The Open-Source NVIDIA/Nouveau vs. NVIDIA Linux Driver At The End Of 2019 - Poor But A Lot Of Hope

[CommunityMember]

I dont see the optimism as justified.

It may not be justified, but there are strong arguments that human optimism supports progress ("i think I can, I think I can"), as while many attempts may fail, eventually knowledge will prevail. On the other hand, there is also the old adage "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me", or perhaps, the unofficial slogan of Missouri, the "Show me" state, or perhaps the derivative saying "Hope springs eternal, to be dashed on the rocks of despair". So, the question might be whether you are an optimist, a pessimist, or a realist, and which better drives the click counts?

[CochainComplex]

nobody is forcing anybody to buy nvidia. why the hate? you don't like it go for amd. its cheapr and has everything you want. if i understand correctly there are some gpu on android phones/tablets that have no open source driver. but i don't recall the hate to exist there. does amd/nvidia advertise open source driver on their graphic cards?

well....but in workstations you will find more nvidia cards ...so somehow you are forced to.

[OneTimeShot]

nobody is forcing anybody to buy nvidia.

I disagree - there are many computers that don't have AMD graphics cards as a configurable option at the point of purchase...

[tuxd3v]

I disagree - there are many computers that don't have AMD graphics cards as a configurable option at the point of purchase...

that is also truth for a lot of other vendors out there..

Usually you see a duopoly of the market on Desktop/Laptop Segment,
on Smartphones segments almost a duopoly again.. and so on..

[hotaru]

I've been saying for a while that any Nvidia/AMD performance comparison that doesn't use Nouveau for the Nvidia GPUs is dishonest and not very useful. it doesn't matter how fast the closed source driver is you end up waiting for weeks for Nvidia to fix a driver bug.

[Sonadow]

I don't need Nouveau to be performant.

It just needs to be functional. Where 'functional' in this aspect refers to meeting the following minimum requirements:

1. Handle dual or triple 1080p displays without too much slowdown
2. Handle Wayland compositing properly without display scrambling or corruption
3. Run properly on at least the three most well-known Wayland compositors (Gnome, KDE and Weston). As it is, Nouveau hard locks the system when attempting a Plasma Wayland session.

[loganj]

CochainComplex OneTimeShot but again you are not forced to buy it. im sure you can build your own station (like i always do) or find a station with amd gpus. some vendors even let you configure your station before purchase. i'm pretty sure you have alternatives to nvidia.

[yoshi314]

nobody is forcing anybody to buy nvidia. why the hate? you don't like it go for amd. its cheapr and has everything you want. if i understand correctly there are some gpu on android phones/tablets that have no open source driver. but i don't recall the hate to exist there. does amd/nvidia advertise open source driver on their graphic cards?

ever built a gpu cluster for ML? there is not much choice there.

[yoshi314]

i wonder what will come first - nvidia's opensource commitment or the year of linux desktop.

[OneTimeShot]

CochainComplex OneTimeShot but again you are not forced to buy it. im sure you can build your own station (like i always do) or find a station with amd gpus. some vendors even let you configure your station before purchase. i'm pretty sure you have alternatives to nvidia.

Hmm... Visits Dell, selects i9 processor. Nope - Nvidia only.


Note: I'm not saying that it is impossible to buy an AMD workstation. Just that in my experience it seems to be somewhat hard.