NVIDIA Transitioning To Official, Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Driver

[birdie]

That's certainly good news, big step in the right direction. But it's also too little too late, given where all the competitors are, and have been for years. Even the Mali problem on the ARM side has been solved a lot earlier.
I'll continue boycotting nvidia until they open up the userland parts (or enable Nouveau or some other project to provide a viable Open Source alternative).

Late? Late in what? Linux on the desktop is still below 2% just like it was 30 years ago. And this development will change absolutely nothing.

[birdie]

Why do people keep bringing up AMD and Intel? AMD I don't use so not really interested in (personally) and Intel are *of course* worse with their "management engines".

My point is that we shouldn't be celebrating companies moving more code into firmware and yet pretending they are becoming more open. They are not. They are becoming more closed.

You are right though, I am an open source zealot.

Start with law. Start with DMCA. OK? Then "hate", OK? The silicon companies don't act like this because they are "evil", they act because the media industry and the law make them so.

[Murple]

Start with law. Start with DMCA. OK? Then "hate", OK? The silicon companies don't act like this because they are "evil", they act because the media industry and the law make them so.

I'm not really concerned about people "hating" on massive companies but for your sake I will concede that I shouldn't swear at Nvidia. You say it's not their fault after all.

But do I need to highlight the number of people getting their feathers ruffled about people hating on companies while they clearly have no problems with personal insults? It seems backwards to me, I won't lose any sleep about Nvidia's hurt feelings but I would be uncomfortable being mean to individual people. I don't really care if people want to insult me on the internet, I just find the dichotomy interesting.

[L_A_G]

Well... This is one of those times where I was wrong, but I'm glad to be so.

Guess I don't have to feel bad about buying an RTX 3090 last summer at all.

[berolinux]

Late in what?

Late in doing what EVERY SINGLE ONE of their competitors did a couple of years earlier.

[phoron]

Start with law. Start with DMCA. OK? Then "hate", OK? The silicon companies don't act like this because they are "evil", they act because the media industry and the law make them so.

I'm not sure that's not an excuse. You could just have a switch to activate firmware signature validation and DRM or run a free firmware version and have the card not decipher DRM media. (Some?) Chromebooks did something similar with verified boot.

I think it's a combination of control freakiness by vendors and apathy/ignorance by consumers. Just don't buy/hire or consume DRMd media (not even watch illegal copies, that increases mindshare and market appeal). Produce and share free content or entertain yourself otherwise. I mean in other centuries we took the Bastille. Now we just can't be bothered to be bored without a film instead of being bored with a film.

[birdie]

Late in doing what EVERY SINGLE ONE of their competitors did a couple of years earlier.

Again, late in what? Has it affected NVIDIA? Their customers? Anyone? I for one don't give a fuck about the openness of their kernel driver. It's a little annoying having to build it manually after upgrading the kernel but that happens four times a year, so I don't really care. And considering the current release is only suitable for compute/corporate, nothing has changed yet at least for me.

On the other hand Open Source zealots most of whom have done nil for Open Source other than leaving hateful comments still say "F you NVIDIA or F you less NVIDIA" in this discussion.

[birdie]

I'm not sure that's not an excuse. You could just have a switch to activate firmware signature validation and DRM or run a free firmware version and have the card not decipher DRM media. (Some?) Chromebooks did something similar with verified boot.

I think it's a combination of control freakiness by vendors and apathy/ignorance by consumers. Just don't buy/hire or consume DRMd media (not even watch illegal copies, that increases mindshare and market appeal). Produce and share free content or entertain yourself otherwise. I mean in other centuries we took the Bastille. Now we just can't be bothered to be bored without a film instead of being bored with a film.

Maintaining two copies of firmware is a lot more work and money. Will at least 100K AMD/Intel customers pay for open source firmware? I doubt more than a few thousand people in the whole world will pay for this privilege which means what you're asking is not financially feasible.

I'll gladly use open source firmware because I've played DRM content on all the PCs I've ever had exactly zero times for my entire life.

[Monsterovich]

Kinda sums up Open Source/Linux zealots' attitude: WE CAN HATE, WE HATE, WE WILL HATE.

Did you expect a different attitude after decades of humiliation by NVidia? Are you ready to forgive everything after one little bone thrown? What they have opened is not even user space, but just kernel modules. In addition, older versions of video cards that can still work are not supported.

[Jabberwocky]

I wonder whether AMD has been doing this as well...

Just like you I am too lazy to look if others are also hiding logic, but I think it's safe to assume kernel maintainers are doing their job (rejecting bad HAL drivers).

The last time I read about something like that was Realtek, could be rtl8811 but my memory is failing me. Later we saw AMD Display Core code being rejected multiple times. IIRC Realtek did nothing about it and their users needed to build the drivers manually. AMD rewrote the drivers a few times which took a really long.

I don't know if Nvidia plans to merge this since they just left it on Github.