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NVIDIA Transitioning To Official, Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Driver
Not true. We had open source drivers for every generation of radeon hardware. We supported the original radeon and r200 open source drivers, and after a brief hiatus during the r5xx days, we continued to maintain open source driver support for all generations in the open source radeon driver and released GPU documentation. During that time we also had the closed source fglrx driver to support workstation customers. With amdgpu we migrated from a dual driver solution to a unified open source driver solution to support all businesses.
Hmm, I might misremember this then. I think practically there wasn't a way around fglrx, but that doesn't make my accusation much better. Also very good point about the documentation. While I understand NVIDIA not wanting to release their code due to potentially a shitload of legal problems to solve along the way, there is not that much excuse regarding documentation that could have helped the Nouveau project to advance.
Hmm, I might misremember this then. I think practically there wasn't a way around fglrx
If you bought a brand new card back then you only had the option of fglrx because in distros like ubuntu the free driver was delayed by 1 year and even after that the performance and featureset of the free on was lacking behind. No fault of our fellow OS devs, they could only build drivers if they had access to a card and documentation.
Knowing the past situation makes me appreciate the present even more.
If you bought a brand new card back then you only had the option of fglrx because in distros like ubuntu the free driver was delayed by 1 year and even after that the performance and featureset of the free on was lacking behind. No fault of our fellow OS devs, they could only build drivers if they had access to a card and documentation.
Knowing the past situation makes me appreciate the present even more.
Well I still stand by my view that NVIDIA always had good (if not even fantastic) support and that (at least for me) ATI lacked behind a very long time. But apparently it wasn't quite as "bad" as I made it out to be. Given that I want NVIDIA to be treated fairly for what they did (even if it wasn't idiologically right), I should at least also treat ATI/AMD fairly for their early efforts.
In the end there are and were three relevant GPU vendors for PCs over the last decades - Intel, AMD/ATI and NVIDIA - and we had working drivers on Linux to various degress all the time. So no matter what idiology was behind it, we are lucky. And it's only getting better.
(Me puts up hand.) I am in the POS and fast food franchise industry, maintaining the OS for a lot of hardware (literally many tens of thousands of sites with multiple computers in one location), using a Yocto based OS and an almost vanilla kernel built from sources with module signing enabled. No NVIDIA based hardware in sight. Everything is AMD or Intel. While the desktop Linux presence may be low, we have very strong figures in the POS space.
I have an almost vanilla kernel, too (linux-tkg...patched from kernel.org sources). That's my point -- most all of us are using an almost vanilla kernel and anyone relying on a distribution kernel isn't using a vanilla kernel and how that has never stopped anyone before...anyone being things like Reiser 5, OpenZFS, NVIDIA, AUFS, Winesync, etc. birdie using the ever changing kernel and patched kernels as a reason to not opensource or why Linux is hard or whatever just falls on deaf ears these days.
Fact is, Linux runs our lives. It buys our food, it lets us communicate, it drives our vehicles, it plays our games, it calculates our information, it stores our data, it edits our HDR movies...whoops, that one's Windows...
OMG, the world's most predominant software stack just updated and we have to update.
Well, fuck it, that sounds hard. Let's not participate with the rest of the world
But the second most predominant stack Windows, just released their 2022Q2-FU4EVR updated for 10 and 11 so we have to update for them, too.
Well I still stand by my view that NVIDIA always had good (if not even fantastic) support and that (at least for me) ATI lacked behind a very long time. But apparently it wasn't quite as "bad" as I made it out to be. Given that I want NVIDIA to be treated fairly for what they did (even if it wasn't idiologically right), I should at least also treat ATI/AMD fairly for their early efforts.
In the end there are and were three relevant GPU vendors for PCs over the last decades - Intel, AMD/ATI and NVIDIA - and we had working drivers on Linux to various degress all the time. So no matter what idiology was behind it, we are lucky. And it's only getting better.
I used both nvidia and ATI/AMD at the time of fglrx. My experience was that both worked rather OK until kernel upgrades broke stuff, but fglrx tended to lag kernel support for longer. That said, I would be let with no video at all in nvidia and only lose acceleration with ATI when that happened. But anecdotal evidence is anecdotal and it was too many years ago to remember everything clearly. I haven't really gamed in years so I pretty much never used a discrete GPU again and I'm doing fine with Intel :shrug:
I did start using the open ATI driver after having those breakages at some point much before the closed one was replaced officially, it wasn't too bad. I didn't benchmark it but it never gave me any problems with games I used.
That said, VIA used to be quite popular for low budget computers. It's not all gamers.
Oh, come on Nvidia! We know you have a bad sense of timing, and of tastelessness, but April fools day was LAST month! Not nice teasing us with such a cruel joke. :P
... Yes, I'm kidding of course. In reality, I think this is a great first step, but for Nvidia to truly be considered by me over AMD for Linux use, I would need:
Open Sourced drivers
... With working power management
... Mainlined into Linux kernel
... With a Mesa userspace driver
Now, the last one Nouveau could provide, the first three are on Nvidia to provide. Good luck, clock is slowly ticking here!
No, the closed version is far behind the free one. Only some rare edge cases run faster.
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.
Thank you for the insights, I agree that it's great to have everything work out of the box.
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