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All you have to see is NVIDIA's trashy effort on Linux and locking-down what-would-otherwise-be-open hardware from being usable by open-source drivers...

GhettoComputers 5y ago
And ARM had constantly updated Linux kernels and drivers from Qualcomm before didn’t they?
- monocasa 5y ago
  ARM works very, very closely with the Linux kernel. The issues with updated code in the kernel isn't because of ARM CPU IP.
  - rjsw 5y ago
    ARM hasn't been much better than Nvidia for GPU code.
    - monocasa 5y ago
      Which is why I said CPU IP. That being said, it's a little hard to blame them there, GPUs are a bit of a patent minefield.
- necovek 5y ago
  ARM has helped found Linaro (linaro.org) ~10 years ago to fix the problem with mainline Linux integration for all the participating SoC vendors. You should expect the following manufacturers to have good mainline support: https://www.linaro.org/membership/ https://www.linaro.org/membership/ I am sure your mileage will vary between vendors (I am pretty sure Qualcomm was NOT one of the founding members, but it's there now), but this at least signals an investment of money and resources.
godelski 5y ago
It's funny because NVIDIA used to work well on Linux, way back in the day. Then they just decided to not care, then they decided to be hostile. Now they're backtracking but only because they are forced to. I thought the amount of ML would have made them backtrack, but it seems that it is more AMD and Steam.
- phire 5y ago
  The quality of Nvidia's linux drivers hasn't changed much. They are about as good as they were 10 years ago. But everything else has changed around them. The quality of other drivers has improved, the linux ecosystem and what it expects out of drivers has changed, and the nvidia windows drivers have gotten features that the nvidia linux drivers don't.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - foepys 5y ago
    Wasn't there a situation where the Linux ecosystem decided to use an API that Nvidia officially opposed and never wanted to support? Resulting in Wayland/KDE/GNOME (or similar) not running quite a lot of features on Nvidia? Something about Nvidia only supporting EGLstream while everybody else wanted GBM? It's very foggy in my mind, so I might be misremembering details.
    - mijoharas 5y ago
      You have the details precisely correct. Nvidia are finally moving to support GBM (iirc, it's because someone from KDE asked an nvidia engineer to help get something working with wayland+eglstreams, and he found out it was impossible, as the community had been saying for a while. Slight citation needed on that as I can't find a reference). Technically they have support in their latest 495 drivers, but I can speak from experience when I say it's not seamless for a user. (I have put a lot of effort into getting it to work and it recently broke again).
mijoharas 5y ago
I cannot agree with this more! I'm so frustrated, since I actually managed to get nvidia + wayland (sway) working on my laptop, and an update of some kind broke my external monitors this week (I haven't had time to roll everything back individually to figure out what yet). It's an incredibly frustrating experience, and I really wonder if nvidia realises the long-term impact they're having by alienating the tech crowd (i.e. the ones that give recommendations to friends, and decide what hardware their companies will buy).
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  It is important to remember that Hacker News and Phoronix and Linux kernel developers are within a communication bubble (like any forum). It may be because, in practice, NVIDIA looks at the size of us all... and yawns because we're tiny and because most tech reviewers still recommend them and most gamers still buy them. And they have a point - AMD has better Linux support, but NVIDIA's got CUDA (which has basically killed OpenCL and AMD's ROCm is less than a proof of concept in quality), DLSS, Raytracing, much better video encoders, a bunch of stuff that people are willing to put up with subpar Linux for.

GhettoComputers 5y ago

And ARM had constantly updated Linux kernels and drivers from Qualcomm before didn’t they?

monocasa 5y ago
ARM works very, very closely with the Linux kernel. The issues with updated code in the kernel isn't because of ARM CPU IP.
- rjsw 5y ago
  ARM hasn't been much better than Nvidia for GPU code.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    Which is why I said CPU IP. That being said, it's a little hard to blame them there, GPUs are a bit of a patent minefield.
necovek 5y ago
ARM has helped found Linaro (linaro.org) ~10 years ago to fix the problem with mainline Linux integration for all the participating SoC vendors. You should expect the following manufacturers to have good mainline support: https://www.linaro.org/membership/ https://www.linaro.org/membership/ I am sure your mileage will vary between vendors (I am pretty sure Qualcomm was NOT one of the founding members, but it's there now), but this at least signals an investment of money and resources.

godelski 5y ago

It's funny because NVIDIA used to work well on Linux, way back in the day. Then they just decided to not care, then they decided to be hostile. Now they're backtracking but only because they are forced to. I thought the amount of ML would have made them backtrack, but it seems that it is more AMD and Steam.

phire 5y ago
The quality of Nvidia's linux drivers hasn't changed much. They are about as good as they were 10 years ago. But everything else has changed around them. The quality of other drivers has improved, the linux ecosystem and what it expects out of drivers has changed, and the nvidia windows drivers have gotten features that the nvidia linux drivers don't.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- foepys 5y ago
  Wasn't there a situation where the Linux ecosystem decided to use an API that Nvidia officially opposed and never wanted to support? Resulting in Wayland/KDE/GNOME (or similar) not running quite a lot of features on Nvidia? Something about Nvidia only supporting EGLstream while everybody else wanted GBM? It's very foggy in my mind, so I might be misremembering details.
  - mijoharas 5y ago
    You have the details precisely correct. Nvidia are finally moving to support GBM (iirc, it's because someone from KDE asked an nvidia engineer to help get something working with wayland+eglstreams, and he found out it was impossible, as the community had been saying for a while. Slight citation needed on that as I can't find a reference). Technically they have support in their latest 495 drivers, but I can speak from experience when I say it's not seamless for a user. (I have put a lot of effort into getting it to work and it recently broke again).

mijoharas 5y ago

I cannot agree with this more! I'm so frustrated, since I actually managed to get nvidia + wayland (sway) working on my laptop, and an update of some kind broke my external monitors this week (I haven't had time to roll everything back individually to figure out what yet). It's an incredibly frustrating experience, and I really wonder if nvidia realises the long-term impact they're having by alienating the tech crowd (i.e. the ones that give recommendations to friends, and decide what hardware their companies will buy).

gjsman-1000 5y ago
It is important to remember that Hacker News and Phoronix and Linux kernel developers are within a communication bubble (like any forum). It may be because, in practice, NVIDIA looks at the size of us all... and yawns because we're tiny and because most tech reviewers still recommend them and most gamers still buy them. And they have a point - AMD has better Linux support, but NVIDIA's got CUDA (which has basically killed OpenCL and AMD's ROCm is less than a proof of concept in quality), DLSS, Raytracing, much better video encoders, a bunch of stuff that people are willing to put up with subpar Linux for.