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Someone check the weather in hell, as NVIDIA seem to be opening themselves up a bit more with the release of some additional GPU documentation.

Phoronix writes that NVIDIA notified them about the documentation now being available on GitHub along with it under an MIT license, which should hopefully help the Nouveau open source Linux driver. It was previously available here on their own website, although they stopped updating that in May. So not only is this more up to date with new and updated files, it's also far easier to look through.

The documentation covers all sorts of things like the BIOS, their custom "Falcon" architecture for security, memory tweaking and so on. This isn't just desktop GPU docs either, having a look over it myself there's information for notebook products as well.

According to what NVIDIA said, it's a work in progress and not everything is up yet. This has apparently been a "multi-year undertaking", which isn't really surprising given how it would all have to be run through different people to sign off on it. The legal spaghetti surrounding things like this is probably quite messy.

Pretty big surprise, nice to see NVIDIA make some more open steps. It's still nothing compared to the levels of AMD and Intel, since they have proper open source drivers but it's a good step in a nice direction for sure. You can find it all here on GitHub.

Hey NVIDIA, if you're reading—get in touch!

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: NVIDIA
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bingus 8 Aug 2019
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I can compile the kernel in minuets

Now that would be interesting to see.
Ehvis 8 Aug 2019
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If not for the greed with the pricing of the 20xx series, Nvidia would have been an ok company in my book.

Greed is not really the thing at work here. The 2080 Ti (and to 2080 to a lesser extent) is the one with the really excessive price and there is absolutely no competition for that card to drive the price down. So they only really compete with themselves. I suspect the production capacity of these high end models is not that big, so they have reason at all to lower the price. It would be nice if AMD entered that segment, but I don't think they're exactly in a hurry to do so.
I can compile the kernel in minuets

Now that would be interesting to see.

'see'? No, hear! A minuet is for the ears; e.g., this one.
lucinos 8 Aug 2019
I think nvidia had hid rock bottom about the time Linus gave the finger. Since then is improving but the pace is so slow that I do not see even considering nvidia for the next decade.
Liam Dawe 8 Aug 2019
Update: Did an article adjustment to mention the old location for the docs and some other minor wording improvements.
Nanobang 8 Aug 2019
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It's nice to think Nvidia's sidling into the open-source world. For the good of their company, their product, and the gaming community, here's to hoping this is something more than a PR ploy.
tuubi 8 Aug 2019
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I can compile the kernel in minuets

Now that would be interesting to see.

'see'? No, hear! A minuet is for the ears; e.g., this one.
A minuet is composed for and named after a type of dance. :)
I can compile the kernel in minuets

Now that would be interesting to see.

'see'? No, hear! A minuet is for the ears; e.g., this one.
A minuet is composed for and named after a type of dance. :)

Yeah but a dance isn't just for the eyes, is it? Err... (Yeah a silly oversight; especially considering that I've written a few minuets myself, aeons ago.)
lejimster 8 Aug 2019
Even if nvidia committed to open sourcing their stuff, it would take them years to bring it upto the level AMD and even Intel are at right now. The beauty of AMD GPU's is that so many people are working on projects to improve performance and compatibility with games. The work that Bas and Dave have done with RADV and now Valve with ACO have been game changing. This is ontop of the tireless work of Marek and his team have done bringing RadeonSI to the level we enjoy today.

As long as I'm on Linux, I just don't see me ever installing an nvidia GPU again.
F.Ultra 8 Aug 2019
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Hopefully AMD's open-source vulkan drivers can pull ahead and make some real impressive wins against NVIDIA's closed drivers in the future, that would really put the pressure on, we have seen what open-source opengl drivers have done for AMD, quite impressive.

Actually I doubt that this will happen. One of the reasons that the binary drivers are faster is that they add tons of per game optimizations and that is something that Mesa frowns upon big time so we will probably not see such work in the open drivers.

Someone check the weather in hell, as NVIDIA seem to be opening themselves up a bit more with the release of some GPU documentation.

Indeed.

I used to be a full nvidia customer for at least 10+ years.

Then AMD did such an amazing job with their Open Source MESA Linux Driver. I switched. AMD earned my loyalty and in exchange I have built at least 6+ full AMD rigs in the last 2 years alone. Now I am looking to exclusively do AMD in laptops too because the Linux Drivers are so much better than Nvidia and more performant than Intel.

As it stands currently, AMD is a superior experience on Linux because the open source driver makes everything stable as software marches forward.

NVIDIA -- you are late to the race, AMD and Intel have already finished the open-source race. You have a lot of work to do before we are swayed to even consider your products again.

Edit:

It goes back to at least 2012 when they said they would release more docs while now it appears they are living up to that promise for helping Nouveau. -- Phoronix

Jesus Christ! Am I to understand it took 7 years for them to even begin to deliver progress on this task? They're going to have to do better than that! I want to see current-gen documentation delivered in this Fiscal Quarter. Unacceptable, at this speed I will sooner see them dethroned.

7 years is nothing for huge corporations to do stuff. In a previous workplace we had to negotiate for 10 years in order to be able to redistribute Reuters Financal News (now Refinitiv) in our system and terminal, only for them to 2 years later decide that they no longer wanted to do it.


Last edited by F.Ultra on 8 Aug 2019 at 2:15 pm UTC
Shmerl 8 Aug 2019
Actually, Nvidia's Vulkan implementation is not faster. If anything, AMD one actually is (considering ACO and amdvlk).

OpenGL cheating on the other hand can not be considered a "faster driver", it's not even a fair comparison. You need to compare compliant drivers for that.


Last edited by Shmerl on 8 Aug 2019 at 3:39 pm UTC
goldenk 8 Aug 2019
I only use Nvidia because they have more powerful cards. If AMD manages to get ahead, I'll switch.

I've been using Intel for CPUs for the same reason forever, but if AMD keeps up the way they did for the past few years, my next rig will be sporting an AMD processor.

Intel kinda sh*t themselves with all the vulnerabilities in their CPUs and the fixes that decrease the performance. Aaaand now AMD offers better performance even from the get-go anyway (plus you're not likely to suffer decreases along the way)

But I'm kinda worried about AMD in the GPU space, since they don't have anything RTX related right now. And Nvidia will likely release the second RTX generation soon enough.
If not for the greed with the pricing of the 20xx series, Nvidia would have been an ok company in my book. 10xx series was AMAZING with great price and even greater performance. But upgrading to 20xx didn't feel like it was worth it. In any case, I'm looking forward to the next generation. I hope they're gonna be more honest with the price but even then an upgrade would be worth it. Even the Super (sub-)series would be worth it in my book, if not for the fact that it's gonna be obsolete pretty soon (next year I think /& hope)

TL;DR I'm not loyal to any company, I'm just gonna get the one that offers the best gaming performance

Exactly, I don’t give a rats ass weather its nvidia or amd. It’s whoever makes the most powerful card and right now it’s nvidia. I could care less about the politics of weather something is open source or not. Its funny how all you AMD users get bent out of shape about hardware or software you dont even use.
Shmerl 8 Aug 2019
Exactly, I don’t give a rats ass weather its nvidia or amd. It’s whoever makes the most powerful card and right now it’s nvidia. I could care less about the politics of weather something is open source or not. Its funny how all you AMD users get bent out of shape about hardware or software you dont even use.

Not surprising coming from those who are used to Windows approach to things. Nvidia is using the same. But Linux approach is different. You might not care less, but you should at least figure out what the Linux approach is.


Last edited by Shmerl on 8 Aug 2019 at 4:53 pm UTC
Shmerl 8 Aug 2019
Good article which brings this topic of people who started using Linux, without understanding the value of FOSS:

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/what-linux-journals-resurrection-taught-me-about-foss-community
lectrode 8 Aug 2019
Good article which brings this topic of people who started using Linux, without understanding the value of FOSS:

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/what-linux-journals-resurrection-taught-me-about-foss-community

Make sure you read it while it's there. The Linux Journal just announced it has closed its doors, but will try to keep the website online for a few weeks to give others a chance to archive it.
Shmerl 8 Aug 2019
Make sure you read it while it's there. The Linux Journal just announced it has closed its doors, but will try to keep the website online for a few weeks to give others a chance to archive it.

Requested Wayback machine to save it: https://web.archive.org/web/20190808184952/https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/what-linux-journals-resurrection-taught-me-about-foss-community
goldenk 8 Aug 2019
Exactly, I don’t give a rats ass weather its nvidia or amd. It’s whoever makes the most powerful card and right now it’s nvidia. I could care less about the politics of weather something is open source or not. Its funny how all you AMD users get bent out of shape about hardware or software you dont even use.

Not surprising coming from those who are used to Windows approach to things. Nvidia is using the same. But Linux approach is different. You might not care less, but you should at least figure out what the Linux approach is.

I disagree with what you say but with as many likes that you receive on your comments, most here think like you so I’ll just go on my way. I don’t believe anyone should be expected to know anything before trying or using linux. Just people using linux is good enough in my eyes no matter the hardware, obviously I’m on the wrong page.
Shmerl 8 Aug 2019
I disagree with what you say but with as many likes that you receive on your comments, most here think like you so I’ll just go on my way. I don’t believe anyone should be expected to know anything before trying or using linux. Just people using linux is good enough in my eyes no matter the hardware, obviously I’m on the wrong page.

You don't need to know it, to try it out, but you can learn it, to understand if you already want to stick around. Trying to fit Windows approach into Linux ecosystem is not productive. Bad actors like Nvidia aren't helping with this, since people assume that's normal.


Last edited by Shmerl on 8 Aug 2019 at 7:11 pm UTC
jens 8 Aug 2019
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I really don't get why there is so much profound hate against NVidia and the need to express that to users that are happy with their Nvidia cards and how you would use them on Linux..

@shmerl, you are an AMD owner, why not just be happy with you very valid choice and play a good game? Why the need to dominate this topic here and invest that much energy into missionary work?

To quote the mentioned article above from The Linux Journal:
It's important to stress that all of these people are contributors to and members of the FOSS community! It's a mistake to exclude members of the community for not behaving like the original core or not devoting their whole lives to FOSS.

(and may be I should add that I run first Linux installation around 1999 with KDE 1.0 beta 3)


Last edited by jens on 8 Aug 2019 at 7:48 pm UTC
Shmerl 9 Aug 2019
I really don't get why there is so much profound hate against NVidia and the need to express that to users that are happy with their Nvidia cards and how you would use them on Linux..

@shmerl, you are an AMD owner, why not just be happy with you very valid choice and play a good game? Why the need to dominate this topic here

It's not about users being happy with their cards (nothing wrong with that). It's about users coming from Windows approach backround and not understanding Linux one, trying to justify what Nvidia does wrong (because they are used to such approach and don't know what's wrong with it). That's not something we should silently accept.

That quote from Linux journal says we shouldn't exclude users, and we indeed shouldn't. It doesn't mean we need to agree with wrong claims. We can explain how they are wrong, in a normal fashion. In fact, if you won't put any effort in explaining it, these people won't even know that anything is off with such approach (that Nvidia uses). And that very article points out, that it's not a good thing.


Last edited by Shmerl on 9 Aug 2019 at 2:56 am UTC
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