Linux Developers Still Reject NVIDIA Using DMA-BUF

[droidhacker]

Stop spreading that nonsense, droidhacker! It won't be a license violation and Nvidia blob already has a kernel module. Go and hack it !

***DISTRIBUTION*** would be a license violation.

READING COMPREHENSION IS KEY.

[XorEaxEax]

Nice speech. But it misses one crucial detail: open drivers are not suitable for some tasks.

If you really need something of NVidia's secret sauce for 'some tasks' then by all means use NVidia's proprietary driver. There is nothing intrinsically better with proprietary drivers other than that they often come directly from the hardware vendor which has all information they could ever need to implement it as efficiently as possible.

The open source graphics stack devs have been at it for almost a decade now. Performance is still bad, so is power saving. If they can't get it right in that amount of time, they never will; graphics evolve past their ability to catch up.

I call bullshit, what determines 'bad' performance? Not as good as under Windows? OSX would be dead in the water then. Valve has shown that gaming on Linux works, showing better performance in their opengl tests compared to Windows. Certainly not conclusive in a Linux vs Windows comparison but it shows that Linux will be able to run these games just fine.

Meanwhile past the world of gaming Linux has long enjoyed a strong position in 3D/SFX where it entered the pipelines as render clusters but has now progressed to support the entire pipeline which is why 3d content software like Mudbox, Maya etc have Linux versions. If graphic performance was 'bad' as you try to paint it, this would never have happened as these programs really rely on gpu performance.

But of course the BIG thing is that discrete GPU's are becoming obsolete for the end user desktop in favour of GPGPU solutions like Intel's which is fully open source and thus can tap right into the kernel driver infrastructure and take advantage of what it offers. This means that your -'graphics evolve past their ability to catch up' statement is just bull.

As I see it Linux has never been in a better position in terms of graphics, there's a new display server coming in the form of Wayland, Valve is working with hardware graphics vendors to increase Linux performance for gaming, discrete GPU's which has been a sore point in terms of open drivers are being obsoleted on the desktop in favour of open source GPGPU solutions, and for those who are using discrete graphics there are both official proprietary offerings AND open source offerings.

Reality doesn't match the fantasy world you have created in your head. Linux devs seem to only care about being able to run X11 with an xterm on it and do coding in Emacs and vi.

You are obviously the one living in a fantasy world.

The only explanation that makes sense is the conspiracy theory; AMD and Intel trying to damage NVidia. It simply doesn't make any sense otherwise.

What? The kernel devs have had the exact same position long before Intel and AMD even started dabbling in GPGPU solutions, the reason Linux enjoys such a strong hardware support out-of-the-box is a direct result of their hardnose stance. The second they had foregone that the vendors would have returned to only supporting proprietary drivers for the architectures they 'found worthy' of their support, severely limiting the strength of Linux as a runs-everywhere-and-on-anything kernel.

As it is now, the kernel developers offers the following incentive for open sourcing your drivers, once in the tree they will maintain it against changes in the internal interfaces thus making use of new functionality and even fix bugs as we find them. The price is to open source so that it can be shipped as part of the kernel.

NVidia refuses and so they maintain their proprietary out-of-tree driver which re-implements functionality they would have gotten for free if they would open source the driver. That is their choice and noone says they can't do so, however now they want to make use of existing kernel solutions rather than writing their own as they've done sofar, of course without open sourcing their driver. Obviously the kernel devs will disagree as the whole point is that proprietary blobs is a nuisance at best, and a raging security/stability hole at worst from the perspective of the kernel devs, and as such they sure don't want to make it more comfortable to maintain binary blobs against the kernel.

[droidhacker]

If you really need something of NVidia's secret sauce for 'some tasks' then by all means use NVidia's proprietary driver. There is nothing intrinsically better with proprietary drivers other than that they often come directly from the hardware vendor which has all information they could ever need to implement it as efficiently as possible.


I call bullshit, what determines 'bad' performance? Not as good as under Windows? OSX would be dead in the water then. Valve has shown that gaming on Linux works, showing better performance in their opengl tests compared to Windows. Certainly not conclusive in a Linux vs Windows comparison but it shows that Linux will be able to run these games just fine.

Meanwhile past the world of gaming Linux has long enjoyed a strong position in 3D/SFX where it entered the pipelines as render clusters but has now progressed to support the entire pipeline which is why 3d content software like Mudbox, Maya etc have Linux versions. If graphic performance was 'bad' as you try to paint it, this would never have happened as these programs really rely on gpu performance.

But of course the BIG thing is that discrete GPU's are becoming obsolete for the end user desktop in favour of GPGPU solutions like Intel's which is fully open source and thus can tap right into the kernel driver infrastructure and take advantage of what it offers. This means that your -'graphics evolve past their ability to catch up' statement is just bull.

As I see it Linux has never been in a better position in terms of graphics, there's a new display server coming in the form of Wayland, Valve is working with hardware graphics vendors to increase Linux performance for gaming, discrete GPU's which has been a sore point in terms of open drivers are being obsoleted on the desktop in favour of open source GPGPU solutions, and for those who are using discrete graphics there are both official proprietary offerings AND open source offerings.


You are obviously the one living in a fantasy world.


What? The kernel devs have had the exact same position long before Intel and AMD even started dabbling in GPGPU solutions, the reason Linux enjoys such a strong hardware support out-of-the-box is a direct result of their hardnose stance. The second they had foregone that the vendors would have returned to only supporting proprietary drivers for the architectures they 'found worthy' of their support, severely limiting the strength of Linux as a runs-everywhere-and-on-anything kernel.

As it is now, the kernel developers offers the following incentive for open sourcing your drivers, once in the tree they will maintain it against changes in the internal interfaces thus making use of new functionality and even fix bugs as we find them. The price is to open source so that it can be shipped as part of the kernel.

NVidia refuses and so they maintain their proprietary out-of-tree driver which re-implements functionality they would have gotten for free if they would open source the driver. That is their choice and noone says they can't do so, however now they want to make use of existing kernel solutions rather than writing their own as they've done sofar, of course without open sourcing their driver. Obviously the kernel devs will disagree as the whole point is that proprietary blobs is a nuisance at best, and a raging security/stability hole at worst from the perspective of the kernel devs, and as such they sure don't want to make it more comfortable to maintain binary blobs against the kernel.

<<applause>>
Very well said!

[asdx]

If you really need something of NVidia's secret sauce for 'some tasks' then by all means use NVidia's proprietary driver. There is nothing intrinsically better with proprietary drivers other than that they often come directly from the hardware vendor which has all information they could ever need to implement it as efficiently as possible.


I call bullshit, what determines 'bad' performance? Not as good as under Windows? OSX would be dead in the water then. Valve has shown that gaming on Linux works, showing better performance in their opengl tests compared to Windows. Certainly not conclusive in a Linux vs Windows comparison but it shows that Linux will be able to run these games just fine.

Meanwhile past the world of gaming Linux has long enjoyed a strong position in 3D/SFX where it entered the pipelines as render clusters but has now progressed to support the entire pipeline which is why 3d content software like Mudbox, Maya etc have Linux versions. If graphic performance was 'bad' as you try to paint it, this would never have happened as these programs really rely on gpu performance.

But of course the BIG thing is that discrete GPU's are becoming obsolete for the end user desktop in favour of GPGPU solutions like Intel's which is fully open source and thus can tap right into the kernel driver infrastructure and take advantage of what it offers. This means that your -'graphics evolve past their ability to catch up' statement is just bull.

As I see it Linux has never been in a better position in terms of graphics, there's a new display server coming in the form of Wayland, Valve is working with hardware graphics vendors to increase Linux performance for gaming, discrete GPU's which has been a sore point in terms of open drivers are being obsoleted on the desktop in favour of open source GPGPU solutions, and for those who are using discrete graphics there are both official proprietary offerings AND open source offerings.


You are obviously the one living in a fantasy world.


What? The kernel devs have had the exact same position long before Intel and AMD even started dabbling in GPGPU solutions, the reason Linux enjoys such a strong hardware support out-of-the-box is a direct result of their hardnose stance. The second they had foregone that the vendors would have returned to only supporting proprietary drivers for the architectures they 'found worthy' of their support, severely limiting the strength of Linux as a runs-everywhere-and-on-anything kernel.

As it is now, the kernel developers offers the following incentive for open sourcing your drivers, once in the tree they will maintain it against changes in the internal interfaces thus making use of new functionality and even fix bugs as we find them. The price is to open source so that it can be shipped as part of the kernel.

NVidia refuses and so they maintain their proprietary out-of-tree driver which re-implements functionality they would have gotten for free if they would open source the driver. That is their choice and noone says they can't do so, however now they want to make use of existing kernel solutions rather than writing their own as they've done sofar, of course without open sourcing their driver. Obviously the kernel devs will disagree as the whole point is that proprietary blobs is a nuisance at best, and a raging security/stability hole at worst from the perspective of the kernel devs, and as such they sure don't want to make it more comfortable to maintain binary blobs against the kernel.

Another applause. Very well said.

Nvidia needs to suck it and fuck off.

[chithanh]

Reality doesn't match the fantasy world you have created in your head. Linux devs seem to only care about being able to run X11 with an xterm on it and do coding in Emacs and vi. They're stuck in the 1990's. Also, they behave like children. They constantly repeat the same thing, "I want the code", like a child in a candy store repeatedly shouting "I want candy." They should grow up and learn to cooperate with proprietary vendors. Even the hardcore "Free Software or Death" guys at FSF gave the world tools to create proprietary software if they so wish (like GCC and glibc). That was a sane decision. It's funny how the kernel devs distance themselves from the "Free Software zealots" and the likes of RMS, but then play the "proprietary drivers are evil" card. What a bunch of hypocrites.

You use Linux, so you benefit from more than a decade of openness and contributions by volunteers, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies. The development model of Linux has enabled it to out-innovate every other kernel in existence.

If you look more a bit more closely, you will notice that the kernel developers' goals are vastly different from what you think they are. They want to build the best kernel possible. Everybody who wants to contribute is welcome to submit patches. Some will be accepted, others rejected, names called, and so on. In the end, the kernel will be better and/or people will have learned from the experience. However, companies that provide only binary drivers do nothing to advance the Linux kernel. Some kernel developers consider binary drivers a violation of their copyright even.

Cooperating with proprietary vendors gives the Linux kernel developers nothing in return, just letting others exploit their work for free without giving anything back.

[asdx]

Fuck you nvidia, I'm so glad Linux developers are giving you a hard time, I hope secure boot will also give you a hard time. Just realize how lost you are here. Release specs or GTFO already.

[MartinK]

Well, I think a working Optimus implementation based on the Nouvea driver should be possible, even if Nvidia itself would not cooperate.

If the result will give any performance gains (given the early state of recent-hardware hardware support in Nouveau) over just using the Intel GPU is another question.

[dh04000]

Fuck you nvidia, I'm so glad Linux developers are giving you a hard time, I hope secure boot will also give you a hard time. Just realize how lost you are here. Release specs or GTFO already.

They are not giving Nvidia a hard time. I'm sure they'd love to not spend money developing optimus for linux. More money to spend on private islands for the CEO's.

The Linux dev's are giving USERS a hard time. They are deprieving USERS of the ability and chioce to use thier system how they want. Alan is deciding for us all becuase he has a bone to pick, while SCREAMING GPL and Freedom! Instead its Alan really saying "its my code, fuck everyone else, I'm the decider".

Someone should just fork his code as LGPL, and merge it in the kernel with the title, for "USE with Prop. Drivers Only", solving the problem, and dening him the power to push twisted viewpoint of "freedom" on us.

If its his code, and he won't let anyone touch it, then we'll use the GPL to against him, and show him its OUR code.

[GreatEmerald]

Yea, I also think that there is no reason to make an exception for NVIDIA. It will slow things down for them, but they should have known it would be the case from the get-go (and it seems that they did, since they wanted the license changed). Of course, open-sourcing their blob is not an option, but helping out nouveau is something they could do. In that case everyone would win.

[GreatEmerald]

The Linux dev's are giving USERS a hard time. They are deprieving USERS of the ability and chioce to use thier system how they want. Alan is deciding for us all becuase he has a bone to pick, while SCREAMING GPL and Freedom! Instead its Alan really saying "its my code, fuck everyone else, I'm the decider".

Someone should just fork his code as LGPL, and merge it in the kernel with the title, for "USE with Prop. Drivers Only", solving the problem, and dening him the power to push twisted viewpoint of "freedom" on us.

If its his code, and he won't let anyone touch it, then we'll use the GPL to against him, and show him its OUR code.

What. Users already have plenty of choice. Proprietary or open-source drivers, for instance. I'm sure NVIDIA can figure out something with Optimus on their own, without compromising the kernel and infringing on rights.

And, uh, if it's his code, he is the decider. And he decided on a license. And the license states that it can't be used with proprietary software. There is nothing that anyone can do about that. Also, I don't think GPL allows relicensing things with a less strict license. And even if it did, well, good luck maintaining the whole relicensed kernel!