We’re now at a point where transitioning fully to the open-source GPU kernel modules is the right move, and we’re making that change in the upcoming R560 driver release.
Is… is this the year of the Linux desktop?
It’s been the year of the linux desktop every year so far, since i’ve switched my machines to it. It is what you make of it
For me it is. I migrated my wife last week and mine is next week. AI spying is the last straw for me.
I see you’re using your wife as a test user for yourself. Smart.
What distro u go with?
If you know fuck all about Linux I think maybe Mint is pretty good but I kept having issues with the auto updater so I’m on Ubuntu - where I’m also having issues with the auto updater, so just ignore that shit and update from the shell. In which case Mint is still probably the most windows-user friendly, but I don’t know that it’s by a huge margin or anything.
I know a lot more than fuck all about Linux, but I’m also super lazy, so Mint is a good option.
I also want something that my wife finds easy. She’s now on her second week, and only one issue which she rebooted and it went away. After that, there is benefit to making mine like hers in case I ever need her to do something when I’m away and don’t have remote access.
You’re welcome everyone, I just bought an AMD card to replace the buggy NVIDIA card I’m using on arch btw.
Thank you for your service o7
This is pretty huge. NVIDIA has been the broadcom wireless chip of the modern era, causing unnecessary end-user pain and preventing every day users from migrating to Linux due to hardware that’s semi-compatible that doesn’t always work out of the box. I’ve been using AMD for their open source support for a while now, but this is a welcome change to enable others to switch - or at the very least test - a fully working Linux OS without having to fight to get things working.
Fucking finally.
I guess the people buying pallets of $50,000 cards have had words with Nvidia over their shitty closed-source Linux drivers. It’s not like Nvidia have suddenly decided to care about Linux gamers.
Is this really as good as it sounds? There’s some parts of the article that concern me:
The initial release targeted datacenter compute GPUs
Not every GPU is compatible with the open-source GPU kernel modules.
Is there any chance that this just means only a certain class of GPU’s are ever going to support open source, while their mainline desktop GPU’s will still be proprietary?
Not trying to spread FUD, but I don’t want to get too excited until I know for sure that this means they will support open source drivers on all their future desktop GPU’s.
All GPUs released since they came out with the RTX 2000+ line are supported and all new GPUs will most likely have support, especially with this announcement saying they’re committed to it. There’s a support list on their GitHub and it includes all the weird little things you’d be worried about. Even silly little laptop chips like the new RTX 500 are on it.
I think the only reason they limited GPU support is because the older ones physically don’t have the hardware for this approach; they switched to their newer RISC-V “GSP” processors with the RTX line. In the new open module, all of their proprietary “secret sauce” was shoved off to firmware running on that new GSP. Previously, their proprietary kernel module loaded all of that same secret sauce as a gigantic obfuscated blob running on your normal CPU instead. The Windows side of their driver has also been moving towards using the GSP, they even advertised it boosts performance or whatever, and I can believe it.
That said, with this new stuff, the official Nvidia userland portions providing Vulkan/OpenGL/CUDA support and the like are still proprietary. It’s still worse than AMD in that regard. But at least it’s possible to replace those bits, and Mesa/NVK are working on getting Vulkan up and running (with NVK supposedly getting pretty damn good, and Mesa’s OpenGL-on-Vulkan is pretty good too so that’s free).
