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

[kpedersen]

make it impossible to get good performance with open source so there is little hope to to something actually usable some day (although I'm pretty sure that those Red Hat devs know something that we don't since someone pays them to work on Nouveau compute and stuff).

It is probably because as well as simulations, compute and games, RedHat also make an OS for general office staff where Nouveau is "good enough" for checking emails and stuff. They probably see a future like this in order to solve video problems for *all* users.

Intel - Laptops / mobility
Nouveau - Emails / documents
AMD - 3D graphics / compute

NVIDIA basically has no place in the future (unless they open up and start to play ball with how modern operating systems are engineered).

[zexelon]

you use them because you are brainwashed nvidiot

Lovely discussion

[zexelon]

I think one of the reasons is that AMD's open source drivers have become so good that there is little reason to buy Nvidia hardware if you already know that you want to use open source drivers if possible. At least last time I've bought Nvidia card was in Fermi days when open source AMD drivers were nowhere near the point they are now. Noadays there is very little reason to choose Nvidia and thus no hardware to hack on occasionally (i.e. using Nvidia closed source for actual work and switching to Nouveau sometimes).

CUDA could be a reason to choose Nvidia if you don't mind it being so closed and tightly bound to one vendor. On the other hand those missing signed blobs make it impossible to get good performance with open source so there is little hope to to something actually usable some day (although I'm pretty sure that those Red Hat devs know something that we don't since someone pays them to work on Nouveau compute and stuff).

I could hack on the Fermi card I still have but with 1 GB of VRAM it's a little too weak for CS:GO even (tbh, it's a bug in the game but it had existed for a long time without hope to get it fixed when I finally retired my GTX 460 for RX 460). It's also quite power hungry (160 W TDP IIRC) for such weak card today, and it's very easy to get a faster replacement that doesn't warm up the room.

So far probably one of the best thoughts! Yes I think it is a needs vs. philosophy vs. fanboy'ism. I actually do need CUDA so that automatically is a driving force. Its been a long time since I have tried an ATI card at all (circa 9500 Pro) so I cant speak to the performance of the ATI open source driver. From what I read its quite impressive though.

That being said, an awesome open source driver does not require Nvidia to open source their platform. Its still awesome closed source. Sure it would be great if Nvidia opened up all their black magic books to the FOSS community and let them have fun with it, but even if they dont, they still produce awesome hardware and support it very well!

[r1348]

I think the issue here can be solved with simple pragmatism: Nvidia is free to offer a closed source driver, and I'm free to spend my money elsewhere.

[kpedersen]

That being said, an awesome open source driver does not require Nvidia to open source their platform.

Just some frigging technical documentation would be enough for the open-source driver to overtake the binary blob. Nouveau is already better in a number of ways (Wayland / Gnome support being one)

I think the issue here can be solved with simple pragmatism: Nvidia is free to offer a closed source driver, and I'm free to spend my money elsewhere.

For users like us, yes. However I do believe that developer time would be better spent elsewhere than fixing NVIDIAs broken crap. EGL streams took how much time to implement in Wayland?

Also, it is too easy for commercial games and engines to say "NVIDIA proprietary driver only" than to fix their code and actually test with proper drivers going forwards.

Nvidia is harming FOSS in quite a few ways.

[xinorom]

Its still awesome closed source. Sure it would be great if Nvidia opened up all their black magic books to the FOSS community and let them have fun with it, but even if they dont, they still produce awesome hardware and support it very well!

Don't forget to take regular breaks and stay well hydrated while you're shilling for Nvidia. You should also ask for a pay raise soon -- you earned it.

[finalzone]

Actually pretty sure Nvidia was doing drivers long before Nouveau.

As pointed by someone, nv driver was an abomination. Only 2D support and no hardware acceleration contrast to xorg ati driver. No open source developers were able to properly maintain that nv driver and it was a good riddance it got kicked out from xserver.

[zexelon]

Don't forget to take regular breaks and stay well hydrated while you're shilling for Nvidia. You should also ask for a pay raise soon -- you earned it.

Lol thanks for the advice!

[loganj]

Britoid but don't confuse linux with everything that runs on linux. from what i understand there are also a lot of "free" types of licenses out there that has some restrictions. there are also a lot of software that are not free but runs on linux.
so yes, linux is free (for now and hope forever). is not just "SUPPOSE". it is free.

no back to nvidia: im not so sure i want so many drivers for my GPU as there are for radeon cards. just imaging to want to report a bug and keep switching/building and so on to figure out if its happening with only 1 driver or 1 version of one of driver or is the software that has problems..... its much easier with only one driver.

[risyasin]

Being a long time of Linux desktop user and numerous Nvidia cards owner, I think I have a right to share my experience of Nvidia cards on Linux desktops.
TLDR: Ugly as hell, fundamentally broken and cheap unlike their cards.

I've started using Nvidia cards since Riva TNT/Geforce MX series on Linux since kernel v2 with Redhat 9 mostly with dual boot with windows just for gaming. My last card was 1050 ti and MX150. So far my experience with proprietary driver worsened through the years. Once it was decent enough even allowing to play some game on linux via Wine. It was better than ATI firegl drivers which they were also proprietary 10 years ago, that's why I was buying Nvidia cards in past becuase of their drivers, But recently, especially Linux folks switched to Wayland, Nvidia literally sucked on both Desktop and mobile. Their approach of to not to follow GBM and insisting on EGLStreams was a signal. Each time for every updated version of their driver not to mention 340 series but even beta drivers, They just made it cheap and cheaper. I think this is somehow related with company's decisions and focus, probably related with investors not quality of workforce they spared for Linux support. Nvidia is dealing with too many problems right now more than ever, and it seems like supporting open source is not in thier priority list even if they have announced that they would, I don't think they will make it properly, most likely will make it cheap again. It was always marketing. Just like now that announcement is also marketing speech at best. How am I so sure about this? Just look at the tegra/jetson support for Linux/Android. They had literally given up of chance to sell millions of devices. But again I have to thank Linux developers at Nvidia. I've used their driver far too long. I respect their work.

Right now using a NAVI10 based card with Gnome on wayland. It's so far the best desktop experience I've ever got in last two decades. Amazing performance. Kudos to AMD.