Will Linus revisit his rejection of Nvidia integration?
Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules
171–180 of 415 posts
Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules
#172Note that this is just the kernel modules, not the actual graphics driver. IIRC these sources were already released under a permissive license along with their driver distribution. This just seems to be them putting those sources on GitHub and being more open to contributions.
Are they? I thought the “OS-agnostic” part was historically only available as a binary. Maybe that changed since last time I looked. On quick inspection, this is a complete, MIT-licensed kernel driver.
>Note that the kernel modules built here must be used with gsp.bin firmware and user-space NVIDIA GPU driver components from a corresponding 515.43.04 driver release. This can be achieved by installing the NVIDIA GPU driver from the .run file using the --no-kernel-modules option.
Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules
#173Phoronix link about what this actually means: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-o... Main takeaways: - support for gaming workstation GPUs is alpha - the user space stuff (OpenGL/Vulkan) is still closed source. (A LOT of heavy lifting is done here.)
Ok, we've changed to that from https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-releases-open-sourc... above. Thanks!
Edit: ok, changed back
Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
That might not even be overstatement. The last few big desktop linux crash-and-burns I've run into all had display drivers as a common component. I like back-foot, underdog NVIDIA. Ascendent AMD hasn't drawn my ire yet, let's hope power corrupts slowly.
Amd changed their windows drivers to not output video if it detects its running in a VM. Nvidia went the other way and stopped doing so. Both can/could be bypassed with some libvirtd xml magic, but still. Nvidia seem to slowly stop being assholes, AMD started already.
The cycle continues
Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules
#175For those who didn't use Nvidia on linux in the old times: The driver was a proprietary binary. Since a kernel module requires interfacing with the kernel API, it could be considered a derivative work and a breach of the GPL license. So, Nvidia provided a small open source shim which interfaced between the kernel and the proprietary module. You had to compile that shim yourself with the right arcane command line inca…
> EDIT: Remember you had to recompile the shim at every kernel update and replaced "module" with "driver".
I haven't bought NVIDIA since then
Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules
#176The kernel modules are the first stage I guess, since a massive amount of hardware programing knowledge is in user space like with AMD/intel GPUs. I wonder how much LAPSUS$ hack has to do with it. I wonder if nvidia hardware programing interface is a mess like AMD one, just curious.
>I wonder how much LAPSUS$ hack has to do with it.
Probably zero.
1) There have been rumors about this for months
2) The hacks only happened very recently, this certainly would have taken longer to do than that.
Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules
#177It will probably end up like how AMD cards work. The closed source driver still exists but there will hopefully be a completely open source stack (Nouveau++?) For nvidia. This blog has more details about red hats plans for this driver. https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2022/05/11/why-is-the-open-so...
I've never properly understood why the closed source AMD driver still exists. Is it substantially different from the open source one? Does it offer anything not included in the open source one?
Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules
#178The kernel modules are the first stage I guess, since a massive amount of hardware programing knowledge is in user space like with AMD/intel GPUs. I wonder how much LAPSUS$ hack has to do with it. I wonder if nvidia hardware programing interface is a mess like AMD one, just curious.
Likely very related, wasn't this one of their exact demands? Looks like Nvidia caved haha.
This is well after the deadline iirc, and not the sort of thing that gets rushed.
I doubt this is directly because of that.
Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules
#179It will probably end up like how AMD cards work. The closed source driver still exists but there will hopefully be a completely open source stack (Nouveau++?) For nvidia. This blog has more details about red hats plans for this driver. https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2022/05/11/why-is-the-open-so...
I've never properly understood why the closed source AMD driver still exists. Is it substantially different from the open source one? Does it offer anything not included in the open source one?
OpenCL, for one.
If you don't care about that, you can run pretty much anything else and performance is great.
Re: Nvidia releases open-source GPU kernel modules
#180It will probably end up like how AMD cards work. The closed source driver still exists but there will hopefully be a completely open source stack (Nouveau++?) For nvidia. This blog has more details about red hats plans for this driver. https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2022/05/11/why-is-the-open-so...
I've never properly understood why the closed source AMD driver still exists. Is it substantially different from the open source one? Does it offer anything not included in the open source one?
I think support for professional users.