NVIDIA Loses Huge GPU Order Due To Linux Blob

[johnc]

Exactly! Arguing that the device can be cloned by anyone who read it's driver is just as stupid as claiming that anyone who ever saw a banknote can now print money? Why the fuck aren't they getting it⁈

I'm pretty sure they have third-party licensed IP in their drivers and hardware.

Even simple stuff like video codecs.

[Wilfred]

I'm pretty sure they have third-party licensed IP in their drivers and hardware.

Even simple stuff like video codecs.

Even then, they could release more documentation. If AMD/ATI can do it, so can nvidia. And perhaps stuff like the HDMI audio can then be reverse engineered by the developer community.

[gamerk2]

Even then, they could release more documentation. If AMD/ATI can do it, so can nvidia. And perhaps stuff like the HDMI audio can then be reverse engineered by the developer community.

Like was so quickly done on AMD cards? ...oh wait a second...

Basically, it appears to me that most in the Linux world would rather have an open driver then one that actually, you know, works.

[johnc]

Like was so quickly done on AMD cards? ...oh wait a second...

Basically, it appears to me that most in the Linux world would rather have an open driver then one that actually, you know, works.

Pretty much.

I still have yet to read on this site a compelling reason for NVIDIA to do all these things people here are clamoring for.

There are some things I would like to see too, but none of them revolve around NVIDIA promoting my religion of choice.


This is one of the reasons that Android never took off. Consumers don't like functioning binary blobs and demand vendors respect the open source community. Hence Android is mired in the 1% of mobile markets. ...oh wait a second...

[Wilfred]

Like was so quickly done on AMD cards? ...oh wait a second...

Basically, it appears to me that most in the Linux world would rather have an open driver then one that actually, you know, works.

Ah, that is the problem right there. The free driver usually works more reliably, less crashes and so than the fglrx/nvidia.ko driver. A friend of mine had to do support for an organization which did 3d stuff and used nvidia cards on linux and he really hated the stability of those things, they crashed often.

[gamerk2]

Ah, that is the problem right there. The free driver usually works more reliably, less crashes and so than the fglrx/nvidia.ko driver. A friend of mine had to do support for an organization which did 3d stuff and used nvidia cards on linux and he really hated the stability of those things, they crashed often.

Across multiple distributions? KDE/Gnome? Specific apps or across the board?

I think the real question is WHY so many important Linux drivers, open source or otherwise, are so horrendously broken/have reduced functionallity, compared to their counterparts on "other" OS's...

[blackiwid]

Across multiple distributions? KDE/Gnome? Specific apps or across the board?

I think the real question is WHY so many important Linux drivers, open source or otherwise, are so horrendously broken/have reduced functionallity, compared to their counterparts on "other" OS's...

its impossible to debug whats the reason of the problem, because you either get an error 53434234 where nowhere is documented freely what that means, nor can you see the source to search the source line with the output and on which point there is the bug, the only way to fix it would be to ask nvidia if they are so generous that they fix your problem, if they dont or they dont prioritise your bug high then you are fucked...

Thats also one important point why closed source drivers suck.

[gamerk2]

its impossible to debug whats the reason of the problem, because you either get an error 53434234 where nowhere is documented freely what that means, nor can you see the source to search the source line with the output and on which point there is the bug, the only way to fix it would be to ask nvidia if they are so generous that they fix your problem, if they dont or they dont prioritise your bug high then you are fucked...

Thats also one important point why closed source drivers suck.

Translation: You can't even determine if the problem was distribution specific or not.

And out of curiosity, with how many third party IP NVIDIA has obtained over the years, how exactly would they go about making an open source driver? And what, exactly, do they gain (IE: profit) by doing so?

[Wilfred]

[...]I think the real question is WHY so many important Linux drivers, open source or otherwise, are so horrendously broken/have reduced functionallity, compared to their counterparts on "other" OS's...

Do you mean just the graphics drivers or also other things. If the other stuff, please contact gregkh and tell him. He is looking for examples.

[hal2k1]

Like was so quickly done on AMD cards? ...oh wait a second...

Basically, it appears to me that most in the Linux world would rather have an open driver then one that actually, you know, works.

The closed drivers don't work. They kind-of implement their range of features to a standard (OpenGL, VDPAU, whatever) with quirks and exceptions and straight-out bugs. Because they implement a replacement for most of the layers of the Linux graphics stack, the issues with the Linux graphics stack itself cannot be fixed. Where the Linux world desires to introduce new features in the area of graphics, such as KMS and Wayland, the vendors of the proprietary drivers refuse to co-operate, and try to frustrate such new developments/improvements. New hardware (for Windows 8 machines) may require code signing of the kernel and drivers, and so the proprietary blobs simply won't work at all on new hardware.

The proprietary drivers are quite broken, they can't be fixed by Linux developers themselves, and they hold Linux development back. Everyone involved in Linux, even the graphics card vendors, would be far better off without the proprietary blobs.