Nvidia submits patches to open source driver

[gtaylor]

On a somewhat related (non-mobile) note, I really regret buying my AMD 5870 three years ago. Things have changed quite a bit in that nvidia has done some serious work on their Linux binary drivers, while AMD's has been utterly unimpressive, if not embarrassingly bad.

I understand that Linux has been a lesser priority for both companies, which is understandable. It's not going to make them the truckloads of money that the rest of their market segments will. But to do silly things like release official Linux binary drivers without so much as a changelog just reeks. They got enough bad blood from that to start releasing drivers with changelogs again, but support for kernels/xorg server versions still typically lags far behind nvidia's. And I can't do something as simple as run multiple monitors without seeing all kinds of weird graphical artifacts with high frequency.

My next card with be an nvidia if things continue on their current trajectory. I know that their binary drivers aren't perfect, but compared to AMD...

Edit: Also, I can't use the OSS drivers, so they don't weigh into my buying decision at all. Good on AMD for doing better there, but the binary drivers are the only ones that can run my setup.

[lelandbatey]

As someone who has bought both brands recently-ish, I have to say I would VASTLY prefer AMD over Nvidia for Linux compatible graphics cards. I found that the community-provided AMD drivers where leagues ahead of Nvidia proprietary and community drivers (in terms of shear usability).

Here's a thread where I test my Nvidia 670 and my AMD 6870 in Linux. I explain why I like one over the other:

http://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1vpngo/which...

[blinkingled]

Just to be clear you are taking about binary drivers for desktops/laptops and this news is totally about mobile (Tegra). It is commonly agreed upon knowledge that on PC platform ATI's binary drivers suck compared to Nvidia's.

However in my experience ATI's GPU docs project plus the resources they invested in getting OSS driver to properly support ATI hardware means that normal users shouldn't really need to install binary drivers if they have a recent ATI GPU. And it works good enough for 3D and power management is supported so laptops benefit too.

Nvidia's patches referenced here are for Tegra which is strictly a mobile chip - nothing to do with desktop/laptop. In desktop/laptop department NVidia's OSS support is still non existent and Nouveau doesn't work as well as OSS ATI driver due to lack of documentation.

[ChuckMcM]

It has been interesting to watch the effect of Linus telling Nvidia to f*ck off.

[zimbatm]

Don't forget Intel. While their GMA chips don't have the performances of a Nvigia/AMD desktop GPU they have a much better track record at publishing code in the open. In fact I don't think there are even proprietary binary drivers for those.

[nolok]

The sad part is that, being on console hardware for a long time with chip derived from their main lines (and being in all 3 "main" consoles of this new generation), AMD obviously already has some great drivers for *nix systems, so it's not like they can't do it or would have to start from scratch.

How much of that is legal impossibility, secrets protection or simply not caring enough, well ...

[weland]

> I understand that Linux has been a lesser priority for both companies, which is understandable. It's not going to make them the truckloads of money that the rest of their market segments will.

Actually, they are both theoretically very interested in the Linux market because of their GPGPUs. Windows is pretty much unheard of in scientific computing (in November it powered a whopping 2 of the 500 comuters in top500). AMD does offer a good range of development tools for their CPUs; I haven't worked on their GPUs, but I've heard nothing but complaints about it.

[edwintorok]

What is missing from the OSS drivers to make it usable for you? Do you require OpenGL 4.x?

Mesa is getting close to OpenGL 3.3 support, and I already have OpenGL 3.1 on my Radeon HD 4650.

In fact for me having a usable open-source driver has been the reason to switch from Nvidia and its proprietary driver.

Edit: I see you mentioned this down-thread, having to do with large number of monitors.

[mrottenkolber]

There was a time when AMD was hyped to heaven for their efforts. Wrongfully so in my opinion. Nvidia cards just always worked on linux, you had to install the blob but then it was a breeze. Fglrx on the other hand...

I tried to setup a dual-gpu notebook for a friend last week. It was impossible. fglrx doesn't support the chips anymore and ubuntu doesn't support the legacy blobs. Complete fail. I had to tell her ubuntu won't work on her computer. (The gpus will overheat without a proper driver)

So thank you AMD for basically not providing any drivers at all, and if you do, them crashing randomly taking the kernel with them. Thank you Nvidia for just working.

Imho in that regard Linus didn't know what the f*ck he was talking about.

[driverdan]

I'm curious to see what kind of impact the use of GPUs for cryptocurrency mining has on Linux. There are a lot more people using them in Linux than previously so it'll be interesting to see if it has an effect on drivers and support.

[freehunter]

After getting a laptop with an Nvidia card built in, I'm pretty much turned off from buying an Nvidia card again. Nvidia's treatment of Optimus on Linux has been... lackluster at best.

[nolok]

Note that this is Tegra related, which might explain their new-found eagerness to help (unlike desktop, they don't fully "own" the mobile high performance chips market yet, and it moves very fast)

Still, a great news

[exDM69]

As far as I understand it, this set of patches allows you to (or at least aims in the longer term to) run Nouveau user space on top of Nvidia Tegra Kernel drivers (did anyone read the code, does this use nvidia kernel drivers or nouveau kernel drivers?), which are already mostly open source.

This would mean that you could run a full open source graphics stack on an ARM System on Chip (SoC). I don't know if this is possible on any current SoC out there.

[chanux]

Linus approves https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/TQDXxxr6ixm

[virtualwhys]

Linus: > Hey, this time I'm raising a thumb for nvidia.

Commentor in G+ thread: > They aren't there yet, more middle finger recommended.

A little chuckle to start the day ;-)

Nvidia's Linux support is generally pretty decent these days; however, the one issue that gets the middle digit moving in their direction is power management in a multi-head laptop setup. Ouch, max power = heat = fan noise.

I had to flash the VBIOS in order to force the chip into low power mode (not a gamer, just need to drive multiple displays).

Doesn't help that they remove PM features from anything but their high end chips; have a K2000M here, nvidia-smi shows a bunch of N/A, can't do diddly.

[w0ts0n]

It seems to be the same discussion year after year. I really hope that SteamOS pushes these companies to get their shit together.

[lukecampbell]

"Let me also stress that although very exciting, this effort is still experimental, so I would like to make sure that nobody makes excessive expectations based on these few patches. The scope of this work is strictly limited to Tegra (although given the similarities desktop GPU support will certainly benefit from it indirectly), and we do not have any plan to work on user-space support. So do not uninstall that proprietary driver just yet. ;)"

[amaranth]

This is just the same basic enablement work they used to do with the "nv" driver. This will just make it possible to use an unaccelerated framebuffer and they go out of their way to mention they aren't going to do any open source userspace (aka GL) work.

[nebulous1]

Getting themselves involved in linux in the run up to SteamOS?

[mariuolo]

Will this also benefit other Kepler users?

[william20111]

Arghhh, all mobile! Ah well least its progress!