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Mumblings Of A "Big New" Open-Source GPU Driver Coming...

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  • #71
    Originally posted by reba View Post
    I think it can't be nvidia because that would be diametral to their history and business concepts.

    However I wonder more about how many hope it will be nvidia. Why? You yourself chose a system with this hardware and knew (or simpy failed to inform yourself before buying) they have their binary blob, a bad history of everything and most of the people know the "F*ck you, nvidia!" meme, which might have made one or the other to dig for some information about why such a prominent person looses his temper that much and publicy?

    I am not going to say "you simply have no right to hope: you brought this simply upon yourself, fully knowing what this brings with it, so cope with your choices like others have to cope with their self-inflicted burdens" because I think overall it would be a big step in the right direction if they would open source their driver or add a new open source driver or massively support existing open source drivers. But, yeah. Not much hope. But it would be good.
    I get what you're saying, and why - however not that long ago, nVidia had the throne of high performing graphics to themselves, and because of this, many people has nVidia cards in their current machines. Now, most average users don't think that the choice of hardware might limit their choice in terms of software/OS - I know that most Windows-users certainly don't, so it must be frustrating for someone who bought a Windows machine, but decides to move to Linux, only to find that their hardware causes issues and limitations, because of the drivers not playing nicely with the direction the OS is taking.
    You need to know more about the OS you're choosing, than the average user will, to know that choosing an nVidia graphics card might cause you problems - and unless you had an interest in the "inner" workings of your OS, you're unlikely to find out that your choice of graphics card was a bad one, until you've pulled out a bit of hair, researching why you can't get the latest and greatest software on Linux, to work with the latest and greatest hardware from nVidia.
    Personally I have a PC from 2015-ish, that still works really well, built for gaming, with nVidia graphics, and it bugs me because I want Linux and Wayland on there. I'm also trying to nudge people in my family towards giving Linux a try, but as they all have slightly dated computers, and all built with Windows in mind - nVidia is an obstacle.
    Also, one of the countless things Linux does really well, is breathing new life into old computers, unless it has nVidia graphics, and you don't want to rely on X.

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    • #72
      ARM/Mali would be my guess.
      Or, HTC is entering the GPU business following their purchase of S3 Graphics from VIA ))

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      • #73
        It's Imagination. They are hiring for this project at this time. I am very certain that this is so that they can try to be more successful in marketing powervr for RISC-V.

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        • #74
          Originally posted by reba View Post
          I think it can't be nvidia because that would be diametral to their history and business concepts.

          However I wonder more about how many hope it will be nvidia. Why? You yourself chose a system with this hardware and knew (or simpy failed to inform yourself before buying) they have their binary blob, a bad history of everything and most of the people know the "F*ck you, nvidia!" meme, which might have made one or the other to dig for some information about why such a prominent person looses his temper that much and publicy?

          I am not going to say "you simply have no right to hope: you brought this simply upon yourself, fully knowing what this brings with it, so cope with your choices like others have to cope with their self-inflicted burdens" because I think overall it would be a big step in the right direction if they would open source their driver or add a new open source driver or massively support existing open source drivers. But, yeah. Not much hope. But it would be good.
          (Disclaimer: I'm not trying to bash you here, just debating your point really, so I'm sorry if I may come across like that but I really don't want to rewrite the whole thing just to make it more palatable :P)

          You should probably learn to make a distinction between hoping and needing. I personally have an Nvidia GPU, and not because I'm stuck with it due to having bought it years ago like mbrf suggested, but because when I bought it ~1.5 years ago it was simply a much better deal than AMD was. I don't buy GPUs based on whether their drivers are open source or not, I buy them based on whether they can give me more bang for less buck, and Nvidia simply delivers on that front. It certainly helps that, despite what many people say, I've never had any issues with the closed source driver at all. At. All.

          Now, a small detour to make an analogy, let's take Windows: despite many people over the years reporting BSODs and general instability and painting Windows as a crappy OS, I've never had any real technical issues with it (besides it being slow and fugly) - it always managed to get the job done perfectly. So technically I never needed Linux as an alternative. But because I'm a proponent of freedom and openness and privacy, and because I've always loved tinkering with my machines, and because as a developer I find myself much more at home using an OS that is made by real developers and thus caters more to my technical tastes, I always hoped that some day I could replace the closed source Windows with the open source Linux - and thus at some point around 2011-2012 or so (a little before Valve came out with Steam for Linux, which was a nicely timed bonus treat for sure) I deemed that Linux had become good enough for me to ditch Windows and switch over. But it was a choice, or a luxury if you want; not a necessity.

          In the same way, and to keep this short(ish), I do not need Nvidia to open source their GPU driver, and I certainly won't feel like I've brought anything upon myself if they never do, because frankly, as I said the closed source driver works really well and I actually even prefer the development model of Nvidia to that of AMD, because I like having the newest GPU features and game compatibility/performance fixes the instant Nvidia decides to deliver them rather than having to wait for the next Mesa or kernel release like with AMD; in the same way that I prefer having the software vendors decide when and how to update their apps instead of relying on the distro maintainers' whims (go go Flatpak). But because I love and support the open source paradigm, I certainly hope that Nvidia will open source their driver, because that will be another small step towards completely doing away with closed source components and thus a better world :P

          So there you have it: in full conscience I hope it will be Nvidia (...though I do not believe it's them, but that's another story).

          PS - This all with the caveat that open or closed source, Nvidia will get their act together and finally deliver on Wayland compatibility with the upcoming 470 branch. Wayland compatibility is indeed a very sore point, and I won't argue that it fits right in the category of "you knew exactly what you were buying so you've brought it upon yourself", but that's hardly to do with the open/closed nature of the driver's source code.

          EDIT: As for who it might be, I'm reading the guesses so far and I have to say, people, don't forget that Vetter in his tweet used the "upstream vs market share" meme, so it makes sense that it's going to be a corporation known for their long-standing stubbornness to make their driver compliant with Linux, that have relied on their market share to try and force their way through, and that have at least started to realize a meaningful drop in said market share. And it has to be a "big" player. So Imagination for example does not fit, because AFAIK they were never unfriendly to Linux. Microsoft also doesn't fit, because in the graphics department they have it very good with their monopoly on DirectX. Nvidia does fit, and so does Mediatek (as far as the big corps mentioned in this thread go).
          Last edited by Nocifer; 23 May 2021, 09:15 AM.

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          • #75
            Originally posted by kingu View Post
            ARM/Mali would be my guess.
            Or, HTC is entering the GPU business following their purchase of S3 Graphics from VIA ))
            Yep, my thought too. Huawei going open source would be indeed a "Big New"s. They have lot's of Mali GPU's and counting. Imagine the burden growing. Meantime Russia is lame. Can't be anything from MCST since Vivante already opensourced and their homegrown 2D accelerator MGA2 do hardly have any importance or even heard of. Baikal-M CPU have Mali-T628 build in, but this CPU was produced in pieces for a glossy paper. NVidia? Yeeeah Funny!

            So I guess news from China.

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            • #76
              Just maybe this "big new" is not such a big deal after all? Who knows, but this is a perfectly possible as well

              http://www.dirtcellar.net

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              • #77
                Originally posted by scottishduck View Post
                This is the SiS driver update I’ve been waiting for
                It's time. All those afflicted with SiS 600/700 series laptops will be finally delivered from X.Org Server 1.12.

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                • #78
                  Originally posted by guara View Post

                  It's time. All those afflicted with SiS 600/700 series laptops will be finally delivered from X.Org Server 1.12.
                  I actually still own a Dell Inspiron 1000 with a SiS 650 GPU. I think I could play Diablo on it back in the day… I think

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                  • #79
                    Originally posted by birdie View Post

                    It's sad Microsoft cannot and will not sue you for defamation. As for me personally, I don't care about statements with zero proof. Find someone else to argue with.

                    I need an actual proof, network dumps showing that Microsoft indeed siphons random files from people's computers.

                    So far, no one in the entire world has produced anything which makes you a liar.
                    Uhhhh.... Windows Defender automatic sample submission? (TBF, most other antivirus software does the same.)

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                    • #80
                      Originally posted by scottishduck View Post
                      This is the SiS driver update I’ve been waiting for
                      Gold.

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