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

[birdie]

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.

"Humiliation"? "Forgive" what exactly? Infinite demands and insults by open source zealots?

I've been using NVIDIA GPUs along with their blob with few to no issues for almost two decades now - more than most people here have used Linux and longer than some of people here have lived.

Just don't tell me about Wayland, OK? I don't care about this wonderful shiny ... crap.

[nexuslm]

Thanks NVIDIA for f*** Maxwell and Pascal users again!

[Anux]

but don't they also ship a closed-source version which is more performant?

No, the closed version is far behind the free one. Only some rare edge cases run faster.

And according to some people the AMD drivers have many issues, one of them even said it's worse than Nvidia.

Many, not so sure. Some features are still missing / in developement like ray tracing and there are bugs for sure but I never stumbled over one. The only thing that realy bothers me is HDR support but the driver allready has all it needs, maybe its Xorgs fault.

If you install ubuntu on a PC with AMD graphics, you can install a game and play while never even thinking about your graphics driver. Thats amazing.

Im really thrilled about Nvidia going open source, they were never considered by me because of their CS driver. But they make good cards and I recommended many friends, that are Windows only, to use Nvidia cards.
If all goes well we will have 3 graphics card makers wit OS drivers in a few years. They will profit from each other and soon have 3 times the performance compared to Windows.

[ResponseWriter]

I almost skipped over this article because I don't bother to read Nvidia related news and had to check the date of publication more than once! This is great news, though.

My guess is, as in the article, is targeting the Linux HPC market and desktop support is just a bonus.

[Mattia_98]

Until everything is mainlined this means nothing. I'd rather have them start working on helping noveau and ditch everything else than start their own thing.

[oiaohm]

"Humiliation"? "Forgive" what exactly? Infinite demands and insults?

I've been using NVIDIA GPUs along with their blob with few to no issues for almost two decades now - more than most people here have used Linux and longer than some of people here have lived.

The Nvidia failure issues is quite bad.
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/NVIDIA/...PL-only_symbol

Just because you have not been hitting them does not mean they are not fairly major birdie this has nothing todo with wayland. This change will be good once everything get sorted out because when you have having trouble you will be able to use all the Linux kernel diagnostic options to locate problem.

Kernel signing has been another major problem. When I say major I mean totally major where Microsoft does not want to sign boot loaders that load a kernel that then load not validated parts into kernel space. Yes major Linux distributions want to validate at source level that kernel space code is valid and have funded development of a lot of tools in linux kernel source code to do just this.

I guess you were not around in the early 2000 when Nvidia first open sourced sections of their driver stack then stuffed every over.

Yes it fun running into the issue that some stuff in the Linux kernel is patented by different parties and is only licensed to be used with GPLv2 compatible code and this resulting in like above where the Nvidia driver starts to work then random-ally fails because you enabled some kernel feature. There is a need for Linux kernel compatible license.

Birdie the patent issues first turned up in the Linux kernel mailing list in 1995. So 25 years of headache. The driver signing problem starts with UEFI in 2005. Yes there are other problems like this where the Linux world has demands from patent holders or Microsoft or other parties that they have to confirm to that Nvidia closed source kernel mode driver has been in conflict with.

Birdie there are demands on the Linux kernel developers from many different parties. The infinite demands is more complex story. Lot fo the demard from Linux kernel developers for Nvidia to open source their drivers is so Linux kernels built by distributions are conforming to what Microsoft and other patent holders want.

You could say Linux kernel developers have been stuck in rock and hard place as they need open source to make lot of patent holders happy and to make those validating kernel for particular uses happy and then Nvidia saying you will use binary blob that totally does not agree. Yes recently Nvidia has lost a few super computer contracts due to the fact validation would be impossible. Yes parties have started now instead of just complaining about Nvidia lack of source code taking their business else where and magically now Nvidia is able to release source code.

the reality here the majority of the demands has not changed. The difference is AMD and Intel are starting to release competitive cards in particular markets so Nvidia is unable to keep on ignoring the demands.

[skeevy420]

Wtf I love Nvidia now

Well let's not go that far

[birdie]

a wall of text

• Modules signing? It's distros' job which willingly decided not to do that because reasons. Nothing technically prevents RedHat/Fedora/Suse/Ubuntu from building kernel modules and signing them.
• I was around 2000, in fact I started using Linux around 1998 and I don't remember anything about NVIDIA in terms of open sourcing something and giving up on that. I cannot find anything on Google either.
• Patent issues? What??
• Supercomputer contracts? Sources? Proofs? Not some hearsay, please.

Can you list the actual technical issues (excluding Wayland support and the whole DMA-BUF issue)? Not made up, not something which is relevant for all 20 people in the world, not something which is murky, like "patents"? I have a closed source NVIDIA driver right effing now under X.org. Everything is picture perfect.

The fact is that Linux kernel lacks stable API and comes under a very communism-like license is not a testament to "issues" in NVIDIA drivers, it's a testament to the Linux kernel being in a fucking perpetual broken state with very little QA/QC no other decent OS allows itself. I've said it a million times and I will repeat it again: developing or open sourcing for Linux means spending a lot more money/time/resources than developing for serious stable OS'es or not opening at all. 99.9% of contributions for Intel/AMD drivers are made by Intel/AMD/Valve employees. The whole "community will help develop" is nothing but a bluff. The community is mostly capable of saying "F you NVIDIA" in various forms.

The two most significant Linux kernel applications which are RHEL and Android both do not use the vanilla Linux kernel. It speaks volumes about the whole situation we are discussing here. So many people rejoice the fact that now NVIDIA has to spend maybe up to ten times more money by open sourcing the driver and working around all the patented stuff in it while maintaining two versions of the driver considering the new open source driver only covers only their last two uArchs.

[sdack]

Took them forever. Like watching an ice sheet break off and melt in the Antarctic.

[skeevy420]

• Modules signing? It's distros' job which willingly decided not to do that because reasons. Nothing technically prevents RedHat/Fedora/Suse/Ubuntu from building kernel modules and signing them.
• I was around 2000, in fact I started using Linux around 1998 and I don't remember anything about NVIDIA in terms of open sourcing something and giving up on that. I cannot find anything on Google either.
• Patent issues? What??
• Supercomputer contracts? Sources? Proofs? Not some hearsay, please.

Can you list the actual technical issues (excluding Wayland support and the whole DMA-BUF issue)? Not made up, not something which is relevant for all 20 people in the world, not something which is murky, like "patents"? I have a closed source NVIDIA driver right effing now under X.org. Everything is picture perfect.

The fact is that Linux kernel lacks stable API and comes under a very communism-like license is not a testament to "issues" in NVIDIA drivers, it's a testament to the Linux kernel being in a fucking perpetual broken state with very little QA/QC no other decent OS allows itself. I've said it a million times and I will repeat it again: developing or open sourcing for Linux means spending a lot more money/time/resources than developing for serious stable OS'es or not opening at all. 99.9% of contributions for Intel/AMD drivers are made by Intel/AMD/Valve employees. The whole "community will help develop" is nothing but a bluff. The community is mostly capable of saying "F you NVIDIA" in various forms.

The two most significant Linux kernel applications which are RHEL and Android both do not use the vanilla Linux kernel. It speaks volumes about the whole situation we are discussing here. So many people rejoice the fact that now NVIDIA has to spend maybe up to ten times more money by open sourcing the driver and working around all the patented stuff in it while maintaining two versions of the driver considering the new open source driver only covers only their last two uArchs.

Honest question:

Does anyone who posts here actually use the vanilla kernel?

I assume most of us are running some distribution and some distribution almost never uses vanilla outside of testing purposes like the newer kernels Ubuntu provides.