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Reports: NVIDIA Launching a Distro of Its Own (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: There are unconfirmed reports that NVIDIA is working on its own Linux distribution dubbed "NLINUX." This NLINUX is supposedly a Linux platform optimized for gamers and similar to SteamOS, but NVIDIA has yet to confirm these reports and the sole evidence appears to be a circulating screenshot of an NLINUX install screen. Would you be interested in a Linux distribution created by an IHV? Somewhat similar is Intel's own Linux distribution, Clear Linux, that offers high performance Linux on Intel x86_64 hardware.
Would I be interested in nvidia's version of Linux?
No.
It's an edited web page.
No, id quite like a steambox though
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
after we had the HTTPS garbage shoved down our throats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpOyKCNZYw
If they'll contribute upstream and make whatever they're doing available to people like SteamOS, Debian, and RedHat, I'm absolutely in favor of this!
Hardware vendors should contribute code liberally to the linux kernel source. If all they're doing is a custom debian variant that they can control package versions on to make their drivers look better than they are, then I'll pass.
If something is coded to be optimised for specific hardware - good on them.
So long as all code, components, drivers etc remain fully open - and are available to the wider linux community I say go for it.
. .
So we have a custom Intel distro to have better Intel support and a custom Nvidia distro to have a better Nvidia support.
What about if I have a system with Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU and I want to get better support for both?
https://contests.nvidia.com/share-every-win-need-for-speed
They should focus on their drivers (same with ATI). I'm fine with Ubuntu.
With just that screenshot to go on, my first guess is a GUI-based driver installer, not a full blown distribution.
Would you be interested in a Linux distribution created by an IHV?
Not especially, but it is preferable to one created by HIV.
This could be a boon for them if they are actually willing to open source the driver code for the platform in addition to whatever GPL'd code they are required to post. I'm guessing this OS will be free to use but costly to license if you want a peek at the driver source code. Count me as pleasantly surprised if this distro is fully open.
amirite?
No, this is probably for CUDA work.
I tend to think it's just made up. But even if it isn't then it is more than likely their own in house beta testing version.
Just be grateful it's not FreeBSD which they they could totally embrace and not have to release any code for.
But everyone needs to get it through their heads that the true future of gaming is not OS bound. The need to instead concentrate on visualized GPU infrastructure. Games will run in VM's in a client game OS. More than likely nVidia wants it's own so it's not dependent on Steam as well as allowing them to have their own store and builtin DRM. They are just playing with their own platform.
Microkernel VM, Multiple windows version, SteamOS. nVidia OS, and multiple Linux systems and entire visualized applets.
On an aside I am actually more surprised that VMWare hasn't tried to team up with AMD. AMD could create specialized CPU extensions that speed up Virtualization and before you know it VMWare could supplant Microsoft as the default software loaded on all systems by default. Microsoft might not be happy with $10-30 per computer but I think VMWare would jump at the billion dollar increase in revenue and increased name recognition.
I certainly would be if it could replace the malingering "games-only" Windows partition.
The truth is somewhere in the middle.
lets further splinter a platform with far too many forks and distros and reinvented wheels and fads of the week and abandoned projects and etc etc etc
no wonder the year of linux on the desktop keeps getting postponed.
Nvidia struggle to make a stable driver, who the fuck thinks they can handle maintaining an entire OS. Steambox looks to be a relative disaster and I have far more faith in them being able to do it then Nvidia.
Why do I have the strange feeling that if NVIDIA were launching their own distro, the NVIDIA graphics driver wouldn't work on it? ;)
Why? Did you need an overpriced box for your cat to poop in?
It's a hoax. I modded it down in Firehose and am pissed it made the front page. That screenshot is from some page on NVIDIA's site, with an edited header. This is a non-story, and it should be blatantly obvious by now they have no interest in Linux interop.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
If its not based on systemd, I might be interested.
However, I don't care about graphics at all, I don't have any hardware from Nvidia and the only game I play is freeciv.
NVidia has been the single worst company we've ever dealt with. So, NVidia, fuck you!
Instead of Android, Linux? Just a guess.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
It's fake, find the differences:
http://i.imgur.com/59VWO7a.jpg
https://contests.nvidia.com/share-every-win-need-for-speed
Thanks for the great post.........
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.
Somehow I thought this quote was from Jobs during his first time at Apple Computer inc.? wow. I haven't had a Mac since 2005 and the distortion field is still strong... (source)
More on point, it seems that not only it is true that hardware+OS+applications are a good way to make money, the control over more of these 3 is a good insurance policy against the other vendors closing down app stores or their hardware on you.
I certainly don't mind that NVidia, Steam, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Nintendo, Sony and mr Goatse all have separate app stores and compatible hardware to go with them, I just hope that in the future it will be possible to play games and use applications/files across platforms without having to own several consoles and owing monthly rents to each of them.
So Ninnle Linux is real?
While I think some things have improved with Linux and gaming. Its a long way from being mainstream option for most gamers. Until you start seeing most top title games ported to a Linux system, you won't see a big migration to Linux gaming. NVIDIA to me is steering itself into a dedicated device gaming platform much like a console alternative. I don't think this is to augment the PC gaming industry. To me this only fragments gaming on PC's even more, and maybe the writing is on the wall for Nvidia that PC gaming is dying out.
I'd be more interested in a distro maintianed by AMD that would assure me their infinitely more frustrating drivers work without a hitch.
I think most of your arguments are ill-founded, but I'm not going to touch the bit about VMs. The person you replied to is an idiot, but your arguments against VMs are also pretty stale.
That said: yes, Linux uses shared libraries. Yes, this occasionally causes problems. However, the whole point of having distributions is to have a set of package versions that are known to work together. I don't know that I've ever run into this issue without I was using an out-of-repo package, and if so I would certainly report it as a bug. The use of shared libraries is a tradeoff that allows Linux distributions to be half the size (or less) than a comparable Windows installation. Any nontrivial problem in tech is going to be a tradeoff of some sorts, and this one mostly falls on the maintainers/developers rather than the end users.
However, while you are more likely to encounter this situation on Linux than on Windows, you have more tools to be able to work around it. Setting LD_PRELOAD appropriately can be a useful workaround, or symlinking $bad_version.so to $good_version.so, and if all else fails there are various container-type strategies which let you isolate part of your system and fill it with only the required libraries.
Writing to the system directories for binaries or config is not particularly normal in Linux, and doubly so if you consider /sbin to be more "privileged". Also there's a push towards stateless systems, which means even less screwing with stuff outside the user-writable directories.
people still install to the system directories but its not the right thing to do.
I'm not going to get into the difference between how BSDs and Linux are distributed, which you should know as well as I. Linux uses the Unix Filesystem Heirarchy as well, and I haven't seen any third-party installers which use anything other than /opt or /usr/local/bin.
Linux is the most popular OS on this planet; the Linux kernel runs on more devices than any other. If it continues to not have much desktop marketshare I will be pretty happy, but nothing you've said has much of anything to do with that.
You write and think like an angry teenager. If we ever need a new APK around here we'll know where to look.
Microsoft's UWP's got everybody spooked. I could see nVidia firing a shoot or two here. Microsoft makes hardware after all. Sure, they'd probably just let Intel do it, or maybe buy somebody like Power VR, but hey, it'd be childs play to kill nVidia. They're pretty much completely dependent on Widows right now outside of a few high end workstations for engineers/mathematicians.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Does this finally mean there will be a distro that supports OPTIMUS technology OOTB with proprietary drivers (not nouveau BLEH!) without all the usual black screening, black listing and all the other fucking around that I have to do each time I do a new install of an OS?
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is a new store. On android tablets with Nvidia chips they have their own store populated with things that will be compatible. I can certainly see Nvidia doing this on Linux as well as android. I will certainly give it a try as long as it isn't locked down it could be a good base for those of us with Nvidia hardware that want to game.