NVIDIA Contributes Much Less To The Linux Kernel Than Intel Or AMD

[CochainComplex]

I think Keith Packard's video on X11's early development really explains this in a nutshell, proprietary coding by corporations is ungodly slow and cumbersome, with the exception of Intel of course. Reminds me of VIM versus Emacs wars, subsequently Keith knows Richard Stallman (author of Emacs) very well, .... and so on.

See Phoronix's recent past article/video, "Keith Packard Talks About Sustaining X11's Development"

I prefer Intel CPU's and NVidia GPU's. However, recently I wasted $100-200 on an AMD video card that failed to work on a recent system due to the system's motherboard not being able to boot UFI. While none of NVidia graphics cards exhibited similar problems, seemingly booting just fine with older MBR partitions. A simple statement within the product's system requirements, require UFI BIOS would have been sufficient, instead ominously omitted.

I must commend the author at Phoronix for having some focus where he's going in life! Nice work.

well ... i have the same story with nvidia ...it had issues to start because the installer hasnt signed the kernel modules properly now i have a "tainted kernel" which has issues to boot under certain uefi configs ( Quadro T1000 running official Dell OEM Linux) .

[pabloski]

You think too MUCH of yourself. You're da king, right? I mean a community which has less than 2% of the market share talks as if each company owes you their time, money and resources. LOL.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

People do vote for NVIDIA and you're entitled not to buy their GPUs ever.

Yeah yeah, keep living in your gaming world https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...tem&px=mteynte

[skeevy420]

rhavenn If I recall, AMD committed to open sourcing within twelve momths of acquitong ATI. In 2006. The legal quagmire took long enough, then they had to rebuild from the ground up, and then they released GCN, and now again AM4/UEFI era cutoff, but it would theyre now in a position to handle new things more readily and with resulting quicker turnaround than previous.

Two years is a slight exageration.

I've been using an open source AMD graphics driver since 2013. I wasn't aware that 2019 minus 2013 equaled 2 either.

[birdie]

Yeah yeah, keep living in your gaming world https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...tem&px=mteynte

A news from eight years, not having any effect on NVIDIA's bottom line. Does the crown fit you head, Mr? Did AMD sales increase due to this event? No, nothing at all? Keep upvoting one another's posts. It's so amusing. You have your nice warm fuzzy echo chamber here on Phoronix forums. Outside them however most people have no idea what Linux is, what the kernel is, how much these three companies contribute to the kernel and how poor Linux outcasts get triggered by it. Oh, most people have absolutely no idea what Intel, NVIDIA and AMD do. Go ask them. Some will say, "They make computers maybe?"

Oh, and don't forget to hate NVIDIA. Luckily the company doesn't give a darn about some lünatics who believe they are the ultimate creation of the universe and everyone owes them.

Also, remind me, you're so mad about NVIDIA contributions, but how much have you personally contributed to open source aside from leaving inane comments? Nothing? Nothing at all? You just love open source?

[rogerx]

Here's an interesting twist, ATI/AMD and a few NVidia cards were installed as OEM on Macs early on, then primarily ATI/AMD during early 2000's. And now most recently, all OEM video cards for Macs are NVidia.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/faq/mac-pro-default-graphics-cards-dvi-dual-link-mini-displayport.html

[skeevy420]

Here's an interesting twist, ATI/AMD and a few NVidia cards were installed as OEM on Macs early on, then primarily ATI/AMD during early 2000's. And now most recently, all OEM video cards for Macs are NVidia.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/faq/mac-pro-default-graphics-cards-dvi-dual-link-mini-displayport.html

Copy/pasted from Apple.com

The world’s most powerful graphics card. Times two.

Taking power one huge step further, Mac Pro supports configuration of two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo MPX Modules. The four GPUs combine to add up to 56 teraflops and 128GB of high-bandwidth memory. It’s a massive amount of performance built to tackle everything from GPU rendering to machine learning to particle simulation

So, yeah...

[CommunityMember]

but well there are these arm based nvidia chips as well - tegra and co running mainly with android. I think i dont have to mention that under the hood android has a linux kernel.

Support for a new SoC is mostly about adding in a new (or modified) DTS file, and typically not adding substantial kernel code itself. ARM, as the designer of the architecture, is responsible for getting major architectural changes into the kernel and getting the (user land) compiler writers to add in any new instruction support. And while sometimes the SoC designers do need to create entirely new peripheral devices, typically that is the responsibility of the chip manufacturer they are using (so Microchip, or Broadcom, etc.) since those manufacturers are selling those chips to many vendors.

[Ironmask]

A news from eight years, not having any effect on NVIDIA's bottom line. Does the crown fit you head, Mr? Did AMD sales increase due to this event? No, nothing at all? Keep upvoting one another's posts. It's so amusing. You have your nice warm fuzzy echo chamber here on Phoronix forums. Outside them however most people have no idea what Linux is, what the kernel is, how much these three companies contribute to the kernel and how poor Linux outcasts get triggered by it. Oh, most people have absolutely no idea what Intel, NVIDIA and AMD do. Go ask them. Some will say, "They make computers maybe?"

Oh, and don't forget to hate NVIDIA. Luckily the company doesn't give a darn about some lünatics who believe they are the ultimate creation of the universe and everyone owes them.

Also, remind me, you're so mad about NVIDIA contributions, but how much have you personally contributed to open source aside from leaving inane comments? Nothing? Nothing at all? You just love open source?

You guys may not like what he says, but he speaks the truth. I love AMD myself, but are not the target audience. We do not matter, and nobody is selling GPUs or operating systems to us. OEMs are the customers, and OEMs only work with big players in the industry like Microsoft. nVidia's target audience is OEMs buying Windows, not hobbyists building their own computers installing Linux. We're a drop in the bucket compared to OEMs. Is it malicious, or are we entitled? It's up to opinion, but either way the numbers don't lie.

[finalzone]

You guys may not like what he says, but he speaks the truth. I love AMD myself, but are not the target audience. We do not matter, and nobody is selling GPUs or operating systems to us. OEMs are the customers, and OEMs only work with big players in the industry like Microsoft. nVidia's target audience is OEMs buying Windows, not hobbyists building their own computers installing Linux. We're a drop in the bucket compared to OEMs. Is it malicious, or are we entitled? It's up to opinion, but either way the numbers don't lie.

OEM definitely are following the progress of Linux ecosystem development otherwise they would easily remove access to hobbyists. Main issues are priority due to budget which will matter when they notice the increase of adoption of Linux ecosystem. That is why open source code and drivers from both AMD and Intel exist to let the community improve the work through review and testing.
As an example, HP Envy x360 Ryzen is getting nearly full functionality out of box with the team work from AMD developers, Linux kernel maintainers and the very users who do the quality check via testing.

[richardnpaul]

My next work and personal laptops will be AMD based on the experiences I've had with my current nvidia based laptops, (GTX 1060 and 860M)

I recently put together a LAN gaming machine which had Pop OS installed, Steam and ran games via Proton and I was super impressed and surprised by the performance of Windows games on Linux these days.
Of course, I chose AMD for the GPU because a sub £100 RX 570 4GB was hard to say no to value wise and the Kernel driver support by AMD gave me no problems, but such positive experiences drive future purchasing decisions so nVIDIA are on my s**t list even though I run Windows as well, which means Apple and I have something in common; which is funny given how intolerant I am to that brand.