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

[pmorph]

Without wasting much more time researching what nVidia did open source, I'm readily guessing this so-called "open sourced nVidia driver" is just a simple open code wrapper around the proprietary firmware driver, and as to how much code nVidia actually open sourced is likely going to be subjective.

I had thought that value of open sourcing it lies mostly in making life easier for developers (isn't that what Linus's rant back in the day was basically about?).
So this release is not helping with that?

[billyswong]

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.

In theory I think GPU designers *could* put all the DRM media related decoding into a TPM-like module independent of the major firmware. Then only signed firmware can access that module and play 4k Netflix. Also, that signed firmware can be open sourced without disclosing the decryption keys.

But all these will take a very strong will for mainstream GPU designers to take effort in doing so, as such effort complicates the design but pays no revenue.

[_ONH_]

Indeed, at least they should find a solution till Pascal..

Nope won't happen and it is a good way for it to be that way! Pascal lacks the hw and no one in a comercial Enterprise should be allowed to waste $ towards the past.
I completely understand birdie's rants about oss module but medium to long term nv is going to spend less with an oss reference module.

[Monsterovich]

Speaking of artefacts - where's your bug report on NVIDIA forums? Screenshots? I've seen nothing.

https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/...ue-again/77856

The problem is very similar to this one. The artifacts show up on the framebuffer of the Firefox window. Whether I've seen this in other applications, I don't remember. Every time I hear a statement that the problem has been fixed and every time it reappears. On older graphics cards, like my old GTX 960, the glitch problems were more serious. Apparently, NVidia doesn't care about older video cards, which by the way is quite clear from this thread.

Are you using the latest drivers?

No. I'm sticking to 470.103.01. It is the recommended driver for my GPU. The newer version of the drivers has serious problems with the compositor (I'm curious why).

I have had no issues with KDE and XFCE X11 compositors in the past couple of years. Again, nothing on NVIDIA Linux forums either.

I had to switch to compton because the stock xfce compositor has problems with the fullscreen windows and reduces FPS in games. I suspect that this is a xfce4 issue. Xfce doesn't unredirect windows properly.

[birdie]

And doesn't work for quite a lot of people out there. Disabling splash screen solves issues for some users, but in case of AMD and Intel it just works.

Same story - for AMD and Intel it just works.

I don't really care about license thing. I just don't want to waste time on system configuration. With NV every kernel upgrade can break system. It requires some magic with secure boot and encrypted filesystem. With Intel and AMD I just install system and it works. No issues, no configuration. AMD, Intel = simplicity.
I can live with binary driver, but I don't really want to waste more time on setting things up than it's really neccessary.

I really cannot relate to these issues as under Fedora I've got none of them

[sinepgib]

That's nice to hear. Actually Wayland is a nice idea, it's just the implementation which is severely lacking.

While I certainly am pretty fanboyish with Wayland, I don't see how the implementation issues can be fixed globally while the server and the compositor are the same piece. That's part of the specification AFAIK, so Wayland itself indeed.
Of course we have libs like wlroots, but more or less all of the big players do their own compositor with few or no shared code, which kinda sucks.

• No idea, fully encrypted system here, zero issues. This is relevant for 0.1% of users out there but WFM.
• Secure boot here with my own certificate, again zero issues.

Quick question: how do you handle distros not signing the nvidia blob? Do you build your own kernel so you can use your own cert there as well?

[sinepgib]

And doesn't work for quite a lot of people out there. Disabling splash screen solves issues for some users, but in case of AMD and Intel it just works.

Same story - for AMD and Intel it just works.

I don't really care about license thing. I just don't want to waste time on system configuration. With NV every kernel upgrade can break system. It requires some magic with secure boot and encrypted filesystem. With Intel and AMD I just install system and it works. No issues, no configuration. AMD, Intel = simplicity.
I can live with binary driver, but I don't really want to waste more time on setting things up than it's really neccessary.

TBF, the SecureBoot issues come from a bit of a double standard on distros. MS is happy to sign their little shim without knowing beforehand what they'll be shipping, so why they can't do the same with nvidia and sign their module? They'd just need to get a package I guess.

[sinepgib]

I had thought that value of open sourcing it lies mostly in making life easier for developers (isn't that what Linus's rant back in the day was basically about?).
So this release is not helping with that?

Kinda sorta. It's still something depending on a closed source userspace driver to even run, so not really easy to debug by them.

[sinepgib]

I really cannot relate to these issues as under Fedora I've got none of them

I thought Fedora was the most problematic distro regarding SecureBoot and nvidia. Am I missing something? Note I do not use it, so I may just be confused.

[Sevard]

TBF, the SecureBoot issues come from a bit of a double standard on distros. MS is happy to sign their little shim without knowing beforehand what they'll be shipping, so why they can't do the same with nvidia and sign their module? They'd just need to get a package I guess.

I think it's NV who should ask them to do so. And NV prefers to use self signed certs for this and that kills whole point of using SecureBoot.