Nouveau Still Pushing Forward In 2020 Thanks To Red Hat But Community Developers Leaving

[finalzone]

Returning to the topic, I find it more interesting how quickly (and more importantly at all) groups like Nvidia have actually fixed their drivers when the Linux kernel changed and broke some key interface.

Note: this does not only affect Nvidia, look at what they did to OpenZFS recently. The linux kernel has no love, even for FOSS software!

Linux kernel will never officially include close source binary ever in kernel space. Both nVidia an OpenZFS have to abide to the kernel policies. About the OpenZFS, that is their own problem given the fact Oracle refused to clarify about the legal matter related to ZFS and the CDDL.
nVidia drivers are nothing more than horrible non-standard compliant hacks which probably explains why the company is so unwilling to largely contribute to nouveau developers.

[mulenmar]

Not sure why you have had those sorts of experiences with Linux. I know I can't reproduce your claims on the systems where I run the Nvidia blob.

From what I have seen on Debian, including Bullseye, the Nvidia binary drivers from the Debian package libraries are smoothly integrated with DKMS. DKMS handles all of the binary blob compiling and kernel module processing. I have not seen DKMS foul up even once in the past 5+ years that I have run those packages.

Now perhaps you would like to share with the rest of us all of the persnickety details of your setup so we can all better understand why you are having the problems you claim with Nvidia binary blobs.

FYI - If I am actually a shill for Nvidia, why don't they send me a check once in a while and give me few video cards when I want/need them?

Hey there, Debian 10 user here, been using the same hardware since the 8 days.

Not *once* have I ever had a trouble-free installation and update of the nvidia driver.

8 series didn't support the GTX 950, but I still had issues getting everything installed for a GT430. There were packages missing no matter what I installed, it seemed like... I gave up and ran nouveau on the GT430, never had a problem.

Similar deal with 9, except I got it working in less than a week... and finally managed to dig up the magic commands to tell DKMS that a new version had been installed, and that it needed to do its thing. Because APPARENTLY we can't even do THAT automatically.

Same thing happens in 10.

You know how simple an Intel-video or AMD system is to update?

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

With a check of what packages will be changed and confirmation, of course... and downloading of the multi-hundred-megabyte packages elsewhere, as appropriate to save my data plan.

Guess what? The X server pops up just fine after reboot, instead of a black screen necessitating another reboot, tacking "nomodeset" to the kernel line, and figuring out went wrong.

Oh, and I can use Wayland, unlike on the nVidia driver.

nVidia is considered harmful not because it doesn't work well, but because it's a pain to make work at all. Users only see the sort of issues I've described, devs sort out much of the headaches before we get our hands on it. That doesn't make the blob less noxious in total.

And who knows what security holes lie hidden in their code...

[mulenmar]

Windows does not ship with any Nvidia (or AMD for that matter) drivers. You still get to the very basic res desktop after install due to VGA compliance. After that you install the proprietary driver and then windows can use the full hardware capability.

This is factually wrong. Modern versions of Windows include drivers for GPUs, beyond basic VESA support, so that their overdone 3D and transparency effects GUI doesn't make the OS look bad. These drivers are very basic, and in some cases I recall don't include OpenGL support (just DirectX), in addition to being out of date by installation time... but they exist.

Linux can actually do the above. In fact you can use the card without any driver as strictly a character terminal... but you may get questions about why your have an Nvidia 2080 TI accelerated terminal

...uh, you do realize that terminals not "accelerated" whatsoever by GPUs?

[NotMine999]

I agree with you but there's a bunch of Linux cry babies that will get very argumentative on that topic that everything has to be open source.

You are 100 percent right about that.

I feel that the proprietary driver should be used by default on installation. It works far better. I've never had great times with Nouveau and switch out immediately anymore as games don't work well with it.

I do not agree. Give users the option to choose which one they want. Honestly, Nouveau is fine if all you want is a simple CLI interface to the system. If you do anything more than that, then expect issues with the Nouveau driver. I have seen Nouveau be totally nonperformant when it comes to 30 fps and 60 fps video playback.

All they need to do is switch that to default and add make it easier to switch and install driver versions. Currently, these two things are still horrible with the way they are done. If they have two driver versions available a stable and the latest they can easily switch back to the stable if the latest has a problem.

Linux needs to improve. Nouveau also must improve and keep up with the latest proprietary driver or it should be removed. Anything else is holding Linux back.

So much YES to your last paragraph, but I would also add that Nvidia needs to step up and release some details of their video cards.

I mean honestly Nvidia, with your recent statements about dropping support for various older cards you can't turn around and tell us that you have "secret sauce" in those old cards that you still use in your current cards. If you did make such an argument you would sink any "leading edge" perception that informed consumers have concerning your latest offerings.

[NotMine999]

As a reminder
2012:Linus Torvalds Calls NVIDIA The Worst Company Ever


2015:Nouveau: NVIDIA's New Hardware Is "VERY Open-Source Unfriendly"
2020:Nouveau Still Pushing Forward In 2020 Thanks To Red Hat But Community Developers Leaving

Linus having yet another "out of the box experience" I suppose....

[NotMine999]

There is no reason to have to use a binary driver. It's not magic technology. Such drivers always cause loads of maintenance and upgrade issues with operating systems and related components. NVIDIA is just creating more problems for their users for no reason. This I'll give up my password for a chocolate bar mentality from NVIDIA users is moronically stupid.

Not sure why you have had those sorts of experiences with Linux. I know I can't reproduce your claims on the systems where I run the Nvidia blob.

From what I have seen on Debian, including Bullseye, the Nvidia binary drivers from the Debian package libraries are smoothly integrated with DKMS. DKMS handles all of the binary blob compiling and kernel module processing. I have not seen DKMS foul up even once in the past 5+ years that I have run those packages.

Now perhaps you would like to share with the rest of us all of the persnickety details of your setup so we can all better understand why you are having the problems you claim with Nvidia binary blobs.

FYI - If I am actually a shill for Nvidia, why don't they send me a check once in a while and give me few video cards when I want/need them?

[Neuro-Chef]

Nvidia produces hardware and the software to drive it. Enjoy the fact that it works so well! I love Linux, I love open source... but I have no qualms with a company that does not wish to FOSS their drivers... especially if said company does such an awesome job supporting their hardware.

Daily stuff not working threads to be found in the official Nvidia forum:

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/board/98/linux/

Intels and AMDs mainlined kernel drivers just work, no fiddling required - Any questions?

[onicsis]

As a reminder
2012:Linus Torvalds Calls NVIDIA The Worst Company Ever

Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, has called out NVIDIA for their poor graphics drivers / support in a public presentation. In the talk he called NVIDIA "the single worst company we have ever dealt with" and ended his green comments with "NVIDIA: FUCK YOU!"

2015:Nouveau: NVIDIA's New Hardware Is "VERY Open-Source Unfriendly"
2020:Nouveau Still Pushing Forward In 2020 Thanks To Red Hat But Community Developers Leaving

Thankfully, these days, AMD are being far more competitive with NVIDIA, so more and more users are coming into GNU-Linux land with an AMD card and getting a great out-of-box experience.

[cybertraveler]

Nouveau is important because people who first try out Linux will have whatever hardware they have. We should strive to have it so that all of the hardware just works upon installation. I really hope that the open source announcement is an NVIDIA equivalent to the AMDGPU kernelside driver. That would solve a lot of problems and move them closer to having a great mostly open option on Linux...just like AMD has.

This is very true. I think the ideal is that Nouveau is made to be fast and stable enough to allow for typical desktop activities. That way it can serve as a gateway drug to GNU-Linux. Once the user has got their initial taste and they like it, they may then start looking for a better GNU-Linux experience and they will probably learn that Intel and AMD are the way to go (in terms of desktop graphics).

Thankfully, these days, AMD are being far more competitive with NVIDIA, so more and more users are coming into GNU-Linux land with an AMD card and getting a great out-of-box experience.

[mroche]

No that's not the point of Linux at all. That's just a point you made up to make yourself feel better about being a bugman with no value system other than Consume Product™.

Believe what you will about someone you don't know. But feel free to be a case study in the toxicity of the internet.

Generally speaking of course you are free to buy Nvidia, but just because you are incentiviced and given in to buy products from them by their market dominated nearly monopoly doesn't mean that you have to defend their bad behaviour.

I don't recall any of my statements defending NVIDIA for their practices. My statements are about defending a user's and consumer's right to choose based on what they value, and that doesn't prevent them from being supportive and a fan of Linux just because they didn't purchase a solution from a vendor with a friendlier attitude to Linux and open-source.

For me it's more a spirit thing

I totally get that and respect that perspective. For most things I do open-source and free software plays a non-trivial role in my decisions. There are just other areas I am willing to or need to compromise on to achieve the results I'm looking for. Do I like all of the things NVIDIA does/has done? Absolutely not. That same sentiment applies to any vendor I deal with, no corporation or individual is perfect.

For the work I do, particularly in the computer graphics space, there is little room to go outside of NVIDIA. They generally provide the best DCC application support (and I'm not talking about driver certification, but actual DCC stability with both consumer and enterprise hardware, but obligatory YMMV) and the software stack they have built over the years has been a key driver in adoption/integration by vendors and developers. AMD has been making good strides in playing catch-up with ROCm, HIP, and that ecosystem. But it's still not as simple to get started with, "universal" in the sense of ease of packaging and deployment, and there are hardware aspects that NVIDIA provides that aren't there yet or don't exist in AMD cards (RTX is obvious but not what I'm talking about).

As an example, with the Turing lineup NVIDIA improved the cards' performance in encoding video streams at 8K with NVENC, a feature that's been around since Pascal. This is something that interested us (at my last employer) a lot as all of our workstations are PCoIP systems. With an upcoming update/refresh from our thin-client provider this would potentially allow us to upgrade our artists' workstations from dual 2560x1600 displays to dual 4K monitors which is huge for the work we do and are planning on doing. Assuming the color accuracy and encoding bandwidth met our standards, of course. In other areas, NVIDIA is very receptive to enterprise needs and requests and is pretty good to work with, including adding custom driver bits for us to test potential workflows with our setup. This isn't to paint a rosy picture of team green, there have been situations (according to my colleagues) where the driver bit them in unexpected ways.

This is where it gets into more of the crux of the issue. On Windows, consumer support from NVIDIA is great as gaming is a first class citizen and integral part of the community, with many developer institutions and engine authors working on games that NVIDIA can work closely with to make sure the games run as smoothly as possible for consumers. On Linux, whether we as consumers like it or not, enterprise with, for example: HPC, machine learning/AI, and proprietary applications is where NVIDIA stands to make the most gain. So their focus on making sure that their driver is stable for the majority of that field (running RHEL/CentOS, Ubuntu LTS, SUSE like distributions) and providing a well built and targeted library support ecosystem makes a lot of business sense. Support for the general consumer is not the main priority. For the driver, the approach to Linux is more like it is on Windows considering graphics drivers aren't built into the NT kernel.

Something people often bring up is kernel breakage when a new kernel release drops as a result of the nonexistent upstream and NVIDIA hasn't released a patch for it. For some folks, myself included, this is negligible for our setups as we don't run bleeding edge. For my personal workstation (which I'm typing this on), I have one 2.5K monitor running an X11 GNOME session on RHEL 8. This solution is rock solid and fantastic, and I avoid a lot of the issues that people can have with the NVIDIA driver (lack of proper Optimus, Wayland, potential multi-monitor issues etc). Compatibility and stability is a major focus of my environments. But I understand that when those kernel breaks or general bugs happen it can be incredibly frustrating for the people experiencing it. My situation and environment is not everyone else's situation and environment. For the open-source community as a whole, I'm really hoping for some good news from NVIDIA at GTC this year, but I'm as wary as I always am that their announcement may not be what we are looking for.

Cheers,
Mike