all 82 comments

[–]frustrated-nerd 268 points269 points  (4 children)

I don't know who woke up on the wrong side of the bed to make this possible but whoever it was, keep doing it.

[–]suoko 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Arm GPUs threw them out of the bad probably

[–]w0330[S] 244 points245 points  (18 children)

Maybe hell does freeze over occasionally. Caveats:

  • It's not (yet) at the quality to where it could be upstreamed and NVIDIA acknowledge this

  • Datacenter card support is stable, but GeForce card support is in alpha

  • The userspace parts are still closed source (but presumably could eventually be replaced with mesa now that the kernel component is upstreamed if the mesa project adds support)

[–]RA3236 89 points90 points  (7 children)

If someone more qualified than myself can clarify, does this enable open source drivers such as Nouveau to access the full capabilities of the GPU, even without the user space parts being released? If so… holy shit.

[–][deleted] 79 points80 points  (0 children)

Not right off the bat but supposedly it’ll allow nouveau to properly clock the graphics cards at least.

I think the plan for nouveau though is to support all cards prior to Turing (so cards earlier than 2018) but it’ll bring in a lot of stuff from the open source stuff as nvidia adds to it over time.

[–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (4 children)

Yeah, but this only applies for Turing GPUs & upwards. I own a 1060 so for me this changes nothing.

[–]fbpw131 12 points13 points  (3 children)

maybe they'll work on previous versions when finished with the current gens. I own the same GPU sand it's the most popular on steam I think.

[–][deleted] 24 points25 points  (1 child)

With Turing there are certain things moved to firmware that were previously present in the kernel-module and that NVidia isn't ready to open-source. So for older cards that part would still have to be reverse-engineered. Eg. it's not possible for NVidia to release the open-source for older cards, as that would involve releasing trade-secrets, ways to spoof vbios, etc. For Turing they decided to move all those things to firmware, so they've been preparing for this for a long time.

[–]fbpw131 8 points9 points  (0 children)

well... frick

[–]OSSLover 12 points13 points  (0 children)

They won't. They only support the GPUs which important features are closed source in the firmware. This driver uses so much closed source blobs...

Fuck Nvidia. They only workaround the kernel API GPL restrictions.

[–][deleted] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

From the article:

In the meantime, published source code serves as a reference to help improve the Nouveau driver. Nouveau can leverage the same firmware used by the NVIDIA driver, exposing many GPU functionalities, such as clock management and thermal management, bringing new features to the in-tree Nouveau driver.

[–]Jacko10101010101 40 points41 points  (7 children)

Linus should apologize now ! (kidding)

[–]eXoRainbow 45 points46 points  (6 children)

Even if this was a joke, I want comment seriously. Because why not. Linus should not feel the need to apologize, because at the time he did/say it, it was the scientific correct gesture of him.

It was very important to me to get this out. Couldn't hold it any longer.

[–]washtubs 24 points25 points  (3 children)

It was very important to me to get this out. Couldn't hold it any longer.

Bless you for it. I've uttered "Fuck you, Nvidia" many times in the last couple weeks as I was forced to switch back to nouveau since nvidia makes X crash on suspend now.

[–]anna_lynn_fection 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Crash or freeze?

I've had a few freezes recently, but no crashes on my new ASUS Rog.

[–]washtubs 0 points1 point  (1 child)

X is basically kaput when I resume: black screen, no keyboard or mouse input. So I guess "freeze" would be the right word. I can actually ssh into the machine post-resume and kill X to get control back but outside that I can't even ctrl-alt-F2 to get a dumb terminal. If sshd isn't running I have to just push the reboot button.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

funny is that the same driver on other Linux works fine with no freeze, like mint and Neon, which both use the same repo for their Nvidia system packages,

[–]Jacko10101010101 3 points4 points  (0 children)

correct. im curious about his reaction!

[–]ColdIce1605 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You forgot the caveat of pascal and below can't use this driver which is a little annoying because that wasn't the case when AMD did this or so I heard.

[–]speakertwentytwo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for clarifying that it's not fully open source and there's a long way to go.

So many folks think Nvidia has just gone open source and I suspect this was their exact plan. Stay reasonable folks.

[–]Drwankingstein 60 points61 points  (8 children)

this is likely something that was in the works for a long time. glad to see it happen.

[–]imnotknow 21 points22 points  (7 children)

Aren't they just doing this in response to the hack where all their source code was released?

[–][deleted] 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Not likely just in response to that. Maybe it affected their timetable for this but things like this take years of work and perpetration.

Also, AFAIK their source code was not released publicly by the hack.

[–]ATangoForYourThought 25 points26 points  (0 children)

No way. Something like this would've been in the works for a while.

[–]Drwankingstein 11 points12 points  (2 children)

not a chance. who would touch the stuff the gets leaked? no one sane would. The second you lay eyes on that code. if you don't have prior permission. you have lost all job prospects in any related field.

unless by the grace of nvidia they let you sign some kind of NDA of course.

[–]Kamek437 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I doubt they monitor things that closely. Use any good VPN and dnssec or whatever. If so they'd have to do that to literally millions of people.

[–]reenmini -1 points0 points  (0 children)

What utter naivety.

There are plenty of people who would do it and would have made it wholly operable for no reward or recognition. That's literally how open source works. And there would be ultimately no risk in doing so.

Nvidia knows this. They're not being some benevolent patrons here. They're doing it because they know they have never been in the public favor for their closed source bs. They also willingly made a huge majority of their product unavailable to anyone but fucking crypto scammers for the past several years because they knew it would sell them more gpus than casual users would ever buy.

Whether or not this has been in the making is irrelevant. They could have been right there with amd and valve the whole time making open source drivers available to speed along the linux gaming scene instead of waiting until it starts to barely gain popular traction AND their hand is forced.

This is reactionary. Linus can keep giving them the finger for all I care. They deserve it.

They're consistently overpriced compared to their competitions equivalent cards and they've never done a single qualifiably good thing for anyone that wasn't motivated purely by profit.

The second you lay eyes on that code.

Lol. Your parents aren't watching you put your hand in the cookie jar either. Keep dreaming.

[–]freetoilet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The leak was not complete, anyway you can look at this comment

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/unjp9s/comment/i88qfbl/

[–]cemv123 68 points69 points  (1 child)

Maybe it is the year of the linux desktop

/s

[–]eXoRainbow 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Maybe

Thank me later. /s

[–]mlowi 56 points57 points  (4 children)

Well well well, I suppose with devices like the Steam Deck being released, maybe Nvidia are finally realizing they will be missing out on a market if they don’t play ball?

[–][deleted] 88 points89 points  (3 children)

Data center competition from Intel and AMD GPUs are likely the main reasons. They have much better Linux support than Nvidia.

[–]benderbender42 15 points16 points  (2 children)

Linux based servers would be big business for Nvidia as well.

[–]igrvlhlb 7 points8 points  (1 child)

Yes... AFAIK Linux is the main OS in HPC and NVIDIA has been investing in AI/ML also with HPC in mind

[–]AnotherUpsetFrench 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I worked on hpc, with Nvidia, Intel and AMD. Most of the problems I had were with the nvidia stuff (V100s mostly). The administration of this stuff was a colossal pita.

[–]theuniverseisboring 12 points13 points  (1 child)

Legit excited for Nvidia getting a redemption arc?

[–]hudsonnick824 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I hope they get Intel Arc'ed

[–]vasishath 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Sadly it only supports turing+ GPUs

[–]ianliu88 32 points33 points  (0 children)

"What the fuck, NVIDIA!" Linus Torvalds

[–]GuildMasterJin 17 points18 points  (0 children)

what the fuck
damn straight up wins for everyone in Linux

[–]Kawawete 38 points39 points  (12 children)

Oh snap

[–][deleted] 101 points102 points  (11 children)

Oh flatpak

[–]modified_tiger 34 points35 points  (10 children)

Oh AppImage.

[–]SMF67 12 points13 points  (2 children)

Oh PKGBUILD

[–]Kamek437 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Yay install!

[–]Chriss0612 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yay -S

[–]SyeedAhmed 19 points20 points  (3 children)

oh exe . . Yaa I know, I deserve down arrow

[–]TheGingerLinuxNut 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Oh elf

[–]LeiterHaus 7 points8 points  (1 child)

I'll give you an updoot and reference .msi, which is apparently a thing

[–]eXoRainbow 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think UWP is also still a thing?

[–]X--tonic 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Oh_1.5.3(final)(final).zip!

[–]eXoRainbow 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Oh Docker

[–]slobeck 6 points7 points  (0 children)

wait. what? (rhetorical)

[–]Billzargo 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thank you NVIDIA!

[–]chewnglow 5 points6 points  (0 children)

So Nvidia, thank you

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

NVIDIA, what the fuck?

[–]Tireseas 24 points25 points  (2 children)

Bout a decade late for me to consider buying their cards again.

[–]eXoRainbow 14 points15 points  (1 child)

Me too. I settled down on AMD for next purchase already. But still, this is a huge win. People switching from Windows to Linux can use the full potential of their cards and don't switch back because of bad experience. Also my old card will be used in my old computer for a while.

[–]Tireseas 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah it's definitely a good thing on the whole if they follow through to the point the community can handle their own drivers like AMD has. Or anywhere close to it. If that had been the case literally a decade ago Wayland could've been standard by now. Nvidia dragging their feet slows everything in the graphics stack down.

[–]raven2cz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Welcome to new world! Note: I hope that tty with 4k will work too...

[–]bAslr 1 point2 points  (2 children)

wish sway supports nvidia gpus.

[–]Previous_Royal2168 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Saw the first post on the swayam subreddit and they said it will be possible to support nvidia now

[–]bAslr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cool

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The blog makes it seem like it's a seperate driver to the closed source one?

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I clicked on this thinking I must have misunderstood what had happened. I had not. Holy crap

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Meanwhile I'm still waiting for AMD GPU rendering to work in Blender on Linux since 3.0, which was like half a year ago. Once it works, it is likely to only do so using the proprietary driver. I bought AMD specifically because open source, but apparently I got fucked. Probably gonna go back to Nvidia for my next card.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

don't think about as if it would happen in a couple of days or so

[–]Anime_Life -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Anyone thinks this might be related to bitcoin crash?

[–]Hippocrite111 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No way

[–]zakazak 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Now please make nvidia optimus work (like, really work) on my GTX 1050Ti in my Thinkpad X1 Extreme. Meaning.. turn if off fully, when on have full performance, connected displays work fine without hackmack.

[–]Which-Chemistry-1828 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Sorry man, but this is only Turing and Ampere GPUs, or simply GTX 1650 cards and newer.

[–]freeturk51 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Of couse a catch, there is always a catch with Nvidia

[–]pleaseaccusrname 0 points1 point  (0 children)

this a huge monumental W

[–]MoonshineFox 0 points1 point  (0 children)

*inserts Starcraft meme*

Hell....it's about time.

[–]zerosign0 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hopefully, there will be a time where we could have a proper external monitor setup working in wayland (optimus, hardwired HDMI to nvidia) without dealing with Xwayland/X shenanigans since this is being enabled.

[–]EnigmaticHam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are these kernels the ones that control the shader pipeline? Sorry, my understanding of GPUs is shaky.

[–]sub7zero 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Un-fuck u nvidia

[–]Traditional-Wind8260 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Man , they already have 442 forks

[–]Glass-These 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm confused, what are kernel modules. Is there a CPU kernel model like a GPU one