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NVIDIA switching to open kernel modules by default in future driver update for Turing+
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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It's a weird time to live in, but not confusing. It's obvious to see that what you really want as a vendor is control over the operating system stack itself, and relying on Microsoft has become challenging.
In essence what NVIDIA is doing is bringing it's entire GPU driver stack open source side, so that entire industries say go on buying tons more hardware.
Us Linux enthusiasts get to reap the benefit, what with entire open source movements bringing libraries to Linux side first that can turn GPU hardware into whatever tool you'd like. Projects like PyTorch and ffmpeg run as first class citizens on Linux.
Windows still relies on either shared DotNet stack (which will make a monkey out of you - cough cough) or the nearly ancient MSYS2 build environment. Microsoft of course prefers you run all that software inside their Linux container system known as WSL - and there's a reason for that.
The Linux graphics stack is looking more "feature complete" by the month, bringing up the question of where you actually get the best hardware support. This is a good question to have.
Now, if only the open source desktop movements could clean house, figure out funding and get their stacks in order, we might finally, for the umpteenth time, maybe see the year of the Linux desktop.
I grow old with anticipation, but seeing what NVIDIA did in the before time versus what they do in the now puts a smirk on this haggered face.
Onwards to the future.
You seem to trust Nvidia. I don't.
Trust their motivation. They are worried that ai including LLM processing will be mainly on Linux and they’ll be left behind. They are just following where they think the money will be. It just happens to be good for Linux and consumer choice, but that’s a side effect, not the reason.
You seem to conflate "trust" with "optimism".
Let me just make it clear, having kernel land drivers and user space drivers open source and working together is a good thing.
Sure, you'll have to agree to a licence when installing CUDA, which will probably never be open source, but as long as the GPU hardware can be used out of the box with open source drivers means that we've come a long way.
Yeah that will never happen, naturally. 🙂
This one might happen, eventually. But not due to concerted effort – of which there has been no shortage, it has seen and continues to see constant, fervent improvement. It will happen because Microsoft is letting their guard down.
Linux is on every platform and being used for almost everything. If left alone it tends to expand eventually and fill every nook and cranny. Microsoft has been keeping the desktop airtight for several decades now but they seem to have hit a dead-end. (When you start putting ads in the start menu it's a sign you're going brain-dead.) The innovation gap has been widening steadily for a decade now and the industry will go where the fresh stuff is happening.
It will be interesting to see if they get off their ass and get back in the game or start throwing their weight around like in the good old '90s and try to pull everybody down.
Most of the Nvidia driver stack it proprietary
i always say this has to be done at the license level. gpl but paid for corporations.
Interesting, but seems difficult to enforce