NVIDIA's Director of Software Development Talks Up Open-Source

[finalzone]

Interoperate with what? Nvidia's driver was developed back when it took a PhD to configure a video card in Linux. Mesa wasn't even on the drawing board back then.
The equation is quite simple: Nvidia has a driver that works for them, while Mesa is unable to provide a straightforward translation (e.g. EGL_Streams being async, while Mesa's GBM being synchronous).

Mesa first release was in 1995 and first 3D support was in 1997 with the now defunct 3DFX. Nvidia existence is on 1993 and their first 3D hardware was in 1998 under Riva TNT.

[leipero]

Just go and read how much data the LHC produces per second (to the point where lots of filtering to discard data must be implemented in-chip because it is impossible to save that amount of data). Then consider you have to process that data. Then we can disagree about the Higgs's boson, for example, to be quite a fundamental discovery.

I don't really care about nVidia, but I find it incredible how far people are willing to go when faced with gray in their black and white world.

Well, as I said, I don't argue against usefulness of computing power in science, it's useful, whoever argues against that is wrong. As for LHC, well, Higgs boson isn't really discovered by any computing power aside from two brains who theorized it, hence my point about "idea > computing power". Now, without going into debate "is it trully discovered/proven by LHC" or not, it was theorized half a century earlier...

[Guest]

Who is talking about open sourcing their drivers? Providing minimal support for Nouveau would be fine. Nouveau would be usable for many users while Nvidia would keep control of their driver and technologies like CUDA or NVDEC/NVENC. Isn't that sounding much better than "use our driver or buy another card"? Isn't it funny when Nvidia talks about being open source friendly when in same time they are blocking open source drivers development?

That makes sense; NVIDIA could provide better documentation.

Also Nvidia driver isn't flawless like you described. If you want to use Wayland - well, your choice of environments are very limited and even if you pick some desktop that supports EGLStreams then you will find that X11 applications are working without acceleration. You described AMD driver as problematic - I never had any issues with it and Wayland works with any environment with accelerated X11 applications. You can say how much "Wayland is broken" but I suggest trying Xorg with mixed-DPI environment to see how much we need Wayland. I also don't need to install any driver because I have working driver right after installation. I also don't have to care about signing kernel module for Secure Boot or updating it after kernel update. Nvidia support Optimus (their own technology) properly now? Well, I used hybrid graphics properly (with power management) years ago on my laptop with Intel and Radeon GPU.

For those use-cases you mentioned, I can see why people wouldn't be happy with NVIDIA's graphics driver. But in my-case, most of that doesn't matter.

My main interest in Wayland is on GNOME, which for me isn't usable until they separate the cursor from the compositor thread (any high GPU/CPU spike causes the cursor to lag or slow-down; super annoying, and I haven't seen this since back in Win98 days). But Xorg works fine for me, so as long as it continues to work on mainstream distros, I don't mind using it, and don't mind NVIDIA's driver in this regard.

As long as I can boot and install a distro and update it, I don't particularly need a graphics driver right out-the-box. However, for testing GPUs out, I do like the convenience of being able to boot into a LiveUSB and run GpuTest, and needing NVIDIA's proprietary driver for that makes that much harder if not impossible (so far I haven't had to diagnose a NVIDIA GPU like that). I wonder if using a persistence LiveUSB with an install of NV's driver would work for this, but I'm sure I'll have to find that out one day.

For the kernel module, I don't use SecureBoot, and akmods on Fedora and dkms on openSUSE TW and Ubuntu seems to cover the module re-build for kernel/driver updates fine behind-the-scenes.

The lack-of battery-savings was the biggest issue for me in the past on Optimus, and continued to be an annoyance up until I got rid of my last laptop with it. I eventually ended up just dealing with it, since I rarely used my laptop without it being plugged in any way. The dual-graphics AMD/AMD and Intel/AMD laptops I used were a joy to use though.

Basically, I'm still fine with AMD for discrete graphics if I have a choice in the matter, but I don't think I'd have a problem going NVIDIA if AMD ever disappointed me bad enough. The HDMI 4K@60Hz issue I had was almost enough (3 out of 5 Polaris GPUs I've had over the years were inexplicably unstable with it). If I had been an early-adopter of Navi, the problems I heard with that may have pushed me though.

[dragon321]

That makes sense; NVIDIA could provide better documentation.



For those use-cases you mentioned, I can see why people wouldn't be happy with NVIDIA's graphics driver. But in my-case, most of that doesn't matter.

My main interest in Wayland is on GNOME, which for me isn't usable until they separate the cursor from the compositor thread (any high GPU/CPU spike causes the cursor to lag or slow-down; super annoying, and I haven't seen this since back in Win98 days). But Xorg works fine for me, so as long as it continues to work on mainstream distros, I don't mind using it, and don't mind NVIDIA's driver in this regard.

As long as I can boot and install a distro and update it, I don't particularly need a graphics driver right out-the-box. However, for testing GPUs out, I do like the convenience of being able to boot into a LiveUSB and run GpuTest, and needing NVIDIA's proprietary driver for that makes that much harder if not impossible (so far I haven't had to diagnose a NVIDIA GPU like that). I wonder if using a persistence LiveUSB with an install of NV's driver would work for this, but I'm sure I'll have to find that out one day.

For the kernel module, I don't use SecureBoot, and akmods on Fedora and dkms on openSUSE TW and Ubuntu seems to cover the module re-build for kernel/driver updates fine behind-the-scenes.

The lack-of battery-savings was the biggest issue for me in the past on Optimus, and continued to be an annoyance up until I got rid of my last laptop with it. I eventually ended up just dealing with it, since I rarely used my laptop without it being plugged in any way. The dual-graphics AMD/AMD and Intel/AMD laptops I used were a joy to use though.

Basically, I'm still fine with AMD for discrete graphics if I have a choice in the matter, but I don't think I'd have a problem going NVIDIA if AMD ever disappointed me bad enough. The HDMI 4K@60Hz issue I had was almost enough (3 out of 5 Polaris GPUs I've had over the years were inexplicably unstable with it). If I had been an early-adopter of Navi, the problems I heard with that may have pushed me though.

I never said you can't run Nvidia driver without any issues. I'm speaking from my perspective and I'm aware that my perspective means nothing to other peoples because they have their own. I just wanted to point that Nvidia and their products aren't flawless and perfect. Of course AMD and Intel drivers have issues too, they are not perfect either. They just work better for me than Nvidia and that's why I use AMD card now.

I agree it's problem with GNOME. Hopefully this will change in near future as GNOME improvements are still developed. As I recall GNOME 3.36 or 3.34 made some improvements with handling input on Wayland and I can confirm it works better than in previous versions. As I know there is also another patch that should move managing input to another thread and this should make big improvement.

I used to test distributions too so having Nvidia card wasn't that good for me too. Yeah, Nouveau can be disabled but not having 3D acceleration is not comfortable. With open source drivers there is no problem. Also even on my main desktop I'm comfortable with having graphics driver as kernel integral part. To be honest Nvidia is doing good job with catching kernels but it's still out of tree module.

That's right, Optimus was annoying before official Nvidia support. Bumblebee worked but not without issues. After Nvidia made official support (late but better late than never) it wasn't that painful to use like before. I don't think I will buy laptop with dGPU in near future but who knows what will happen in future?

I'm waiting for Intel dedicated GPUs. On CPU side I prefer AMD now but I really like Intel GPUs and it will be nice to have more choice. I'm not anti Nvidia either.

[DMJC]

I used to think that NVIDIA was the be all and end all of GPUs, but I dove into a 5700XT last year and haven't looked back. Initially the card was rough around the edges but the open source drivers really came through and now the card performs well, handles all major tasks/applications including Maya, Blender and games. I really have no reason to go back to NVIDIA's crap. Also driver updates are shipped directly in the distribution so I don't even bother trying to track updates any more everything is auto-magic. The only complaint I have is a Linux issue, e.g having Intel/AMD active at same time and having smooth handling of hotplugging, but all Linux setups have that issue.

[lucrus]

No one cares, guys. No one cares.

Apparently at least NVidia itself does care, or they wouldn't keep talking about their open source efforts.

[birdie]

Apparently at least NVidia itself does care, or they wouldn't keep talking about their open source efforts.

Where it matters, where it translates into more profits. You seem to be extremely inattentive - I mentioned it in my post.

[WalterCool]

Meh, from my side this is my last laptop with Nvidia. Had my hopes they would change, but they doesn't.

I'm okay with their proprietary technologies like CUDA, but restricting their hardware to digital signatures is way too oppressive.

[insilications]

Nvidia user here, but I expect AMD and Intel to crush them in the long term if they keep bullshitting people on open source.

[lucrus]

Where it matters, where it translates into more profits. You seem to be extremely inattentive - I mentioned it in my post.

Assuming that was my point (which is not), here is your post, please explain to me where you mentioned that.

Let's have three dozen more comments how "prominent" figures of this world choose not to buy NVIDIA because the company doesn't share their Open Source religion. Oh, God.

Users of the OS which has a miniscule market share and which basically has no games (I'm talking about native AAA titles) try to surprise everyone with their stance and smart choice. No one cares, guys. No one cares.

But, as already pointed out, that's not my point and you can safely skip that explanation, because I was referring to NVidia claims about their open source efforts for gamers and end users (linux): they obviously care to keep also those users somewhat hopeful if not 100% happy, and that alone shows those users are not irrelevant, not even to NVidia.