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

[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?

[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?

[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]

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.

[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?

[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...

[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.

[brad0]

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.

You don't have to advertise to people that you are willfully ignorant and stupid.

[DanL]

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.

Since when did this become magic?:

apt-get install nvidia-kernel-dkms

Because APPARENTLY we can't even do THAT automatically.

See above (and lay off the Caps Lock).

[xinorom]

See above (and lay off the Caps Lock).

DanLobotomy strikes again, with his cutting wit.