The Open-Source NVIDIA/Nouveau vs. NVIDIA Linux Driver At The End Of 2019 - Poor But A Lot Of Hope

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Open-Source NVIDIA/Nouveau vs. NVIDIA Linux Driver At The End Of 2019 - Poor But A Lot Of Hope

While the open-source Radeon Linux graphics stack has made some remarkable improvements this year not only from AMD but also the likes of Valve, unfortunately not as much can be said about the state of the open-source NVIDIA (Nouveau) driver. The Nouveau Linux graphics driver remains much slower than the proprietary driver, the hardware with the best support is several generations old, and due to the lack of signed firmware images there still isn't yet any open-source 3D for the Turing GPUs that have been shipping for months. But there may be hope in 2020.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=28703

[dweigert]

Very likely that some software patents and IP have had their clock run out in 2019/2020 so they *Can* opensource things now. Nvidia was using a lot of SGI IP, and you can't give that away until the legal encumbrances have been taken care of.

[ThoreauHD]

Charlie Brown, you're adorable.

[blackshard]

Very likely that some software patents and IP have had their clock run out in 2019/2020 so they *Can* opensource things now. Nvidia was using a lot of SGI IP, and you can't give that away until the legal encumbrances have been taken care of.

They should have a lot of patented IPs in a lot of their things since they practically never contributed to any linux kernel related opensource projects (ie: all the drivers have been somehow reversed engineered).

[OneTimeShot]

I don’t get the optimism here. Why is it going to be different this time?

[tildearrow]

It's not poor. It's the best they can do given the circumstances.

It actually is impressive they can do this.

[moilami]

Nvidia what? That company has never existed in my life, and I don't believe it will begin to exist in my life during the next 5 years.

[stormcrow]

It's not poor. It's the best they can do given the circumstances.

It actually is impressive they can do this.

Poor in terms of usability, and comparative feature implementation. Not poor in terms of effort.

The only way this is going to change is if Nvidia decides to become an active participant in driver development beyond trying to push their API implementations into Wayland. That really depends on why they're so closed lipped compared to AMD's contributions. If it's licensing problems (remember what happened to 3Dfx), then it's understandable they've been holding back.

[Kohrias]

I dont see the optimism as justified. nVidia just pulled a PR stunt earlier this year. I dont see any indication whatsoever of them open sourcing anything of relevance. I totally agree with Linus Torvalds here: fuck you nVidia!

[loganj]

nobody is forcing anybody to buy nvidia. why the hate? you don't like it go for amd. its cheapr and has everything you want. if i understand correctly there are some gpu on android phones/tablets that have no open source driver. but i don't recall the hate to exist there. does amd/nvidia advertise open source driver on their graphic cards?