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

[mdedetrich]

Props to NVidia for this effort but also being practical/mature about it and not putting the new open source driver into the Linux tree since it makes sense for them to tie their driver to their own release schedule and also so they can support multiple kernel versions.

Really happy about this though, they seem to have approached the problem in the best way possible.

[Volta]

Linus' middle finger finally worked.

[Monsterovich]

NVidia, fuck you... less.

[abu_shawarib]

Nice. Shame about Turing+ only support though.

[ssokolow]

Nice. Shame about Turing+ only support though.

According to this post, the plan going forward is to get Nouveau and the nVidia driver sharing a kernel-side backend.

[ms178]

They missed Victory Day by a few days, but still - seeing Microsoft releasing a Linux distro and Nvidia opening up (a little) are both a big splash for open-source software just a couple of days apart. What's next? Microsoft open sourcing DirectX and porting it to Linux?

[RealNC]

Is this about making the already available source code of the kernel modules available under an open license? Or is source code now available for stuff that was previously only available in a binary blob?

[fitzie]

My video cards for linux: tseng -> matrox -> matrox -> ati -> ati -> ati -> amd -> amd -> amd -> ??

my next upgrade will be to support 120hz + hdr. I will probably stick to AMD unless nvidia does something amazing, like make an arm apu with geforce builtin.

[You-]

it literally contains 1. and 2.

I don't see the firmware terms having been changed anywhere? I could be wrong here but when discussing on twitter with people much more knowledgeable, it was accepted that firmware was still not redistributeable and separate from this release. This driver needs that firmware to work. Just like Nouveau needs it to work.

It doesn't contain the display part. This is useful for compute and also probably if you have a second graphics card that controls the display.

The display part of the GPU driver will need to be written, but that was never the major hold up. Its the firmware not being redistributeable that hurts distros the most. (distros because individual end users can acquire the firmware. But that doesnt make plug and play any easier.)

EDIT: I misread the blog post linked below. The code is there, but not complete and needs testing.

Redhat reportedly plans to make open source replacements for the user space bits:

https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2022/...ant-for-linux/

Yup. But the big problem was always redistrubuteable firmware. Before nvidia started using signed firmware Nouveau had gotten surprisingly good for older hardware where somethings they could even roll their own opensource firmware. But then nvidia made signing mandatory and only allowed base clock frequency firmware to be redistributed.

If nvidia does step 1, there are enough nvidia fans and users out there for the community or other big companies to do the rest of the legwork. While today is nice, it is less important than allowing redistributeable firmware.

[You-]

Nice. Shame about Turing+ only support though.

The problem withNouveau was the lack of redistributeable firmware. If they release that I would suspect Nouveau would improve in leaps and bounds even without official support.