Nouveau Developers Remain Blocked By NVIDIA From Advancing Open-Source Driver

[karolherbst]

Looks like they actually intended to merge nvgpu with nouveau at some point:
https://github.com/kfractal/nvgpu

Well there is also a Nouveau tree for the Pixel C where Nvidia is actually using Nouveau as well. It's just that there is hardly any communication and if they push new stuff, they don't tell us or try to upstream it. It could be already a lot better if they really wanted to.

[pinguinpc]

That's not true at all, There are just so many preexisting systems already there.

If you want new linux users then you need to give them a fully open source out of box experience.

For this reason amd card is better option if you want opensource driver and this situation related in article confirm nvidia dont offer any help (only put more difficulty) to nvidia opensource driver aka nouveau

Before cited reason make very difficult make opensource drivers for nvidia cards

Wait nvidia opensource driver in actual situation is a big lose of time especially in recent cards

[RussianNeuroMancer]

it is fun

Yep, it's more fun to work on series that almost nobody use with nouveau (see gamingonlinux statistic) than get old series that actually need nouveau (because proprietary driver dropped) into stable state: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95429

By the way, I have to use EGL to get OpenGL working, because with GLX rendering doesn't work for anything, including web-browser and system compositor. In other words, only KWin X11/EGL, KWin Wayland, Mutter Wayland works here (Blink-based browsers have to be switched to EGL too) which lead me to idea that nobody from dev team actually use or test driver on this GPU generation.

[karolherbst]

Yep, it's more fun to work on series that almost nobody use with nouveau (see gamingonlinux statistic) than get old series that actually need nouveau (because proprietary driver dropped) into stable state: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95429

By the way, on another laptop with almost same GPU I have to use EGL to get OpenGL working, because with GLX rendering doesn't work for anything, including web-browser and system compositor. In other words, only KWin X11/EGL, KWin Wayland, Mutter Wayland works here (Blink-based browsers have to be switched to EGL too) which lead me to idea that nobody from dev team actually use or test driver on this GPU generation.

Yeah, there are already plans to have better coverage on older hardware as well, just a matter of time when we are able to actually start working on this, because it would be quite an investment. There were some talks about CI and driver testing on XDC this year as well.

We really loved to reduce introducing regressions and have a broader way of testing to detect that important features are getting taken care of, as display stuff is for sure.

[boffo]

Yeah, but it's not like we hired everyone on the planet who knew how to assemble & build packages from source code.

I'm not complaining about lack of driver contributions, just about how "open source but not yet upstream" code has seemingly become an insurmountable obstacle for the larger community. I honestly expected to see more in the way of community contributions to distro-specific package building & publishing if we published the driver code.

We can do it all ourselves, even the packaging, but I really did believe that we should focus our efforts on driver development and let others deal with distro-specific integration.

Pontostroy packages were the best.

[duby229]

Yeah, but it's not like we hired everyone on the planet who knew how to assemble & build packages from source code.

I'm not complaining about lack of driver contributions, just about how "open source but not yet upstream" code has seemingly become an insurmountable obstacle for the larger community. I honestly expected to see more in the way of community contributions to distro-specific package building & publishing if we published the driver code.

We can do it all ourselves, even the packaging, but I really did believe that we should focus our efforts on driver development and let others deal with distro-specific integration.

What distro specific packaging issues are you seeing? I'd like to know more about it if you're willing to share.

[duby229]

For this reason amd card is better option if you want opensource driver and this situation related in article confirm nvidia dont offer any help (only put more difficulty) to nvidia opensource driver aka nouveau

Before cited reason make very difficult make opensource drivers for nvidia cards

Wait nvidia opensource driver in actual situation is a big lose of time especially in recent cards

Let's just face it, nVidia hardware is real and open source is real too. I honestly think it's a noble objective. I definitely give AMD the nobility they deserve for being a part of it. Nvidia doesn't deserve that at all, but the nouveau devs definitely do.

[TumultuousUnicorn]

I don't think you meant to suggest that "non-free" was better than "not-yet-upstream open source" but that is what your words are saying.

You are doing a great job with Open Source driver. The "not-yet" is -for me- the main problem, people must wait after buying a Radeon card. It's a bit frustrating.
I know there is ongoing work, and I hope it will be merged upstream in 2018.

And that's perfectly fine... but realize that people vote with their wallets. The message you are sending is that proprietary is a-ok with you. I haven't bought NVIDIA for years because of this. AMD might not be perfect, but at least they are making progress. If the community would fully embrace AMD and stopped buying NVIDIA we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I've got an old Radeon HD 6870, using Open Source driver. Sometimes, I want to buy a new card, but I don't know what to do. Vega? No thanks. So I keep this old card.

[Otus]

Your best bet with nouveau is a GTX 780/GTX 780 Ti.

By new I meant 1000 series. I'm not interested in buying a four year old GPU.

[karolherbst]

By new I meant 1000 series. I'm not interested in buying a four year old GPU.

well, Nouveau works best in terms of performance (tm) for the 780 Ti, that's just the way it is. You can actually also reclock a 980 Ti or something, but then there is no fan control, because we miss the signed firmware to control the fans. I have a branch for this though so that at least laptop users can reclock those sooner or later.

It is just the way it is