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Fedora Project Leader Calls Out NVIDIA Over Their Proprietary Linux Drivers

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  • #11
    Originally posted by tildearrow View Post
    If NVIDIA doesn't want to open up, at least NVIDIA should provide an AMDGPU-PRO-like solution (open-source kernel driver with closed-source user-space driver)...
    I think the main reason why Nvidia doesn't want to invest in open source drivers is simply because it shares driver code of both it's kernel and user space drivers across different operating systems it supports. So going open source would basically mean waste of resources for Nvidia because that would mean adapting the kernel driver to the DRM infrastructure (which I doubt it's even possible), not to mention the license issues that would theoretically introduce. I mean Nvidia blob has its share of issues, but for the most part it works and performs well. AMD is another story on the other hand. Fglrx was really bad and their pro OpenGL driver is also not very performant, so for AMD it made sense to go open source for that reason. I'm think AMD would've also not invested in open source if Fglrx wasn't bad and its pro drivers were performant.
    Last edited by user1; 04 April 2022, 07:17 AM.

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    • #12
      Why does everyone care so much about NVIDIA? Their user experience on Linux is abysmal when it works at all, so what? If you want to run Linux, use Intel or AMD GPUs and don't bother with NVIDIA.

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      • #13
        Obligatory Linus: https://youtu.be/_36yNWw_07g

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        • #14
          Originally posted by user1 View Post

          I think the main reason why Nvidia doesn't want to invest in open source drivers is simply because it shares driver code of both it's kernel and user space drivers across different operating systems it supports. So going open source would basically mean waste of resources for Nvidia
          It would immensely help if they publish the specs, made their firmware freely redistributable or open source and/or open sourced their driver. Even if cannot be merged directly, it would help the current Nouveau effort. None of that would be a resource waste.

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          • #15
            Originally posted by jacob View Post
            Why does everyone care so much about NVIDIA? Their user experience on Linux is abysmal when it works at all, so what? If you want to run Linux, use Intel or AMD GPUs and don't bother with NVIDIA.
            For folks starting out new, using Intel or AMD might make more sense. However Nvidia has considerable marketshare and some users cannot easily move away (CUDA for example) and it would be good to have all the major players working together instead of one vendor standing out and stalling progress on several common projects that adversely affects even users who use Intel or AMD.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by tildearrow View Post
              If NVIDIA doesn't want to open up, at least NVIDIA should provide an AMDGPU-PRO-like solution (open-source kernel driver with closed-source user-space driver)...
              For that to be viable they would need to at the very least adapt Nouveau to use it. No open source userspace, patches rejected. That's the policy. The move for AMDGPU-PRO was exactly like that.

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              • #17
                Originally posted by RahulSundaram View Post

                It would immensely help if they publish the specs, made their firmware freely redistributable or open source and/or open sourced their driver. Even if cannot be merged directly, it would help the current Nouveau effort. None of that would be a resource waste.
                Regarding opening their firmware for Noveau devs, I agree, they should do it. I remember they stopped doing it for some reason when Maxwell was released in 2014, which is why pre Maxwell cards work better on Noveau.

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                • #18
                  I unfortunately don't think users can be trusted to make the right choice (and avoid Nvidia hardware).

                  It should really be down to the kernel and distros to make life hard for these kinds of "out of tree" vendors. Linux is more and more becoming into a position of power and is able to do so. For example:
                  • blobs should be removed from official package repos
                  • nouveau should be made very difficult to interact with the blob when they are installed (similar to the early days)
                  • people using the old blobs should be seen as pariahs and newbies should be automatically using the nouveau drivers until they purchase AMD / Intel.
                  • A harder stance should be taken by compositors(?) to not dick around Nvidia. For example Sway/wl_roots and Gnome did quite well earlier on.
                  Note: This is not a hate of Nvidia and is not a permanent thing. These steps should only be to encourage Nvidia to grow up and join with the rest of the industry and open up their drivers. There isn't all that much IP in there that needs protecting these days.

                  OpenBSD has made the right decision against Nvidia, long before anyone else but they are just a little bit too unknown (in the area of gaming) to make serious difference. This really is for Linux to step up and solve this problem.

                  Some difficulties, I do understand, exist:
                  • I notice that many games developers are still a bit old fashioned (or inexperienced?) in that they seem to love big names. It is fairly common to see "Proprietary / official drivers" in the requirements. I think UE4 and Unity as underlying engines are also unfortunately involved in this kind of nonsense (for some reason they are unable to understand or test against the open-source drivers like everyone else?).
                  • Places like CEX (a second hand gaming store in the UK) seem to be saturated by Nvidia cards. This might be biased by the crypto-fans or it is simply that Nvidia is able to churn out their hardware much faster than AMD. So many people end up with one of these and can be disappointed if it didn't work. However Nouveau has solved this to some extent. It *does* work, just enough to learn Linux and keep you going until you buy a replacement. FreeBSD is in a worse position here.
                  Last edited by kpedersen; 04 April 2022, 08:08 AM.

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                  • #19
                    Originally posted by Modu View Post
                    Don't buy nVidia hardware. It's that simple.
                    That's easy to say when literally every notebook in the market with dGPU is equipped with NVIDIA. Even with Ryzen processors. Sure you can get a Radeon, but in my case it means to order it somewhere in other country and pay excess customs taxes and shipping.

                    And unfortunately there are less models available with Radeons. For example, I love my current notebook for almost everything, except RTX2060 (i am even ok with intel cpu). But exact same model has no AMD option at all. And other models have either stupid keyboard, or useless 2K-4K-8K screen, or some other weird things. Or cost like a Macbook.

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by pegasus View Post
                      Yeah, this is becoming a necessity especially when you see things like these: https://github.com/google/jax/issues...ment-760236170

                      It's high time that AMD and Intel come up with competitive hardware, ecosystem will move to the more open software stack in a few years. We're getting first AMD GPU boxes this year just to start this move ...
                      AMD GPUs are much better than Nvidia's concerning performance per Watt - Nvidia just mixed different terms (aka FUD) to 'proof' right to be wrong and wrong to be right.
                      AMD CPUs are much better than Intel's concerning performance per Watt and parallelization - not to mention the extreme mitigation problem Intel does not want to address.
                      So concerning Linux AMD systems got standards some time ago. Phoronix readers should get it since several years, right?

                      Nvidia GPUs and Intel CPUs had due to big wallets of said companies the lead in very special benchmarks which are not relevant for real work / real gaming.
                      But as technical knowledge is no longer important - the stakes are high.

                      So current AMD HW is superior (since introduction of Zen2 and RDNA1 in all respects, which I have experienced) - at least if you care for the environment and
                      thus avoid head spreaders wasting a big deal of Watts.

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