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NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Modules

developer.nvidia.com

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Re: NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Modules

#61

Post by bcrescimanno »

mepian wrote: post #15
hypeatei wrote: post #2

How is the NVIDIA driver situation on Linux these days? I built a new desktop with an AMD GPU since I didn't want to deal with all the weirdness of closed source or lacking/obsolete open source drivers.

The current stable proprietary driver is a nightmare on Wayland with my 3070, constant flickering and stuttering everywhere. Apparently the upcoming version 555 is much better, I'm sticking with X11 until it comes out. I never tried the open-source one yet, not sure if it supports my GPU at all.

The 555 version is the current version. It was officially released on June 27.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-555.58-Linux-Driver

Re: NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Modules

#62

Post by llmblockchain »

levkk wrote: post #48
llmblockchain wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 3070 on X and it has been great.

Same setup here. Multiple displays don't work well for me. One of the displays doesn't often get detected after resuming screen saver.

I have two monitors connected to the 3070 and it works well. The only issue I had was suspending, the GPU would "fall of the bus" and not get its power back when the PC woke up. I had to add the kernel line "pcie_aspm=off" to prevent the GPU from falling asleep.

So... not perfect, but it works.

Re: NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Modules

#63

Post by joecool1029 »

creata wrote: post #8

Huh. Sway and Wayland was such a nightmare on Nvidia that it convinced me to switch to AMD. I wonder if it's better now. (IIRC the main issue was https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1317 , which is now complete.)

It's buggy still with sway on nvidia. I really thought the 555 driver would wrinkle out last of the issues but it still has further to go. Switched to kde plasma 6 on wayland since then and it's been great, not buggy at all.

Re: NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Modules

#64

Post by lyu07282 »

art0rz wrote: post #22
hypeatei wrote: post #2

How is the NVIDIA driver situation on Linux these days? I built a new desktop with an AMD GPU since I didn't want to deal with all the weirdness of closed source or lacking/obsolete open source drivers.

I've been running Arch with KDE under Wayland on two different laptops both with NVIDIA GPUs using proprietary drivers for years and have not run into issues. Maybe I'm lucky? It's been flawless for me.

The experiences always vary quite a lot, it depends so much on what you do with it. For example discord doesn't support screen sharing with Wayland, it's just one small example but those can add up over time. Another example is display rotation which was broken in kde for a long time (recently fixed).

Re: NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Modules

#65

Post by nailer »

kabes wrote: post #59
dralley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. It's probably a matter of constantly being prodded by their industry partners (i.e. Red Hat), constantly being shamed by the community, and reducing the amount of maintenance they need to do to keep their driver stack updated and working on new kernels. The meat of the drivers is still proprietary, this just allows them to be loaded without a proprietary kernel module.

It's hard to believe one of the highest valued companies in the world cares about being shamed for not having open source drivers.

Having products that require a bunch of extra work due to proprietary drivers, especially when their competitors don't require that work, is not good.

Re: NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Modules

#66

Post by l33tman »

anon291 wrote: post #20
hypeatei wrote: post #2

How is the NVIDIA driver situation on Linux these days? I built a new desktop with an AMD GPU since I didn't want to deal with all the weirdness of closed source or lacking/obsolete open source drivers.

I've literally never had an issue in decades of using NVIDIA and linux. They're closed source, but the drivers work very consistently for me. NVIDIA's just the only option if you want something actually good and to run ML workloads as well.

Same here, been using the nvidia binary drivers on a dozen computers with various other HW and distros for decades with never any problems whatsoever.

Re: NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Modules

#68

Post by commodoreboxer »

kabes wrote: post #59
dralley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. It's probably a matter of constantly being prodded by their industry partners (i.e. Red Hat), constantly being shamed by the community, and reducing the amount of maintenance they need to do to keep their driver stack updated and working on new kernels. The meat of the drivers is still proprietary, this just allows them to be loaded without a proprietary kernel module.

It's hard to believe one of the highest valued companies in the world cares about being shamed for not having open source drivers.

They care when it affects their bottom line, and customers leaving for the competition does that.

I don't know if that's what's happening here, honestly, but you're right that they don't care about being shamed, but building a reputation of being hard to work with and target, especially in a growing market like Linux (still tiny, but growing nonetheless, and becoming significantly more important in the areas where non-gaming GPU use is concerned) can start to erode sales and B2B relationships, and the latter particularly if you make the programmers and PMs hate using your products.

Re: NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Modules

#70

Post by lyu07282 »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #35
sqeaky wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the drivers work very consistently for me The problem with comments like this is that you never know if you will be me or you on your graphics card or laptop. I have tried nvidia a few times and kept getting burnt. AMD just works. I don't get the fastest ML machine, but I am just a tinkerer there and OpenCL works fine for my little toy apps and my 7900XTX blazes through every wine game. If you need it professio…

It also depends heavily on the user. A mechanic might say "This car has never given me a problem" because the mechanic doesn't consider cleaning an idle bypass circuit or adjusting valve clearances to be a "problem". To 99% percent of the population though, those are expensive and annoying problems because they have no idea what those words even mean, much less the ability to troubleshoot, diagnose, and repair.

a lot has probably to do with not really understanding their distributions package manager and lkms specifically, I also always suspected that most Linux users don't know if they are using Wayland or X11 and the issues they had were actually Wayland specific ones they wouldn't have with Nvidia/x11 and come to think of it, how would they even know if it's a GPU driver issue in the first place? Guess I'm the mechanic in your analogy.
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