Fedora Project Leader Calls Out NVIDIA Over Their Proprietary Linux Drivers

[NobodyXu]

Proprietary NVIDIA drivers work perfectly in major operating systems: Windows and MacOS (that was in the long past; Apple has long stopped using NVIDIA GPUs).

If Linux with all its "inclusiveness" doesn't play well with NVIDIA drivers that doesn't say "NVIDIA is bad" it says Linux is not really inclusive and welcoming: it's either our "open source way" or "F you NVIDIA" and "F everyone who dares not share our philosophy".

Open Source fans however doesn't quite notice the amount of hypocrisy at all. In Android, iOS, Windows and MacOS both proprietary and open source software works perfectly.

In Linux only 1) actively maintained 2) included in the main repos if your peculiar distro 3) open source software works.

Good luck using something which is not all of these three.

Keep on fuming over but do sometimes look in the mirror.

Defending Nvidia, who refuse to work with open source developers?

What a shame, birdie, you really love to undermine the open source effort.

GPL is a way to ensure nobody modifies the code to improve something yet refuse to give it back.
For kernel, which is very important, this is necessary to ensure that different parties will cooperate and improve one codebase, instead of creating proprietary clones.

Without GPL, the open source community you know today will not exist.
We will be forced to use proprietary stuff, with no control or ability to modify the it.

Also please do reflect on your market share on your demands. Maybe have some modesty or tomorrow HaikuOS, NetBSD and other peculiar OSes will demand open source drivers from NVIDIA as well.

I owned a GTX 1070, and I want an open source driver.

Modesty? Why? I bought their hardware, I am the consumer here, I have the right to ask for their support.

Fuck Nvidia for being such a jerk.

Oh, and do remember that AMD and Intel actually spend a ton of money developing the two versions of their drivers (open source contributions are minimal). NVIDIA avoids that.

AMD and Intel are the one who make their hardware, so of course they write their own driver, since they have the spec sheets of these hardwares before anybody.

As for AMD, it is really lagging behind on driver support, sometimes the open source contributors add the code before AMD do it.

[King InuYasha]

Proprietary NVIDIA drivers work perfectly in major operating systems: Windows and MacOS (that was in the long past; Apple has long stopped using NVIDIA GPUs).

If Linux with all its "inclusiveness" doesn't play well with NVIDIA drivers that doesn't say "NVIDIA is bad" it says Linux is not really inclusive and welcoming: it's either our "open source way" or "F you NVIDIA" and "F everyone who dares not share our philosophy".

Open Source fans however doesn't quite notice the amount of hypocrisy at all. In Android, iOS, Windows and MacOS both proprietary and open source software works perfectly.

Open Source is a philosophical model, so of course there's a point of contention here. And for what it's worth, macOS and iOS are both very much anti-open source. It's in their EULA and the terms around their App Stores, which forbid classes of open source licenses for applications offered there. For iOS, there's no alternative if you can't put it in the App Store.

In Linux only 1) actively maintained 2) included in the main repos if your peculiar distro 3) open source software works.

Good luck using something which is not all of these three.

Keep on fuming over but do sometimes look in the mirror.

Also please do reflect on your market share on your demands. Maybe have some modesty or tomorrow HaikuOS, NetBSD and other peculiar OSes will demand open source drivers from NVIDIA as well. .

Actually, Linux pretty much dominates in the money-generating businesses that GPUs are used for: data center VDI, AI/ML, and mining. So we have more power than you realize. The only place we're not winning yet is gaming, but AMD was chosen for the Steam Deck, so...

Oh, and do remember that AMD and Intel actually spend a ton of money developing the two versions of their drivers (open source contributions are minimal). NVIDIA avoids that.

AMD and Intel spend a lot on their open source driver stack. AMD's work consistently makes up the bulk of the merge window each kernel cycle, for example. Intel is a top contributor across the board, and I can tell you from using both Windows and Linux, their Windows drivers are in much worse shape than their Linux ones. Intel also somewhat stewards Mesa through employing the leads of the project, and they do a lot on the Wayland effort too. The proprietary parts of their stacks are overlaid on the open source ones, which means that the value to the ecosystem is drastically amplified.

[birdie]

Data centers have neither X.org, nor Wayland (they run CUDA and ML workflows which are like ~10% of NVIDIA drivers which again most desktop never use) thus your argument is null and void.

Yeah and AMD is on Xbox and Sony PS, so what? NVIDIA doesn't have a license for X86. NVIDIA is a victim of the beautiful US patent system but no one here wants to talk about inconvenient facts.

[birdie]

Defending Nvidia, who refuse to work with open source developers?

What a shame, birdie, you really love to undermine the open source effort.

GPL is a way to ensure nobody modifies the code to improve something yet refuse to give it back.
For kernel, which is very important, this is necessary to ensure that different parties will cooperate and improve one codebase, instead of creating proprietary clones.

Without GPL, the open source community you know today will not exist.
We will be forced to use proprietary stuff, with no control or ability to modify the it.



I owned a GTX 1070, and I want an open source driver.

Modesty? Why? I bought their hardware, I am the consumer here, I have the right to ask for their support.

Fuck Nvidia for being such a jerk.



AMD and Intel are the one who make their hardware, so of course they write their own driver, since they have the spec sheets of these hardwares before anybody.

As for AMD, it is really lagging behind on driver support, sometimes the open source contributors add the code before AMD do it.

I have not defended NVIDIA.
I have not undermined the open source effort.
Stop putting words in my mouth.

You're a user of the OS who most people know nothing about which has stagnated on the desktop for the past 30 years and never broke out of ~2% desktop market share.

Have fucking modesty. NVIDIA, nor any other proprietary company owes nothing to you and your particular OS. Show me a single reason why Linux is better than Haiku OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Open BSD, Solaris, QNX and a ton of other OSes. Why the fuck NVIDIA should support Linux more than they already do?

Again, in Windows and MacOS both open source and closed source software works beautifully. In Linux only open source software actually works and that's not with huge asterisks either - try running KDE3 in your favourite distro - all open source btw. Wait, you cannot? The fuck you're talking about? Take off the crown off your head.

[NobodyXu]

I have not defended NVIDIA.
I have not undermined the open source effort.
Stop putting words in my mouth.

You're a user of the OS who most people know nothing about which has stagnated on the desktop for the past 30 years and never broke out of ~2% desktop market share.

Have fucking modesty. NVIDIA, nor any other proprietary company owes nothing to you and your particular OS. Show me a single reason why Linux is better than Haiku OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Open BSD, Solaris, QNX and a ton of other OSes. Why the fuck NVIDIA should support Linux more than they already do?

So you are saying I should shut up because I am one of the minority?

Fuck no.
I am not going to shut up, I am not going to stop complain about Nvidia as long as they don't have an open source driver.

They don't owe me anything?
I bought their hardware and I expect it to come with software support.

Since both AMD and Intel have excellent open source support, Nvidia being one of the silicon tech giant, supporting open source driver in Linux won't cost much.

Again, in Windows and MacOS both open source and closed source software works beautifully. In Linux only open source software actually works and that's not with huge asterisks either - try running KDE3 in your favourite distro - all open source btw. Wait, you cannot? The fuck you're talking about? Take off the crown off your head.

Having the kernel open source and the core of the system (systemd, package manager like apt) open source means much more than just running open source softwares.

It means I have control over it and can modify it however I like.
Both Mac and Windows does not give me any control.

[birdie]

Lastly to all of ya.

Do you know the primary difference between Operating Systems and semi-broken legos like Linux?

Operating Systems provide stable guaranteed to work for at least a decade APIs/ABIs.

Linux has none of this shit. Any Linux distro is a lego which gets reassembled using new shiny pieces each 6-24 months depending on the itch of your favourite distro leader(s). Oh, and no two Linux distros are the same in terms of pieces they use, not to mention new versions of your distro are not binary compatible with older versions. You want NVIDIA to support this madness? Like really? How much software have you created in your life?

Nothing will change in terms of Linux popularity and acceptable between both users and ISVs before this gets fixed/implemented/whatever once and for all.

Of course, on Phoronix open source fans normally dismiss everything I say because I'm a fucking hater, right?

Listen to Linus Torvalds who said the same almost a decade ago: https://youtu.be/5PmHRSeA2c8?t=283

You might have heard about this guy, I guess.

[cl333r]

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)...

No, another AMDGPU Frankenstein is too little too late, we just need commitment to Nouveau, it's not too much to ask.

[NobodyXu]

Lastly to all of ya.

Do you know the primary difference between Operating Systems and semi-broken legos like Linux?

Operating Systems provide stable guaranteed to work for at least a decade APIs/ABIs.

Linux has none of this shit. Any Linux distro is a lego which gets reassembled using new shiny pieces each 6-24 months depending on the itch of your favourite distro leader(s). Oh, and no two Linux distros are the same in terms of pieces they use, not to mention new versions of your distro are not binary compatible with older versions. You want NVIDIA to support this madness? Like really? How much software have you created in your life?

i have been writing a lot of code and honestly, API/ABI breakage happens a lot of time.

Nowadays things are moving fast, APIs are also breaking fast, with new versions come out, changing API/internals to support new feature, improve performance, etc.

Continuous Integration and nightly build is a thing, because the client want the new code (new features) to be deployed ASAP.

An example of this would be Cuda, a software product released by Nvidia.

While cuda does not remove API as it breaks backware compatibility, they deprecates the API, meaning any software project that are still alive and under maintenance should update their code to use their latest API.

As for stable API on Linux, the Linux kernel itself provides a set of stable API.
It is called the system calls.

All of them are stable and is required to never break old softwares.

The APIs that are unstable are the in-kernel APIs, it is only used by the kernel itself and modules,

Nothing will change in terms of Linux popularity and acceptable between both users and ISVs before this gets fixed/implemented/whatever once and for all.

Of course, on Phoronix open source fans normally dismiss everything I say because I'm a fucking hater, right?

Having to keep all the in-kernel APIs without breaking is insane.

That would mean a lot of bloat and unable to remove old mechanism and replace them with new one.

Maybe have a release schedule to keep certain APIs stable for a period will be helpful, but keeping all APIs stable and immutable does more harm than good.

And there is no once and for all golden bullet, every software will have to release new APIs, deprecate old ones and eventually remove them when they think nobody use them.

Windows keep all softwares backward compatible because this is its major sell point.
Without it, Windows will be easily replace by other OSes, since its OS is of shit quality.

[piotrj3]

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.

What you said is only true for RDNA2 and maximum stress loads.

RDNA1 wasn't more efficient then Turing and all the way back Nvidia was more efficient one. And AMD is only more efficient when gaming, in most computing workloads Ampere is better then RDNA2 a lot.

For Intel meanwhile AMD is only more efficient when you talk about the biggest Intel CPUs, like 12900k or 11900k vs 5900x/5950x. 12600k in performance per watt is more efficient then 5800X as well idles at way lower wattage. Der8auer also made test during gaming of frames per watt on 12900k vs AMD cpus, and also during gaming Intel on average was ahead.

Nvidia and Intel has a bit diffrent strategy they mostly on default settings allow power targets to be at maximum load beyond their efficiency point. That means if you stress them they consume a lot more, but with small TDP limit you almost lose no performance but can cut away 20% of power consumption.

In GPU RDNA2 is simply too much optimized for gaming and nothing else, while Ampere is more general architecture. Not to mention Samsung vs TSMC node.

In CPUs intel struggles to scale up designed due to lacking chiplets. In CPUs not chiplet based in desktop currently Intel is heavy winning at 12600k and below in all price performance and efficiency, just AMD for higher tier processors (5900x/5950x/servers) can keep their efficiency point at its best and keep adding more chiplets at that efficiency point. Intel has limits at making very big CPUs.

[gbcox]

At this point it's more than obvious that NVIDIA could care less about LINUX. Kudos to Matt however for calling them out. The only thing that will get their attention is if they believe that their profits are going to be impacted. Distributions should no longer bend over backwards to support NVIDIA equipment (which, with the cooperation of Intel and AMD that is quickly becoming a reality). If you want a good experience, use AMD or Intel. There are many LINUX users and proponents that are in decision making positions or influence decisions. All they need do is to start using that power to avoid NVIDIA like the plague. If companies start demanding servers/desktops/laptops with Intel or AMD graphics the market will be more than happy to oblige. The carrot approach hasn't worked... time to use the stick.