The Maintainer Of The NVIDIA Open-Source "Nouveau" Linux Kernel Driver Resigns

[NSLW]

He was a paid employee. He developed nouveau for a living. Any idea if RedHat plans to replace him with another employee?

[You-]

This is a cautionary tale to buy hardware that officially supports the OS you want.

Why?

The stuff that worked yesterday will continue to work tomorrow.

Stuff that didnt work yesterday or had issues may have less issues or might start to work tomorrow. In fact with the code drop earlier in the day, they are already in a better state than they were!

I get avoiding nvidia. I have never advocated them for decades now and wish intel/AMD all the best in destroying them, but this news article has no relevance to such things.

[NeoMorpheus]

I wonder why RedHat would burn money on something like this when nVidia itself has done nothing but crap all over libre software efforts over the years.

Strange. Anyway, hat tip to Ben, he's quite a trooper.

Maybe they have the same fanatics that we have here, kissing Dear Leader Jensen's ass, instead of giving him the middle finger and buying AMD, which does care for open source.

[fitzie]

True, but on the other hand, it is all about an ecosystem, and even if there is only a minority using NVidia on the linux desktop, a good support here is important for the image of that ecosystem. It gives a bad impression to "multiplicative people", when there e.g. still is no proper support for wayland. Even if it is not mission critical to them.

Compared to the cash nvidia generates, they could provide first class linux drivers for an amount of cash that wouldn't even be noticeable in the annual reports. Not at all. But they would gain a lot of prestige by important people. Think about that gossip like "Well, this guy in IT dep, he actually uses linux on desktop - such a nerd! - he says nVidia is awesome, they have an excellent driver support!" You can't buy this prestige cheaper but by providing good drivers.

You're right, but I'm talking about the incentives. Even amd didn't get fully involved in the opensource driver until it was commercially beneficial for them. This why even now AMD rocm effort is kinda a joke, even though it's very much a chicken and egg scenario. NVidia could drop a few million/yr into opensource driver development without it effecting their bottem line, and even if they are convinced that it is the future, there just is not any business justification right now, because it's entirely duplicative work without the guarantee of a payoff. Companies rarely invest in such things. Only after it's certain that the open source driver will be superior will nvidia get involved.

Even IBM didn't get involved in Linux until they saw plenty of companies making money on Linux, long after it was clear it was going to win the server war. I just think Linux people doesn't see that for however dominant linux is, the model for hardware firmware/drivers is still very much closed by default. Any nvidia will not do anything that allows other companies to add cuda compatibility, which I suspect will be the way nvidia will knocked off their perch.

[Weasel]

But can it run Wayland?

I hope not, because it sucks (Crapland, not Nvidia).

[Weasel]

I haven't heard good things about Nvidia's official Wayland drivers, and Wayland is the future of Desktop Linux.

Something that can't even query absolute window positions for your hotkeys/macros can't be the future of anything, except of masochists.

So, keep suffering.

[sophisticles]

My comments regarding the Nouveau driver are related to the abysmal performance of Nouveau compared to the proprietary driver, as well as the inability to use CUDA with Nouveau and the lack of support for NVENC when using Nouveau.

As i have stated numerous times in my comments regarding Asahi Linux, I consider it absurd to buy hardware that has certain features and then use OSes and/or drivers that do not allow you to make full use of the hardware you paid for.

I don't care if it's Nvidia, Apple, Intel, AMD, or anyone else, if I pay for a piece of hardware i expect to be able to make full use of its capabilities, not be hamstrung by some ridiculous ideology that expects people to give away their software for free.

Just because some people and companies want to release the software they write as open source does not mean that everyone is obligated to do so.

[sophisticles]

This is so funny, neither Wayland, dmabuf nor Vulkan work properly at this moment on Nvidia proprietary drivers

From what i understand, Wayland itself does not work properly and Vulkan is still in its infancy.

I'm not sure these work properly on AMD's proprietary drivers either.

[sophisticles]

Because we believe in open software, as a philosophy and as a strategy. We invest in Linux's future, because we don't have a future without it. It's no exaggeration to say that none of this conversation would be happening if Linux wasn't The platform for OpenGL. People are going to buy NVIDIA hardware for that, and we can't support hardware we can't drive ourselves, so we need something open and credible.

You don't have to like my employer, its parent company, or our products - believe me, I'm right there with you some days - but our motivations really are pretty transparent. We don't do closed drivers because we can't fix them, and if we can't fix them we can't support you. We don't do out-of-tree drivers because the whole point is to get them upstream so everyone keeps them stable and everyone wins, because we are a big part of that everyone. We work on the desktop because without that Linux is a niche OS, competing with QNX and NetWare instead of WIndows and macOS, and that means nobody knows how to use it or develop for it and that means we don't have a talent pool to hire from, or, like, customers.

You are implying that you work for Red Hat, if true then you seem to ignore that Linux on the desktop is a niche OS.

As for why people buy NVIDIA hardware, it's not because of OGL, gamers buy it for the DX support, HPC users buy it for CUDA and video professionals buy it for NVENC and CUDA.

None of these is supported by the open source driver.

Trust me, Nouveau could go the way of the Dodo, Red Hat could go the way of the Dodo, Linux could go closed source and people would still use Linux+Nvidia without giving it a second thought.

[nwnk]

You are implying that you work for Red Hat, if true then you seem to ignore that Linux on the desktop is a niche OS.

I'm not implying anything. I've worked for Red Hat for nearly 18 years. I've been the userspace graphics lead for most of that time. I am pretty sure I was on Ben's interview panel.

I didn't say Linux wasn't niche on the desktop. I said Linux would be niche everywhere without the desktop.

So why undermine a well-functioning Nvidia blob with an unfinished Wayland where it doesn't work?

Speaking as the guy who kept your X server working for most of those 18 years: because X11 is no longer fit for purpose. RHEL9 still has Xorg and is going to get new hardware enablement for another (checks) four years or so, and (anecdotally) many VFX shops are just now moving to RHEL8, so anyone who seriously needs the Serious NVIDIA Workstation Features has a runway before they have to panic. In the meantime we desperately need to cut bait, because maintaining two display servers is unsustainable, particularly when one of the display servers would only be kept to enable a driver we can't fix.