6 ms·

Not sure what's to gain here really. NVIDIA are free to remove this check and just ship their own Linux distro to their profitable customers. It's desktop user

by nly 3y ago

Not sure what's to gain here really. NVIDIA are free to remove this check and just ship their own Linux distro to their profitable customers. It's desktop users with NVIDIA GPUs who will end up shafted.

kkielhofner 3y ago
Exactly. Nvidia's position is so incredibly strong in AI and these customers clearly do not care whatsoever about spats like this and/or whether or not the driver is closed source/binary/whatever. If they did AMD/ROCm would have more than low single digit market share in AI. Nvidia obviously has the resources and ability to make a Debian/Ubuntu derivative (or whatever) that can offer increased usability, performance, etc with their hardware. Nvidia may even save effort and cost internally by primarily focusing AI/CUDA driver development on their own distro as opposed to what I'm sure is currently a significant amount of patchwork, workarounds, etc for the bewildering array of variability currently present in the Linux ecosystem. These users/customers aren't using a given Linux distro out of idealistic passion/preference for the distro like many users here - they just want to do AI. They're going to use the best tools available to achieve that goal. Needless to say these massive thousands of Nvidia GPU deployments are highly orchestrated and if an Nvidia distro can offer even 1% improvement on the usability, performance, etc with their hardware these customers are going to deploy an Nvidia distro immediately. These customers are also likely effectively supporting a distro variant already and they would absolutely rather let Nvidia take on as much of this effort as possible. I'd venture to guess many Nvidia customers have actually been asking Nvidia for it - Nvidia may already effectively be doing it for them. Lambda Labs (for example) already does this - shipping and supporting an Ubuntu derivative that does whatever you want with AI within seconds of booting their hardware. Even Oracle already does this and the recent issues with RHEL/Cent are yet another reason this makes sense to Nvidia. Nvidia also already does this with their Jetson line of hardware. You're absolutely correct that it is the desktop users who will get shafted by this. I've been a Linux desktop user since 1997. I love Linux. However, for something like this not even the might and influence of Linux/Linus/etc will "win" going up against Nvidia on this.
tedivm 3y ago
They already ship their own repackaged Ubuntu, called DGX OS. It's basically Ubuntu with extra software, drivers, and configuration. Switching the kernel around wouldn't be hard for them (they may already be rolling their own kernel). That said, part of the reason nvidia is so popular is that it's easy to buy their cards, spin up a system, and let a researcher play with it. If people had to buy the dgx workstations for this it would limit them to only the high level cards. There are a lot of benefits to giving every researcher in a company their own hardware for experimenting and debugging before they send their models off to the big clusters for training. https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-os-6-user-guide/index.html https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-os-6-user-guide/index.html
- NikkiA 3y ago
  Forcing them to maintain their own kernel fork will incur additional financial expenses - not least in the form of a developer's salary - so it is, in essence a fine. Will it be enough to force them to stop fucking around? Probably not, but it's one more paper cut, and perhaps in the process of their fork they violate the GPL in a more openly and legally actionable way
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  Thank you for providing this! When I wrote my comment below I suspected such a thing existed but I wasn't sure.
mrighele 3y ago
My guess is that Nvidia will get into a partnership with some distro to use a patched kernel that removes the relevant parts. In fact I will expect that one (cough Ubuntu cough) may do it on their own just to get a bigger slice of people working with Cuda
- xav0989 3y ago
  They already do: https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-os-6-user-guide/index.html https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-os-6-user-guide/index.html
admax88qqq 3y ago
Bundling their driver and a custom kernel to work with it _really_ sounds like a derivative work that would be a very clear GPL violation. That would be a pretty risky move legally speaking.
- junon 3y ago
  Not unless they open source the derivation of otherwise make the source available.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    The intent of the GPL-- and Linux's interpretation thereof-- is that you can't just circumvent it by putting a thin API in for what you need and then shipping a huge closed source and/or restricted blob that integrates deeply with the GPL thing.
    - dTal 3y ago
      Funny because that's exactly how most commercial Linux-based products work, including and especially Android smartphones. In my opinion, tolerating TiVo-ization was a major and possibly fatal misstep for GPL enforcement. What is a firmware blob, if not a derived work? It stems from a "nerdy" interpretation of "linking" that considers as relevant the fact that the monolithic proprietary blob (encrypted, protected, unmodifiable) has some sort of internal interface that mirrors the way a user might use a hypothetical free version of the product (running proprietary processes on a free kernel/userland). But it ignores the fact that the user cannot in practice disentangle the product in any way. It is the user experience that should legally be the deciding factor. I realize this may be a controversial stance, but consider - what if I released a proprietary and closed source desktop application that bundled into its binary a copy of the Linux kernel? Are the specifics of how it interacts internally with this code really relevant? Is this really a different situation than code that runs bare metal?
      - admax88qqq 3y ago
        This is different thatn TiVo-ization. TiVo-ization is, releasing your code as FOSS, but enforcing in your hardware that you can only run vendor signed builds on the device, preventing users from running their own modifications to the software. Most enterprise linux derivatives do not bundle proprietary linux modules with a modified linux kernel.
AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
Fortunately, Linux Desktop users are no longer forced to bend over and take it from NVIDIA: they can get an AMD GPU instead and enjoy a proper kernel driver.
- josefx 3y ago
  Can you list what abuses by nvidia you are talking about that made life for users worse?
  - effie 3y ago
    Not sharing their source code with the Linux kernel project, like AMD does. Instead, NVIDIA keeps it close to their chest, providing users only their binary driver. This sometimes causes failure of graphics after kernel upgrades when the kernel changes too much. In the past they prevented people from running consumer GPUs on Xen systems.
- bjoli 3y ago
  I don't do any AI work, and I just got an Intel GPU. It just worked. I have not installed anything extra, nor have I had to configure anything. It has worked flawlessly.
Zigurd 3y ago
Some of NVIDIA's big customers would not trust NVIDIA's distro for practical reasons, like not having to do a security audit of yet another distro vendor, or having their own internal distro.
COGlory 3y ago
Are they going to port all my GPU accelerated software over to that distro?
slim 3y ago
they could be forced to publish their drivers code, since there would be no clear boundaries between their kernel code and their driver code (from a legal point of view)

by nly 3y ago

kkielhofner 3y ago

Exactly. Nvidia's position is so incredibly strong in AI and these customers clearly do not care whatsoever about spats like this and/or whether or not the driver is closed source/binary/whatever. If they did AMD/ROCm would have more than low single digit market share in AI. Nvidia obviously has the resources and ability to make a Debian/Ubuntu derivative (or whatever) that can offer increased usability, performance, etc with their hardware. Nvidia may even save effort and cost internally by primarily focusing AI/CUDA driver development on their own distro as opposed to what I'm sure is currently a significant amount of patchwork, workarounds, etc for the bewildering array of variability currently present in the Linux ecosystem. These users/customers aren't using a given Linux distro out of idealistic passion/preference for the distro like many users here - they just want to do AI. They're going to use the best tools available to achieve that goal. Needless to say these massive thousands of Nvidia GPU deployments are highly orchestrated and if an Nvidia distro can offer even 1% improvement on the usability, performance, etc with their hardware these customers are going to deploy an Nvidia distro immediately. These customers are also likely effectively supporting a distro variant already and they would absolutely rather let Nvidia take on as much of this effort as possible. I'd venture to guess many Nvidia customers have actually been asking Nvidia for it - Nvidia may already effectively be doing it for them. Lambda Labs (for example) already does this - shipping and supporting an Ubuntu derivative that does whatever you want with AI within seconds of booting their hardware. Even Oracle already does this and the recent issues with RHEL/Cent are yet another reason this makes sense to Nvidia. Nvidia also already does this with their Jetson line of hardware. You're absolutely correct that it is the desktop users who will get shafted by this. I've been a Linux desktop user since 1997. I love Linux. However, for something like this not even the might and influence of Linux/Linus/etc will "win" going up against Nvidia on this.

tedivm 3y ago

They already ship their own repackaged Ubuntu, called DGX OS. It's basically Ubuntu with extra software, drivers, and configuration. Switching the kernel around wouldn't be hard for them (they may already be rolling their own kernel). That said, part of the reason nvidia is so popular is that it's easy to buy their cards, spin up a system, and let a researcher play with it. If people had to buy the dgx workstations for this it would limit them to only the high level cards. There are a lot of benefits to giving every researcher in a company their own hardware for experimenting and debugging before they send their models off to the big clusters for training. https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-os-6-user-guide/index.html https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-os-6-user-guide/index.html

NikkiA 3y ago
Forcing them to maintain their own kernel fork will incur additional financial expenses - not least in the form of a developer's salary - so it is, in essence a fine. Will it be enough to force them to stop fucking around? Probably not, but it's one more paper cut, and perhaps in the process of their fork they violate the GPL in a more openly and legally actionable way
kkielhofner 3y ago
Thank you for providing this! When I wrote my comment below I suspected such a thing existed but I wasn't sure.

mrighele 3y ago

My guess is that Nvidia will get into a partnership with some distro to use a patched kernel that removes the relevant parts. In fact I will expect that one (cough Ubuntu cough) may do it on their own just to get a bigger slice of people working with Cuda

xav0989 3y ago
They already do: https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-os-6-user-guide/index.html https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-os-6-user-guide/index.html

admax88qqq 3y ago

Bundling their driver and a custom kernel to work with it _really_ sounds like a derivative work that would be a very clear GPL violation. That would be a pretty risky move legally speaking.

junon 3y ago
Not unless they open source the derivation of otherwise make the source available.
- mlyle 3y ago
  The intent of the GPL-- and Linux's interpretation thereof-- is that you can't just circumvent it by putting a thin API in for what you need and then shipping a huge closed source and/or restricted blob that integrates deeply with the GPL thing.
  - dTal 3y ago
    Funny because that's exactly how most commercial Linux-based products work, including and especially Android smartphones. In my opinion, tolerating TiVo-ization was a major and possibly fatal misstep for GPL enforcement. What is a firmware blob, if not a derived work? It stems from a "nerdy" interpretation of "linking" that considers as relevant the fact that the monolithic proprietary blob (encrypted, protected, unmodifiable) has some sort of internal interface that mirrors the way a user might use a hypothetical free version of the product (running proprietary processes on a free kernel/userland). But it ignores the fact that the user cannot in practice disentangle the product in any way. It is the user experience that should legally be the deciding factor. I realize this may be a controversial stance, but consider - what if I released a proprietary and closed source desktop application that bundled into its binary a copy of the Linux kernel? Are the specifics of how it interacts internally with this code really relevant? Is this really a different situation than code that runs bare metal?
    - admax88qqq 3y ago
      This is different thatn TiVo-ization. TiVo-ization is, releasing your code as FOSS, but enforcing in your hardware that you can only run vendor signed builds on the device, preventing users from running their own modifications to the software. Most enterprise linux derivatives do not bundle proprietary linux modules with a modified linux kernel.

AdmiralAsshat 3y ago

Fortunately, Linux Desktop users are no longer forced to bend over and take it from NVIDIA: they can get an AMD GPU instead and enjoy a proper kernel driver.

josefx 3y ago
Can you list what abuses by nvidia you are talking about that made life for users worse?
- effie 3y ago
  Not sharing their source code with the Linux kernel project, like AMD does. Instead, NVIDIA keeps it close to their chest, providing users only their binary driver. This sometimes causes failure of graphics after kernel upgrades when the kernel changes too much. In the past they prevented people from running consumer GPUs on Xen systems.
bjoli 3y ago
I don't do any AI work, and I just got an Intel GPU. It just worked. I have not installed anything extra, nor have I had to configure anything. It has worked flawlessly.

Zigurd 3y ago

Some of NVIDIA's big customers would not trust NVIDIA's distro for practical reasons, like not having to do a security audit of yet another distro vendor, or having their own internal distro.

COGlory 3y ago

Are they going to port all my GPU accelerated software over to that distro?

slim 3y ago

they could be forced to publish their drivers code, since there would be no clear boundaries between their kernel code and their driver code (from a legal point of view)