6 ms·

What exactly is the issue with proprietary drivers? They ship the hardware, they ship the driver(s). That's their problem. They probably want people to be able

by axlee 3y ago

What exactly is the issue with proprietary drivers? They ship the hardware, they ship the driver(s). That's their problem. They probably want people to be able to use their cards. Why fight this battle? If Nvidia wants to lose Linux users by not shipping drivers, let them fall, but I don't see the point in badly replicating drivers and making them "open-source". You still bought the GC from BigCorp, and only Nvidia can make those cards anyway: this "open-source" driver can't exist without Nvidia making cards. Who benefits from all that work?

dralley 3y ago
Open source drivers can be shipped in the mainline kernel. Drivers that ship in the mainline kernel, are 1000% less of a pain in the ass.
vlovich123 3y ago
If that were the case, we’d have almost no HW support on Linux. The Linux kernel doesn’t have a stable API nor ABI which means the only way to get meaningful HW support is to mainline the driver. DKMS helps a bit in “stabilizing” but it has it’s warts.
bestouff 3y ago
What is the issue with a proprietary OS ?
- greentea23 3y ago
  1. Privacy: mac/windows requires an online user account sign-in and have built-in telemetry that can't be disabled. 1984 is your reality on these OSs, particularly a problem outside of the free world. 2. Hardware lifespan: apple or microsoft get to decide when you buy a new computer instead of you and the community. Annoying, expensive, and not environmentally friendly. 3. Customizability and control: can't fix or improve the OS, and many powerful features just don't exist. 4. Open knowledge and human progress: by sharing knowledge and allowing others to contribute, we collectively advance. Proprietary operating systems discourage progress, and open source ones facilitate it. Nearly all of the great apps you know and love exist because of the culture of sharing. Even the proprietary OSs only exist because of open source OSs and libraries as the foundation and inspiration.
skybrian 3y ago
Linux users benefit from being able to use more hardware. It's the same motivation as any other driver. It's why drivers exist.
bayindirh 3y ago
> What exactly is the issue with proprietary drivers? They break. I have a GT730 card which came with my office PC. This card’s support has ended with the 470 driver series, which is one of last (if not the last) release for the previous generation of NVIDIA drivers. Now, the drivers still ship, and the kernel module is still maintained, but the surrounding GLX drivers are static. As the desktop Linux improves and moves forward, accelerated stuff tends to get migrated to newer technologies, or its GLX use is getting refined. This causes drivers to lose compatibility over time. This means more and more of your applications fail to start or break in mysterious ways. Also there’s Wayland support issue, which is the elephant in the room. I had to buy an AMD card which works better, because all the software ecosystem around that card is maintained by volunteers, and the card is architected for working with open drivers well. AMD redesigned its silicon to allow open drivers to work with every unit on the GPU without revealing sensitive information (like HDCP keys) while allowing open drivers to access video encoders and such on the card. After I got that card, all my problems have just vanished. So, I’ll never use an NVIDIA card on my computer for the foreseeable future.
- c0pium 3y ago
  Except the exact same thing happens with AMD and their open source drivers. There are tons of AMD cards that are perfectly fine for desktop usage and will absolutely not work under Linux. It comes down to a religious belief in open source, which is totally fine. But let’s be honest about what’s happening here.
  - type0 3y ago
    > Except the exact same thing happens with AMD and their open source drivers. How so?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    If the drivers are in-tree, they should keep working indefinitely. What open source drivers are in Linux and stopped working over time?
    - 3y ago
mike_hock 3y ago
In theory: A driver that's actually open source allows it to be ported to future versions of the Linux kernel as well as other kernels such as FreeBSD, giving you some level of guarantee that you'll be able to use the hardware for the full extent of its physical life. In practice: Even ignoring NVIDIA's insistence on proprietary drivers, other manufacturers have already succeeded in making drivers that are technically "open source" with unreadable source code full of opaque logic and magic constants maintained by a kernel dev who has had to sign an NDA for the privilege of maintaining the driver, so the code isn't any more likely to survive a major kernel redesign (or perhaps a shift to a different operating system) than a proprietary driver would be, unless the manufacturer remains interested in actively supporting the device.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  > magic constants maintained by a kernel dev who has had to sign an NDA for the privilege of maintaining the driver Wait is this true? How did the kernel team agree to this?
  - mike_hock 3y ago
    Because the alternative would have been not having a driver, I guess.
zucker42 3y ago
I'd prefer to have the option to use my current Nvidia card with open source drivers, or to purchase a new one (I care more about good open source drivers now than I did when I bought my current card, in large part because of Wayland). Plus, Nvidia has a virtual monopoly on neural network acceleration because of CUDA, and that seems like it will last at least a few more years, so for some people it's not as simple as "buy AMD". Second, my understanding of Linux's history is that people creating open source drivers for hardware is responsible for its success. The problem of bootstrapping Linux hardware compatibility was solved in part by people writing open-source drivers when companies didn't support Linux. Community support has been necessary for the creation and upstreaming of many previous drivers, not least among them AMDGpu. Also, in this case, a large portion of the work for Nouveau is funded by Red Hat. I believe they business reasons for wanting a well-functioning open source Nvidia driver.
renewiltord 3y ago
Open source driver lasts longer. Because of the great work by the Nouveau guys, I was able to use some hardware for longer than Nvidia would support. Very thankful. Back in the day, VIA's Unichrome integrated graphics were best supported by the OpenChrome project. Very grateful to those guys too.
bee_rider 3y ago
Sort of beating a dead horse at this point, the other comments have brought it up, but—they want you buy a card, and use it for at least long enough that you can’t return it anymore. Driver support will be an afterthought, performed at their whim, and the only harm they suffer from not doing it will be offending the small community Linux users.
- gpderetta 3y ago
  I'm all for wanting OSS drivers, but Nvidia does support its hardware across for many many years
matheusmoreira 3y ago
Because it leads to straight up better products and companies that don't upstream the drivers get outcompeted by the ones that do. Greg Kroah-Hartman explains it: https://youtu.be/fMeH7wqOwXA&t=7m https://youtu.be/fMeH7wqOwXA&t=7m
- c0pium 3y ago
  Except it very clearly doesn’t. At best it’s uncorrelated. AMD and Intel have open source drivers, and Nvidia doesn’t. Nvidia has a much better product. Nvidia has AMDs GPU revenue in the couch cushions near the ping pong table.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    I favor Intel and Snapdragon processors because of the Linux support. The nvidia case is unfortunate because its competitors are too far behind to put pressure on it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tuna74 3y ago
"What exactly is the issue with proprietary drivers? They ship the hardware, they ship the driver(s). That's their problem. They probably want people to be able to use their cards. Why fight this battle?" Linux was built because Linus Thorvalds wanted to use his hardware for something else the manufacturer envisioned. The free software movement got started because Richard Stallman wanted to add a new feature in the printer driver.
bravetraveler 3y ago
It's easy to think they should support their product... they should, but that's not a complete representation. Their failure to do it well becomes user problems, which history shows, has been the overwhelming case. Open source gives the user or their community recourse

by axlee 3y ago

dralley 3y ago

Open source drivers can be shipped in the mainline kernel. Drivers that ship in the mainline kernel, are 1000% less of a pain in the ass.

vlovich123 3y ago

If that were the case, we’d have almost no HW support on Linux. The Linux kernel doesn’t have a stable API nor ABI which means the only way to get meaningful HW support is to mainline the driver. DKMS helps a bit in “stabilizing” but it has it’s warts.

bestouff 3y ago

What is the issue with a proprietary OS ?

greentea23 3y ago
1. Privacy: mac/windows requires an online user account sign-in and have built-in telemetry that can't be disabled. 1984 is your reality on these OSs, particularly a problem outside of the free world. 2. Hardware lifespan: apple or microsoft get to decide when you buy a new computer instead of you and the community. Annoying, expensive, and not environmentally friendly. 3. Customizability and control: can't fix or improve the OS, and many powerful features just don't exist. 4. Open knowledge and human progress: by sharing knowledge and allowing others to contribute, we collectively advance. Proprietary operating systems discourage progress, and open source ones facilitate it. Nearly all of the great apps you know and love exist because of the culture of sharing. Even the proprietary OSs only exist because of open source OSs and libraries as the foundation and inspiration.

skybrian 3y ago

Linux users benefit from being able to use more hardware. It's the same motivation as any other driver. It's why drivers exist.

bayindirh 3y ago

> What exactly is the issue with proprietary drivers? They break. I have a GT730 card which came with my office PC. This card’s support has ended with the 470 driver series, which is one of last (if not the last) release for the previous generation of NVIDIA drivers. Now, the drivers still ship, and the kernel module is still maintained, but the surrounding GLX drivers are static. As the desktop Linux improves and moves forward, accelerated stuff tends to get migrated to newer technologies, or its GLX use is getting refined. This causes drivers to lose compatibility over time. This means more and more of your applications fail to start or break in mysterious ways. Also there’s Wayland support issue, which is the elephant in the room. I had to buy an AMD card which works better, because all the software ecosystem around that card is maintained by volunteers, and the card is architected for working with open drivers well. AMD redesigned its silicon to allow open drivers to work with every unit on the GPU without revealing sensitive information (like HDCP keys) while allowing open drivers to access video encoders and such on the card. After I got that card, all my problems have just vanished. So, I’ll never use an NVIDIA card on my computer for the foreseeable future.

c0pium 3y ago
Except the exact same thing happens with AMD and their open source drivers. There are tons of AMD cards that are perfectly fine for desktop usage and will absolutely not work under Linux. It comes down to a religious belief in open source, which is totally fine. But let’s be honest about what’s happening here.
- type0 3y ago
  > Except the exact same thing happens with AMD and their open source drivers. How so?
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  If the drivers are in-tree, they should keep working indefinitely. What open source drivers are in Linux and stopped working over time?
  - 3y ago

mike_hock 3y ago

In theory: A driver that's actually open source allows it to be ported to future versions of the Linux kernel as well as other kernels such as FreeBSD, giving you some level of guarantee that you'll be able to use the hardware for the full extent of its physical life. In practice: Even ignoring NVIDIA's insistence on proprietary drivers, other manufacturers have already succeeded in making drivers that are technically "open source" with unreadable source code full of opaque logic and magic constants maintained by a kernel dev who has had to sign an NDA for the privilege of maintaining the driver, so the code isn't any more likely to survive a major kernel redesign (or perhaps a shift to a different operating system) than a proprietary driver would be, unless the manufacturer remains interested in actively supporting the device.

phendrenad2 3y ago
> magic constants maintained by a kernel dev who has had to sign an NDA for the privilege of maintaining the driver Wait is this true? How did the kernel team agree to this?
- mike_hock 3y ago
  Because the alternative would have been not having a driver, I guess.

zucker42 3y ago

I'd prefer to have the option to use my current Nvidia card with open source drivers, or to purchase a new one (I care more about good open source drivers now than I did when I bought my current card, in large part because of Wayland). Plus, Nvidia has a virtual monopoly on neural network acceleration because of CUDA, and that seems like it will last at least a few more years, so for some people it's not as simple as "buy AMD". Second, my understanding of Linux's history is that people creating open source drivers for hardware is responsible for its success. The problem of bootstrapping Linux hardware compatibility was solved in part by people writing open-source drivers when companies didn't support Linux. Community support has been necessary for the creation and upstreaming of many previous drivers, not least among them AMDGpu. Also, in this case, a large portion of the work for Nouveau is funded by Red Hat. I believe they business reasons for wanting a well-functioning open source Nvidia driver.

renewiltord 3y ago

Open source driver lasts longer. Because of the great work by the Nouveau guys, I was able to use some hardware for longer than Nvidia would support. Very thankful. Back in the day, VIA's Unichrome integrated graphics were best supported by the OpenChrome project. Very grateful to those guys too.

bee_rider 3y ago

Sort of beating a dead horse at this point, the other comments have brought it up, but—they want you buy a card, and use it for at least long enough that you can’t return it anymore. Driver support will be an afterthought, performed at their whim, and the only harm they suffer from not doing it will be offending the small community Linux users.

gpderetta 3y ago
I'm all for wanting OSS drivers, but Nvidia does support its hardware across for many many years

matheusmoreira 3y ago

Because it leads to straight up better products and companies that don't upstream the drivers get outcompeted by the ones that do. Greg Kroah-Hartman explains it: https://youtu.be/fMeH7wqOwXA&t=7m https://youtu.be/fMeH7wqOwXA&t=7m

c0pium 3y ago
Except it very clearly doesn’t. At best it’s uncorrelated. AMD and Intel have open source drivers, and Nvidia doesn’t. Nvidia has a much better product. Nvidia has AMDs GPU revenue in the couch cushions near the ping pong table.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  I favor Intel and Snapdragon processors because of the Linux support. The nvidia case is unfortunate because its competitors are too far behind to put pressure on it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tuna74 3y ago

"What exactly is the issue with proprietary drivers? They ship the hardware, they ship the driver(s). That's their problem. They probably want people to be able to use their cards. Why fight this battle?" Linux was built because Linus Thorvalds wanted to use his hardware for something else the manufacturer envisioned. The free software movement got started because Richard Stallman wanted to add a new feature in the printer driver.

bravetraveler 3y ago

It's easy to think they should support their product... they should, but that's not a complete representation. Their failure to do it well becomes user problems, which history shows, has been the overwhelming case. Open source gives the user or their community recourse