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

[slawdog]

Does this mean virtual GPUs will become a thing on nvidia hardware?

[zexelon]

Wow... the Linux holy warriors got a victory here! That said as an avid Nvidia user, this is great news! Thanks to the Nvidia team that is making this happen... and probably the lawyers for finally signing off on something like this... it was probably a huge obstacle to get the legal team to agree to something like this.

Now Linux zealots can enjoy the highest end performance... with a clean conscience ... or at least a little bit cleaner

[WannaBeOCer]

Why you people are happy so much? Given how nvidia *ucks you at all angles, you still want more?
They were open source hostile. And now they are open, but for the server space first. And frankly any big super computer project, probably had access to their source code drivers from long time ago.
They were selling cards directly to miners, and lying they don't.
They invent their proprietary stuff, just to vendor lock-in. CUDA, VDPAU, etc.

AMD are just better, in any way. Not to mention they just start beating nvidia on raw performance arena too.

Where oh where is AMD's graphics settings on Linux? Nvidia's proprietary drivers and CUDA software stack have been a fantastic. It's the reason why most scientific research is done using Nvidia GPUs. AMD's GPUs were practically useless for gaming on Linux with Wine up until 2020 when Valve started dumping a ton of money and ACO was released. Gamers keep trying to push Wayland but it's broken for scientific research. It's no shock Nvidia delayed it on an enterprise Linux distro like Ubuntu.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayla...ge_requests/45

Wasn't Sapphire, PowerColor and XFX(AMD exclusive partners) selling directly to miners? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1PVN2Ek7dg

Nvidia made a specific SKU to sell to miners. Nvidia never sold their GeForce cards directly to miners. Yes, they invent their own proprietary stuff and vendor lock it to protect their IP. Since AMD isn't innovative they steal the idea, create a crappier implementation and sell it for cheaper. That's how AMD was founded if you recall. Thanks to AMD x86-64 we're still stuck with x86 applications in 2022. Seems like Apple is the only one who has it figured out.

[CochainComplex]

Well hell is freezing I guess. WTF?!

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

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.

Nvidia addresses this directly in their announcement.

Upstream approach NVIDIA GPU drivers have been designed over the years to share code across operating systems, GPUs and Jetson SOCs so that we can provide a consistent experience across all our supported platforms. The current codebase does not conform to the Linux kernel design conventions and is not a candidate for Linux upstream.

There are plans to work on an upstream approach with the Linux kernel community and partners such as Canonical, Red Hat, and SUSE.

In the meantime, published source code serves as a reference to help improve the Nouveau driver. Nouveau can leverage the same firmware used by the NVIDIA driver, exposing many GPU functionalities, such as clock management and thermal management, bringing new features to the in-tree Nouveau driver.

[You-]

The blog you quoted in the post before stated that Nouveau required a dedicated special firmware release from NVidia:



So which one is it? Does Nouveau use the exact same firmware images as NVidia binary driver or is it something specially made for them?
The blog states that the eventual end goal is to have a merged kernel driver that both proprietary NVidia stuff and Mesa (currently using Nouveau) can share, with shared firmware of course.

The blog says "Nouveau specific firmware that NVidia currently releases". This is the basic firmware without reclocking support which Nouveau currently releases. This firmware isnt needed by anything other than Nouveau because the nvidia official driver has the full firmware.

Nvidia needs to release the full firmware for any additional functionality. That wont need to be Nouveau specific and can be the current firmware they redistribute with their official driver.

[Dasein]

*Screams in Pascal with GTX 1080*

[tildearrow]

Calm down everyone, they just moved the secret sauce into the silicon so the driver itself does not do as much.
This means they don't care so much about hiding the source.
Unfortunately older existing cards will never see proper OSS support from nvidia because of this, since those require the special sauce to be in-driver.

I would be happier if I was not stuck on a GTX 1080 that is currently not worth upgrading.

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

[microcode]

Just glad they some day won't be holding up distro kernel release schedules anymore.

[agd5f]

I see many people here praising AMD for their already open-source drivers, but don't they also ship a closed-source version which is more performant? And according to some people the AMD drivers have many issues, one of them even said it's worse than Nvidia.

We provide a closed source OpenGL driver for workstation, but the open source OpenGL driver is recommended for gaming and performs better for that. The only reason for the closed source OpenGL driver was because Mesa lacked a bunch of features which workstation applications need that took a long time to add support for and those workstation users need support in the interim. Both the open source and closed source OpenGL drivers use the same open source kernel driver.