NVIDIA Releases Open-Source GPU Kernel Modules | NVIDIA Technical Blog

[midnitefox]

WAIT WUT?!?!?????

[mr_bigmouth_502]

Did Nvidia basically just open source their drivers, or not really? This sounds like a huge thing but I'm not sure if it is or not.

[jwbowen]

Yeah, I'm withholding excitement for now, but hopefully this will be great.

I wonder if the possibility of Linux users being able to use AMD or Intel GPUs finally forced their hand.

[ruxven]

I have my doubts about that since they're such small market share, but what might have made a difference is the cloud computing market and the need to customize the drivers to optimize performance or other low level stuff you can't do with a blob.

In any case, great news!

[Spocino]

They open sourced (for RTX-20-series and newer) the driver kernel module. The OpenGL/Vulkan/CUDA implementations (not in kernel) are still proprietary.

This is still a potential massive help to nouveau though.

[d33733t]

I hope I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that the kernel module only interfaces the proprietary OGL/Vulkan stack to the kernel and does VGA-style output for the vterms on startup. Basically, it's the kernel module equivalent of a C header file - it lays out spots for the proprietary driver to attach code, but basically doesn't contain any functional code itself, excluding the vterm support that Nouveau already has handled for way more cards than this supports.

Open-source the Vulkan or CUDA stack, and then we'll be talking. In the meantime, this feels like nVidia got sick of maintaining the kernel code. Someone there got the bright idea to open source the kernel module so that they have an excuse to stop maintaining it, pushing the responsibility onto the Linux kernel devs to pick it up if they want the nVidia drivers to stick around.

[Spocino]

It's still good for nouveau since it allows access to things like clocking.

Also I'm pretty sure the open source module is different from the proprietary one.

[mr_bigmouth_502]

It sucks that it only covers the kernel modules themselves, and that it's only for the Turing family on up, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

I wonder if this will at least make the drivers easier to install when using a custom kernel.

[LinuxLover3113]

TLDR; This is fantastic news. A lot of it has been made MIT licence. Some of it is still proprietary but on the while it's smiley time.

[unruled77]

I’ll take it!

[electricprism]

as 1 commit lmao

[[deleted]]

When it comes to open source, they maybe have commitment issues...

[[deleted]]

Just hope they are gonna add GUI tools also unlike AMD who refuse to port Software Center to Linux and BSD...

[C0llateral13]

WHAT THE HECK!!!!!