Nouveau Linux 4.14 + Mesa 17.4-dev vs. NVIDIA

[leipero]

Still, in general for standard workflow (office, media, browser) I prefer nouveau for supported GPU's (with auto re-clocks etc., older gen GPU's).

[Jahimself]

I think nouveau is doing quite alright for a reverse engineering driver. Nvidia should soon be concerned by open source if they continue to improve it like they did over the past 3 years.

[Flaburgan]

Not to be disrespectful, I never really understand this fanatical obsession with open source software.
Now, I am not saying that open source software is bad. In fact, I am a big fan of it, but in some cases it simply doesn't make sense.

In some case like Linux (Unix was paid), or detecting underhanded trickery by devs/companies (Microsoft's telemetry in Win 10, cough) open source is very good.
Other relevant but very rare case is when devs take the code and modify it to suit their needs/add more customization features, however that doesn't happen too often with low level drivers.

And this is why, I struggle to make sense of the Nouveau driver.
Nvidia's official driver does everything Nouveau does and does it way better (Proof is in the article). It has better compatibility and more features


Another thing, that I disagree with. Working, with outside developers to develop open source drivers risks giving away some of the competitive details, which they have worked very hard to gain, since this happens to be a very low-level driver.

Moreover, Nvidia hasn't blocked the development of Nouveau, it simply is giving signed microcode blobs to work with open source driver stacks which seems a fair compromise when it comes to protecting proprietary stuff. It is not just Nvidia, AMD also does the same thing and AMD is a company which has very open-source friendly image. (It is stated in the article)

Do we as a developer community expect too much when it comes open source? Surely, we don't expect companies to just open up all their secrets and simply give it away?

If you find a bug, report it but they don't care and don't patch?
If they decide your hardware is too old and is not supported anymore by this OS/kernel/whatever but you still want to use it?
If they simply don't care about GNU/Linux anymore and stop release the driver, or don't update it to work with new technology (like wayland)?
If you need a minimum of security and don't want a code you can't audit to run at the highest privilege inside your kernel, being able to listen or even modify everything you read an write?
Open-Source is about giving the power to the user. Closed-source is about making choices for you, without having to listen to you.
When I buy hardware, I buy hardware, and should be able to run any kind of software I want on the top of it.

[duby229]

Not to be disrespectful, I never really understand this fanatical obsession with open source software.
Now, I am not saying that open source software is bad. In fact, I am a big fan of it, but in some cases it simply doesn't make sense.

In some case like Linux (Unix was paid), or detecting underhanded trickery by devs/companies (Microsoft's telemetry in Win 10, cough) open source is very good.
Other relevant but very rare case is when devs take the code and modify it to suit their needs/add more customization features, however that doesn't happen too often with low level drivers.

And this is why, I struggle to make sense of the Nouveau driver.
Nvidia's official driver does everything Nouveau does and does it way better (Proof is in the article). It has better compatibility and more features


Another thing, that I disagree with. Working, with outside developers to develop open source drivers risks giving away some of the competitive details, which they have worked very hard to gain, since this happens to be a very low-level driver.

Moreover, Nvidia hasn't blocked the development of Nouveau, it simply is giving signed microcode blobs to work with open source driver stacks which seems a fair compromise when it comes to protecting proprietary stuff. It is not just Nvidia, AMD also does the same thing and AMD is a company which has very open-source friendly image. (It is stated in the article)

Do we as a developer community expect too much when it comes open source? Surely, we don't expect companies to just open up all their secrets and simply give it away?

There are a few things you have incorrect here. In actual fact nVidia obfuscates their firmware and makes it really difficult to obtain. Another fact is that yes, nVidia's official driver does have a better gaming experience on th newest hardware, but it's also equally true it has a really buggy multi-monitor experience, as well as a laggy 2d desktop experience. If you are a desktop user and/or a multi-monitor user you'll likely have a much better experience with nouveau.