NVIDIA Begins Providing Open-Source 3D Driver Support For GeForce GTX 900 Series (phoronix.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In late 2014 NVIDIA announced their GPUs would begin requiring signed firmware images before the open-source driver could enable hardware acceleration. That led the Nouveau developers to call the latest GPUs "very open-source unfriendly", but that criticism can now be laid to rest as NVIDIA has finally released the signed firmware and basic open-source driver code. The open-source driver can now move on with its open-source 3D enablement for Maxwell GPUs and the NVIDIA developer is hoping it will be ready for the next kernel cycle (Linux 4.6).

Comments

laid to rest?

[Gravis Zero]

requiring signed firmware is still open source unfriendly! if the firmware can be changed, we want an open source version of that too! we also want to be able to run our own code on it. signed firmware is a hostile statement saying that you don't want anyone else to be able to write firmware for this card.

Re:still a binary blob then?

[JackieBrown]

I hate what you wrote because I love open-source but I have seen all these complaints before.

Company doesn't open source and they are the devil
Company partially open sources and they are the devil for not opening it all
Company completely open sources and then we hear that they are just trying to get free labor and they are still the devil.

Personally, I don't care.

[0100010001010011]

For me FOSS is a tool, it's not something to get emotional or tied up about. I pay Nvidia money Nvidia pays people to develop drivers that work. I paid AMD/ATI money and they said "Ha, here's a shit ton of specs, write them yourself". Sorry. My job isn't to write display drivers, my job is to use the display drivers.

I suppose I could try growing my own food too, but I (gladly) pay someone else to do it for me. Even if it is a bit 'closed source'.

Re:Personally, I don't care.

[TeknoHog]

I paid AMD/ATI money and they said "Ha, here's a shit ton of specs, write them yourself". Sorry. My job isn't to write display drivers, my job is to use the display drivers.

That's weird. I paid AMD and I got decent binary drivers. Not perfect, but decent for my purposes. I know they also provide some specs for open source devs, but so far I haven't found the open drivers good enough.

Re:Personally, I don't care.

[DrYak]

Radeon 7870

Those older radeon work very nicely with the opensource drivers (r600 driver on radeon kernel module), and AMD is devoting resource to this driver.

The problem here isn't AMD's own effort. The problem is you're using an OS that is NOT officially support by AMD anyway.
AMD do support Linux. They don't officially support BSDs (though there has been some announcements that they might eventually).

Usually driver support for BSD comes in the form of mending Linux driver code into working with BSD kernel.

Meanwhile my old Nvidia cards are still cranking away with working drivers (with acceleration!)
It's like I paid Nvidia money and they delivered a product I could use.

Unless you want to use them on a platform they don't support officially.
Then it's basically "fuck you", no alternative offered.

This might something as simple as wanting to have an up-to-date kernel on your Linux installation.
(And which is something slowly disappearing with AMD, now that they are merging both their open- and closed- source stacks with AMDGPU kernel module and upcoming DAL).

Unless you're volunteering to read through AMD's spec sheets and writing me a driver for free.

Well at least the possibility exists. There are specs, there's even code which works for Linux as a reference.
Whereas with Nvidia? It's just "go fuck yourself" (unless you're referring to Tegra).

Additionally under Linux AMD has a 'bug' (Feature?) where you can't even use them under OpenCL without a {display} device attached. There is a way to fake it with a resistor but if you're going to bank on headless GPU computing you'd think you'd make a driver that could work with no head.

And as you mention it: it's a bug. A defect in the older catalyst stack.
It's a thing that is currently being worked on, and that should disappear once the stack has finished migrating to AMDGPU.
(Reminder: Linux has a lot of work being done in the kernel for the concept of compute nodes/render nodes).

Shall we speak about the support of Intel+Nvidia hybrid laptops ?

AMD's opensource is good

[DrYak]

And how good is that AMD driver?

Their opensource driver (yup, they are also having some of the opensource driver developers on their own payroll) is actually pretty good.
(As often shown on phoronix benchmarks).
To the point that the open-source driver is the officially supported driver for older hardware platforms that get dropped out of catalyst. Usually by the time a card isn't supported by catalyst anymore, the opensource driver is demonstrating nearly as good performance (and on a few occasions, even better).

The situation is quite different from Nvidia.

With AMD:
- the closed source driver is so-so. It's buggy and crashy, but at least there's 1st day support for newer hardware generations or newer features.
- the open source driver is really good (thanks to actual input by AMD, both documentation *AND* paid position)
- AMD is putting lots of effort in that direction. It progresses very slowly, takes time, but looks promision. AMDGPU is such an exemple (moving to a stack which is mostly open-source, with catalyst being only a proprietary openGL library running above the opensource component as an alternative to the opensource Gallium3D/Mesa's OpenGL state tracker).

With NVidia:
- the closed source driver is high quality. But it's basically an almost straight recompile of the windows stack. So you're fucked up if you need a feature that Linux does differently (hybrid Intel+Nvidia grpahics on laptop was such an exemple). Also fuck you if you use a newer kernel than what they are currently supporting (you can't use a rolling distro or a 3rd party repo to get the latest kernels, because Nvidia's drivers rely on their own special shim driver). And don't forget "fuck you too" if you have older hardware, they'll drop support from newer drivers, and only seldom support older generations of driver for you.
- the open source driver is a mixed bag anywhere between total crap and more or less working. Not at all the fault of the developers. They are basically on their own it's a miracle what they managed to pull off with such a meager support.
- Nvidia mostly doesn't give a crap about opensource development. From time to time, they might decide on a whim to be nice for once and throw a bone. Usually when it also helps Tegra developement and just happens to have some use for desktop cards.
- The exception is the Tegra mobile platform. Given the overly dominant position of Linux in the embed world, Nvidia are regularily providing some help to the opensource Tegra support.

So if you want opensource drivers not only for ideological reasons but also practical reasons (like having a rolling distro and/or latest kernels).
AMD is the definitive GPU maker to go to.

If you want the best performance ever while not minding whatever code you run, Nvidia is you best choice.
(Just hope you won't land on one of the few "not supported" sore points, like laptops).