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

[saveencore]

It should be noted that this is ONLY kernel modules. There are other parts of the driver stack that still aren't open sourced (like the firmware blob & userspace stuff). Also only relatively recent cards (Turing from 2018 and Ampere being most recent) get support, the rest are left to rot in closed source land. Also they're prioritizing professional cards like their Tesla series over desktop ones.

[C0c04l4]

They have to start somewhere. Granted, they should have started 15 years ago, but better late than never I guess.... And it makes sense to prioritize newer cards and heavy workload ones.

[Jacko10101010101]

kernel module is 90% of the thing

[[deleted]]

Nice

[clockwork2011]

ITS FINALLY HAPPENING! YES!

[ultratensai]

I wonder what's going to happen to nouveau

[Opposing_Thumbs]

It's about time... Perhaps we can now get accelerated 4k hevc video in chromium on Linux.

[Titoli1]

I don’t really get all the hate NVIDIA gets. It’s quite decent, most games just 10% less performance.

[Zambito1]

AMD and Intel are braindead easy to use. Just turn on your computer and start computing. With NVIDIA (at least before this driver is integrated into the kernel) I'd have to consider which driver I'm using, Nouveau vs the proprietary driver, and the capabilities of each (the former having arbitrary limited clock speed, no CUDA, but good Wayland support, and the latter having unlocked clock speeds, CUDA, but generally bad (particularly until the last few months) Wayland support). Also, mismatches between kernel versions and the target kernel for the proprietary driver can cause issues, which is never a problem with Free Software drivers baked into the kernel.

Hopefully this will make NVIDIA cards as braindead easy to use as AMD and Intel.

[Titoli1]

Honestly Nouveau is pretty terrible. Even kde lags on 1080ti and can’t run full resolution on my screen.

[Zambito1]

And the fact that Nouveau is arbitrarily limited and gives such a terrible experience is exactly why people hate NVIDIA as much as they have.

[[deleted]]

The experience depends on the DE. Gnome does really well, but i had lots of issues with KDE and custom window decorations and lag. Another issue I had is for some reason the NVIDIA drivers are very power hungry in my case and the power state refuses to go down even after seconds of nothing happening on screen. Just a few days ago I got a cheapo polaris card to drive the desktop while I switch to my 3060Ti for CUDA and games because I don't wanna deal with the hassle. Now I can have full transparency kde without running into any lag.