Rumor: NVIDIA Working On Their Own Distribution For Linux Gamers

[dimko]

Seconded.

And what next? Make all users use that specific distro, Because 'it just works' on their distro and refuse support for all other general purpose distros?

[birdie]

The amount of idiocy in this thread is staggering.

First of all, NVIDIA's Linux distribution won't be substantially faster than distribution X/Y/Z because most distros are already well optimized. The most they can squeeze will be 3% performance extra by using -Ofast -mtune=generic but that will substantially reduce the stability of their offer.

Secondly, NVIDIA doesn't need to waste their time packaging their drivers - people have been doing that for them for ages. In fact, it surely looks like the people in this thread are very new to Linux because in the past NVIDIA indeed offered precompiled drivers for most popular distros and their versions. However nowadays, the number of $distros * $architectures * $distro_releases is so huge, it makes nearly impossible to create repos even for the most popular ones (consider the fact that there are at least four supported Ubuntu versions, three Fedora versions, etc. etc. etc.)

Lastly, NVIDIA has never done anything "weird". It's a commercial organization and whatever they do is intended to maximize their profits. They will not waste their resources trying to compete amongst 50+ Linux distros. There's zero profit in that.

In short, I smell Photoshop or there's a tiny chance that this is a Ubuntu based distro meant purely for internal consumption in order to QA their drivers.

[BrandonB]

I don't see this as being targeted at gamers or game developers, as those roles are already filled by...well, a lot of stuff, frankly. If anything, I'd guess they're building an HPC distro or something to run in the self-driving cars they've become so interested in. Which works for me, because the last thing we need is another reason for game developers to ignore AMD on Linux.

[johnc]

In short, I smell Photoshop or there's a tiny chance that this is a Ubuntu based distro meant purely for internal consumption in order to QA their drivers.

Probably. Or maybe just the next iteration of Linux 4 Tegra.

[geearf]

It's pretty much this page:

https://contests.nvidia.com/share-every-win-need-for-speed

I don't see the point of allowing this fake to propagate though.

[birdie]

It's pretty much this page:

https://contests.nvidia.com/share-every-win-need-for-speed

I don't see the point of allowing this fake to propagate though.

A nice find! Michael, please, update the article - it's a clear fake.

[Xaero_Vincent]

Yep, pretty clear it's a fake.

[emblemparade]

I hope this rumor is true. And it really makes a lot of sense: if NVIDIA controls its own distro, they can finetune it carefully to showcase the best performance and other features of their hardware.

Worries about "fragmentation" are misguided. Valve's SteamOS will very likely remain the reference platform for vendors targeting Linux, and of course it's wonderful that they only have to worry about one OS. The rest of the Linux distros only need to make sure that they match SteamOS's base line (and it's really very basic and standard) in order to guarantee access to the full catalog of games. There's no doubt that NVIDIA will want that, too.

Will we see NVIDIA devices running a custom NVIDIA Linux? Possibly! And it will be great to see competition in that space for better and better performance.

Remember, Phoronix is all about benchmarking various Linuxes and keeping vendors on their toes as to how well they compare to the competition. I foresee that Phoronix will more and more become a crucial resource for the growing interest in Linux as a gaming platform.

[Zan Lynx]

And here I was hoping they'd discovered something amazing. Maybe a huge speedup by putting their OpenGL/Vulkan drivers directly into the kernel.

But it's just a fake.

[AJSB]

It was said and discussed, more than once, that in the long run, Nvidia will be doomed to go bankrupt if it stays only in the graphics business.

To make things worse, wnly last year there was a overall decline of 20% in dGPU market.
Granted, in the enthusiastic segment there was a growth, but the bread and butter is in the low and middle segment.

That segment is been eaten by Intel and AMD APUs, eventually, will be completely overtaken by APUs.

The enthusiastic market is NOT enough to sustain NVIDIA, even if VR takes off.

Nvidia have no chance to get a x86 even if it bought AMD...Intel could block it, apparently.

Even worse, it lost Console market to AMD, even new Nintendo NX will use a AMD APU.


So...what is alternative to NVIDIA ? Alternative already started:

Nvidia got a ARM licence, NVIDIA developed its own APUs and are using them
in the Shield TV and a Game console (with limited performance) as Test beds.

I bet that they will sooner or later develop a much more powerful ARM APU.
I also bet that will be "socktable" as its Zen in AM4 or Skylake in LGA1151.
Will use DDR4 in DIMMs, etc, etc. possibly in m-ITX for factor MoBos.

A ARM that can be a alternative in terms of performance to x86 in Desktops and Portables,
that will run with great performance LibreOffice,etc. and will also have great performance in games.

What better complement that "its own" OS, a Linux Distro when finally everything is tailored out-of-the-box to work with a specific HW.