already having done a lot of the infrastructure work for a lot of features), the continued interest in non-x86 platforms like ARM, RISC-V, MIPS and POWER and the availability of consumer and server products based on them, China's government-driven initiative to remove the dependency on Intel-based computer (and their rising economic influence), console platforms adding pressure on vendors for open drivers, a potential investment in mobile GPUs, etc.

A closed-source driver for one hardware platform is feasible, but a closed-source driver for 3 or 4 gets far more difficult. Utilizing kernel driver frameworks can reduce the maintenance burden a lot. As of right now, there's no reason to consider Nvidia for anything other than x86. Having most of the desktop marketshare is an attractive position, but their current strategy severely limits growth in other markets. They're a big fish in one pond, but they can't expand anywhere else. Eventually that's going to make someone nervous.

That said, I still half expect their March announcement to be that they have no intention of providing an open source driver, because they've just been that shitty.