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I think that if Nvidia open sourced it's Graphic Drivers , 80℅ of backslash against Nvidia would disappear suddenly. I think that Backslash against Nvidia is d

I think that if Nvidia open sourced it's Graphic Drivers , 80℅ of backslash against Nvidia would disappear suddenly. I think that Backslash against Nvidia is due to it's somewhat hostile nature towards OpenSource (to be accurate, they didn't open source Nvidia's Graphic Drivers). But, Nvidia's drivers work well(Nvidia's Linux drivers are somewhat on parity with Windows ones) . I heard that until AMD open sourced their drivers, lot of them were preaching that Nvidia is only way to Play high end games on Linux(also CUDA). Personally, I prefer AMD GPU. I find their drivers to work great with Linux.

marcosdumay 6y ago
Well, parity with Windows is the right wording here. Windows drivers are starting to work better now that Microsoft adopted the Linux model of centralizing them. But they still aren't any great. For any non-usual hardware the drivers still come bundled with all kinds of shit, stop working after a while, and get bugs at random.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  > Windows drivers are starting to work better now that Microsoft adopted the Linux model of centralizing them. No. Intel ships WHQL Certified broken WiFi drivers via Windows Update. It took me three weeks to try all available versions, settings etc to troubleshoot. At last, I've roll backed the driver to earliest version and pinned it there. Now the wireless card is working as intended. Device is an HP Spectre X2 convertible tablet so everything is a package. Edit: Use kinder words.
  - calvano915 6y ago
    I've installed Intel's Driver Update Utility and it keeps the wifi up to date from them rather than Windows Update. I remember conflicts with Windows Update when trying to use Intel's own drivers years ago but it hasn't been an issue with my current device.
    - bayindirh 6y ago
      > I've installed Intel's Driver Update Utility and it keeps the wifi up to date from them rather than Windows Update. The problem is, Intel's all newer drivers are broken for that particular card, even the ones installed by Intel's Driver Update Utility (I've tried that too, yes). It's the same time that Intel's e1000e Linux drivers started breaking older cards so, there's something off in that department IMHO. The add insult to injury, both Windows and Linux drivers' release notes claim that the cards in question are supported by the respective, newer drivers.
Macha 6y ago
Yes, nvidia (the proprietary GPU driver) was way better than fglrx (the proprietary amd driver) and even nouveau (the open source reverse engineered driver for Nvidia) worked better than radeon for me in those days. It was intel for smooth sailing or nvidia for acceptable performance. I think their unpopularity these days come from three factors: 1. For the gamer crowd, RTX 2000 was a price hike and even the higher end cards were not that impressive for performance. It looks like they were resting on their lead against AMD. 2. People love to root for the underdog and AMD was behind for the longest time. 3. For the developer crowd, the closed source Nvidia drivers were not great for Linux compatibility, and the Mac crowd couldn't care because they couldn't have Nvidia after their fight with Apple. I think for a sample of the general public who have opinions on Nvidia, it's 1,2 and 3 in that order while for HN users, it's 3, 2 and 1 in that order.
- KptMarchewa 6y ago
  Nouveau is extremely slow, and was slow on several of my machines for at least 5 years. I'm not sure how it's any better.
  - rhn_mk1 6y ago
    Nouveau is only slow because about 5 years ago Nvidia started signing the card firmware, excluding Nouveau from using some features like setting appropriate clock speeds. They release some pared down firmware that Nouveau is allowed to use, but not after years from release have passed. Before that mess (around the 900 series), nouveau was fast.
    - smichel17 6y ago
      Can confirm; I had a laptop (Dell XPS 14) with a GT630m and Nouveau worked well enough that I never felt the need to install the proprietary drivers over 4 years of use.
  - Macha 6y ago
    I'm replying to the parent comment about AMD pre-open-source drivers. So we're already 5 years ago. I had my Linux install in a VM for a number of years because fglrx was an aggravating experience (unstable, often broke on kernel updates) to use and radeon had abysmal performance on my 290x. To the point that my laptops 540m (on nouveau) would outperform the 290x under linux. I still have that 290x in one of my systems, and since amdgpu supported it it has been a very pleasant experience. But even that took a while as they started with 3xx and supported the 4xx cards before going back for the 2xx cards.
iso8859-1 6y ago
Why do you use the Unicode "CARE OF" symbol? https://util.unicode.org/UnicodeJsps/character.jsp?a=2105 https://util.unicode.org/UnicodeJsps/character.jsp?a=2105
- MisterTea 6y ago
  The GP does not appear to be a native English speaker so I suspect a key mapping error.
  - esperent 6y ago
    What does GP mean?
    - Falell 6y ago
      Grandparent, 2 posts up the tree.
- pathseeker 6y ago
  Wow, didn't notice until you pointed it out. Rebinding someone's % to that symbol would be a good prank...
matheusmoreira 6y ago
> I think that if Nvidia open sourced it's Graphic Drivers , 80℅ of backslash against Nvidia would disappear suddenly They don't even have to do that. All they have to do is allow nouveau to actually drive the graphics card. Maybe it won't be as performant as the proprietary driver but it will actually work out of the box with no system instability.
gitua 6y ago
> I think that Backslash against Nvidia is due to it's somewhat hostile nature towards OpenSource I would add also Nvidia's hostility towards standards. They are pretty much the Apple of the GPUs : Optix, RTX, CUDA, etc. they are screwing up the whole ecosystem by making closed APIs that only work on their platform. If you are a graphic or ML dev you can only hate Nvidia for how they are hurting standards and making our job so much harder while we could just agree on Khronos standards. Hopefully some standards catch up (raytracing in Vulkan coming) but some other don't (ML is CUDA only)
- nsajko 6y ago
  In what way is NVIDIA hurting Vulkan? I suspect the opposite is true, AMD designed the API Vulkan is based on, but the whole Vulkan thing would be meaningless without NVIDIA also standing behind it. Are you blaming NVIDIA for Vulkan not being on par with their proprietary APIs? Presumably Nvidia is not sabotaging Vulkan, rather the issue could be that Vulkan is an abstraction that supports multiple GPUs, and that improving Vulkan is resource intensive.
- zvrba 6y ago
  > I would add also Nvidia's hostility towards standards. With CUDA I get a comfortable C++ dev environment that integrates with their products AND Visual Studio, FOR FREE. I played a bit with raw OpenCL a couple years ago, and it's.. uncomfortable. I've looked for free (as in beer) SYCL implementations... couldn't find any. IDEs with integrated debugging for OpenCL... couldn't find any, at least not for free. (Intel charged $$$ for their full-fledged OpenCL tools.) CUDA is popular because the development environment is free AND comfortable. Has the situation changed the last years? > Khronos standards You could argue the other way: CUDA has become the de facto standard in certain areas and other vendors should release CUDA-compatible tooling for their products. I as a developer want to get work done and I don't care about ideals like "standards". I choose and recommend tooling that gives the shortest way to the result. --- I'm mostly working with REST these days and I curse the HTTP protocol and URIs, etc. that are a mishmash of hacks to get it work with 7-bit charsets. At one occasion I said: "Just because something has a 30 year old RFC doesn't mean it's suitable for use in _today's_ applications." Standards can just as much hold back and prevent better ideas from emerging as they can help with interoperability.

marcosdumay 6y ago

Well, parity with Windows is the right wording here. Windows drivers are starting to work better now that Microsoft adopted the Linux model of centralizing them. But they still aren't any great. For any non-usual hardware the drivers still come bundled with all kinds of shit, stop working after a while, and get bugs at random.

bayindirh 6y ago
> Windows drivers are starting to work better now that Microsoft adopted the Linux model of centralizing them. No. Intel ships WHQL Certified broken WiFi drivers via Windows Update. It took me three weeks to try all available versions, settings etc to troubleshoot. At last, I've roll backed the driver to earliest version and pinned it there. Now the wireless card is working as intended. Device is an HP Spectre X2 convertible tablet so everything is a package. Edit: Use kinder words.
- calvano915 6y ago
  I've installed Intel's Driver Update Utility and it keeps the wifi up to date from them rather than Windows Update. I remember conflicts with Windows Update when trying to use Intel's own drivers years ago but it hasn't been an issue with my current device.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    > I've installed Intel's Driver Update Utility and it keeps the wifi up to date from them rather than Windows Update. The problem is, Intel's all newer drivers are broken for that particular card, even the ones installed by Intel's Driver Update Utility (I've tried that too, yes). It's the same time that Intel's e1000e Linux drivers started breaking older cards so, there's something off in that department IMHO. The add insult to injury, both Windows and Linux drivers' release notes claim that the cards in question are supported by the respective, newer drivers.

Macha 6y ago

Yes, nvidia (the proprietary GPU driver) was way better than fglrx (the proprietary amd driver) and even nouveau (the open source reverse engineered driver for Nvidia) worked better than radeon for me in those days. It was intel for smooth sailing or nvidia for acceptable performance. I think their unpopularity these days come from three factors: 1. For the gamer crowd, RTX 2000 was a price hike and even the higher end cards were not that impressive for performance. It looks like they were resting on their lead against AMD. 2. People love to root for the underdog and AMD was behind for the longest time. 3. For the developer crowd, the closed source Nvidia drivers were not great for Linux compatibility, and the Mac crowd couldn't care because they couldn't have Nvidia after their fight with Apple. I think for a sample of the general public who have opinions on Nvidia, it's 1,2 and 3 in that order while for HN users, it's 3, 2 and 1 in that order.

KptMarchewa 6y ago
Nouveau is extremely slow, and was slow on several of my machines for at least 5 years. I'm not sure how it's any better.
- rhn_mk1 6y ago
  Nouveau is only slow because about 5 years ago Nvidia started signing the card firmware, excluding Nouveau from using some features like setting appropriate clock speeds. They release some pared down firmware that Nouveau is allowed to use, but not after years from release have passed. Before that mess (around the 900 series), nouveau was fast.
  - smichel17 6y ago
    Can confirm; I had a laptop (Dell XPS 14) with a GT630m and Nouveau worked well enough that I never felt the need to install the proprietary drivers over 4 years of use.
- Macha 6y ago
  I'm replying to the parent comment about AMD pre-open-source drivers. So we're already 5 years ago. I had my Linux install in a VM for a number of years because fglrx was an aggravating experience (unstable, often broke on kernel updates) to use and radeon had abysmal performance on my 290x. To the point that my laptops 540m (on nouveau) would outperform the 290x under linux. I still have that 290x in one of my systems, and since amdgpu supported it it has been a very pleasant experience. But even that took a while as they started with 3xx and supported the 4xx cards before going back for the 2xx cards.

iso8859-1 6y ago

Why do you use the Unicode "CARE OF" symbol? https://util.unicode.org/UnicodeJsps/character.jsp?a=2105 https://util.unicode.org/UnicodeJsps/character.jsp?a=2105

MisterTea 6y ago
The GP does not appear to be a native English speaker so I suspect a key mapping error.
- esperent 6y ago
  What does GP mean?
  - Falell 6y ago
    Grandparent, 2 posts up the tree.
pathseeker 6y ago
Wow, didn't notice until you pointed it out. Rebinding someone's % to that symbol would be a good prank...

matheusmoreira 6y ago

> I think that if Nvidia open sourced it's Graphic Drivers , 80℅ of backslash against Nvidia would disappear suddenly They don't even have to do that. All they have to do is allow nouveau to actually drive the graphics card. Maybe it won't be as performant as the proprietary driver but it will actually work out of the box with no system instability.

gitua 6y ago

> I think that Backslash against Nvidia is due to it's somewhat hostile nature towards OpenSource I would add also Nvidia's hostility towards standards. They are pretty much the Apple of the GPUs : Optix, RTX, CUDA, etc. they are screwing up the whole ecosystem by making closed APIs that only work on their platform. If you are a graphic or ML dev you can only hate Nvidia for how they are hurting standards and making our job so much harder while we could just agree on Khronos standards. Hopefully some standards catch up (raytracing in Vulkan coming) but some other don't (ML is CUDA only)

nsajko 6y ago
In what way is NVIDIA hurting Vulkan? I suspect the opposite is true, AMD designed the API Vulkan is based on, but the whole Vulkan thing would be meaningless without NVIDIA also standing behind it. Are you blaming NVIDIA for Vulkan not being on par with their proprietary APIs? Presumably Nvidia is not sabotaging Vulkan, rather the issue could be that Vulkan is an abstraction that supports multiple GPUs, and that improving Vulkan is resource intensive.
zvrba 6y ago
> I would add also Nvidia's hostility towards standards. With CUDA I get a comfortable C++ dev environment that integrates with their products AND Visual Studio, FOR FREE. I played a bit with raw OpenCL a couple years ago, and it's.. uncomfortable. I've looked for free (as in beer) SYCL implementations... couldn't find any. IDEs with integrated debugging for OpenCL... couldn't find any, at least not for free. (Intel charged $$$ for their full-fledged OpenCL tools.) CUDA is popular because the development environment is free AND comfortable. Has the situation changed the last years? > Khronos standards You could argue the other way: CUDA has become the de facto standard in certain areas and other vendors should release CUDA-compatible tooling for their products. I as a developer want to get work done and I don't care about ideals like "standards". I choose and recommend tooling that gives the shortest way to the result. --- I'm mostly working with REST these days and I curse the HTTP protocol and URIs, etc. that are a mishmash of hacks to get it work with 7-bit charsets. At one occasion I said: "Just because something has a 30 year old RFC doesn't mean it's suitable for use in _today's_ applications." Standards can just as much hold back and prevent better ideas from emerging as they can help with interoperability.