NVIDIA have released some GPU documentation on GitHub

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: jensI 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.

Well, I fully agree on your points. Just to be sure, I would ofc _prefer_ too if Nvidia would do their driver development in the open in line with kernel developers.
But there is a difference between e.g. telling people that Nvidia employees are just jerks and telling (once) that there is a preferred way. In my opinion you (here and on reddit) and some others are way to aggressive and one-sided in venting their frustration with NVidia. Usually going that fierce into a discussion will get people with other opinions also into extreme positions and in the end all rationale is lost and it just gets personal.

I consider anti-competitive behavior of that sort to be a jerk behavior, so I see no point in holding back from calling it that way. Whether it's a fault of specific Nvidia employees or some collective decision making there, isn't really that relevant. The company as a whole represents that stance, and can be criticized for that.

Just to be clear, it's not the fault of those who use Nvidia, that Nvidia does this kind of stuff. It's Nvidia's fault.


Last edited by Shmerl on 9 August 2019 at 6:47 am UTC

Quoting: ShmerlI consider anti-competitive behavior of that sort to be a jerk behavior, so I see no point in holding back from calling it that way. Whether it's a fault of specific Nvidia employees or some collective decision making there, isn't really that relevant. The company as a whole represents that stance, and can be criticized for that.

Nothing wrong with criticizing, but repeatedly venting unfiltered frustration is not exactly that imho. Well, cultures are different, may be my background just doesn't fit in the way how most people argue on the Internet. Fortunately the place here is still mostly civilized (thanks Liam!). Reddit, phoronix, facebook or similar places seem to trigger the worst in some people.

(Sorry for getting a bit off-topic)


Last edited by jens on 9 August 2019 at 7:55 am UTC

Quoting: jensNothing wrong with criticizing, but repeatedly venting unfiltered frustration is not exactly that imho.

I do not think Shmerl overdid it.

Quoting: lucinos

Quoting: jensNothing wrong with criticizing, but repeatedly venting unfiltered frustration is not exactly that imho.

I do not think Shmerl overdid it.

Well I don't know. Have you seen the two discussions on Reddit?

If you look at the bare fact of releasing this documents and forget all history, this action itself is a good thing. Granted, a very small step and not the most important, but it is a positive step which may yield some hope for further actions into more open development. Yet this action is received, based on the discussion here, on Reddit or Phoronix like someone from Nvidia stated that they personally dislike some kernel developers. If I were working for Nvidia for Linux I would really have my doubts with this community, because it would never be good. AMD needed some 6 years to change their ways and there is still a lot to do. Yet people, especially people that long ago switched to AMD, would be only pleased if NVidia were magically able to this work in one week. Every voice that offers some empathy for the way Nvidia does things, or at least tries to offer some rationale explanation will be burned to the ground immediately.

Please don't get me wrong, there are lots of areas where Nvidia can improve their ways to the better, but one should not forget that it's never black and white/good and evil. Things take a lot of time, especially in large organizations with lots of different competing forces in it. People should just switch to AMD and be happy if they cannot wait, no need to continue the crusade.

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: jens

Quoting: lucinos

Quoting: jensNothing wrong with criticizing, but repeatedly venting unfiltered frustration is not exactly that imho.

I do not think Shmerl overdid it.

Well I don't know. Have you seen the two discussions on Reddit?

If you look at the bare fact of releasing this documents and forget all history, this action itself is a good thing. Granted, a very small step and not the most important, but it is a positive step which may yield some hope for further actions into more open development. Yet this action is received, based on the discussion here, on Reddit or Phoronix like someone from Nvidia stated that they personally dislike some kernel developers. If I were working for Nvidia for Linux I would really have my doubts with this community, because it would never be good. AMD needed some 6 years to change their ways and there is still a lot to do. Yet people, especially people that long ago switched to AMD, would be only pleased if NVidia were magically able to this work in one week. Every voice that offers some empathy for the way Nvidia does things, or at least tries to offer some rationale explanation will be burned to the ground immediately.

Please don't get me wrong, there are lots of areas where Nvidia can improve their ways to the better, but one should not forget that it's never black and white/good and evil. Things take a lot of time, especially in large organizations with lots of different competing forces in it. People should just switch to AMD and be happy if they cannot wait, no need to continue the crusade.

(to set the "tone" for my response, I'm just offering counter-points in what is hopefully a respectful debate-like manner)

While I agree that there are shades of grey, and releasing docs won't happen overnight, it was nvidia who introduced binary drivers in the first place. They've had plenty of time to help FOSS drivers along, and up to now, really haven't done anything in that regard. I would argue that them trying to lock things down has stifled GNU/Linux graphics stack development of late.

nVidia have a bit of history here, so it's worth calling them out until there's something more concrete to believe that something will actually change. And there's no need to own nvidia hardware in order to do so. If nvidia allowed FOSS drivers to prosper before now, then projects such as gallium-nine might have become more mainstream. There's praise for DXVK now, but imagine if that was feasible across the board back when DX9 was more prominent. That's just one example where FOSS drivers for nvidia would have been of benefit to everyone.

Of course, it could also be argued that nvidia allowed gaming to take off for GNU/Linux, what with having relatively high quality OpenGL drivers for a long time. Counter argument is that it locked everything to nvidia's way of doing things, and it would be far superior if there was a FOSS alternative long ago. As I see it, we're now (thanks to Intel for keeping everything running for a long time, and to AMD for their efforts) seeing just what a proper FOSS driver stack can do. So just imagine if there was no need for development to be reliant on blobs - I daresay Wayland would be much further along than it currently is.

And I will reiterate on previous posts that FOSS is an important foundational element of GNU/Linux. Perhaps the end user doesn't have to care about that, but I truly do think that it must remain a core element of GNU/Linux, and that proprietary encroachment must be resisted. Sitting quiet won't do. As soon as the entire driver stack for everyone is FOSS, I personally would then start to mention more about wanting open sourced firmware as well.

Thanks a lot for your reply. First and foremost I really appreciate the tone you use. I'm reading/receiving your factual and respectful response way different than "they are all jerks".

Actually I agree with most facts you state. I guess history could indeed have been different if Nvivia had decided for a different route. That said, I would say they just did at that time what worked best in their interest, serving Linux enterprise customers (the kind of Pixar's). Therefore they needed to progress fast and be flexible. I don't think Nvidia had the progress of the Linux Desktop much in mind. Retrospectively we can only guess if working more open and upstream would have granted them the success in the enterprise sector they had and thus would have justified an open way from the beginning. I agree that the desktop landscape stalled but considering how much financial volume were in the Desktop sector I can understand that they gave their enterprise customers priority. Fortunately the Desktop seems to get some traction, AMD and Intel did foresee this and reacted appropriately.
Please also keep in mind that their drivers always delivered from the beginning on first class OpenGl and now Vulkan support so it is not that all was bad. I can also tell from my professional experience that it is really not that easy to turn a huge software platform into something different once you're having 5 years of coding in it. I guess it would now be a serious investment when Nvidia suddenly wanted to go the AMD way, essentially like starting from the beginning. May be the timing for AMD and Intel was just better. Nvidia was faster and earlier but that created some legacy that seems to bite them now. (just speculating)

Anyway, the competition now is good and lets hope that Nvidia will get more open and upstream over time so that LInux as a Desktop platform further prospers.


Last edited by jens on 9 August 2019 at 7:49 pm UTC

Quoting: jensIf you look at the bare fact of releasing this documents and forget all history,

Why should we forget all history? Nvidia caused this mess, refused to fix it, and now provides documentation that still doesn't help with it and refuses to answer the direct question about fixing it as well. Should we now cheer? If Nvidia wants community to react positively, they should stop acting as jerks.

This whole problem isn't really dependent on their support of enterprise market, extensions and the blob. I.e. nothing should stop them from keeping their blob, without blocking Nouveau from working. Except, that would create an option for users to use Nouveau instead of the blob. So they are using firmware control as a market manipulation tool. I don't see any excuse for that. It's the same nasty lock-in like methodology, like many others they use (CUDA and so on).

Giving them a pass on this behavior only encourages it.


Last edited by Shmerl on 9 August 2019 at 5:19 pm UTC

Quoting: Guest...and ok, I'm commented out now. I probably won't post anymore, because I'm running out of things to say, but allow me to thank you for the nice discussion! Strange but true: allows me to de-stress from work.

I want to echo your ending, thanks a lot as well for your replies and thoughts! Have a nice and quiet evening!

PS: Regarding early preview of extension, I think this is (kind of) already happening, e.g. Valve bringing the DXVK author early into the progress of the transform-feedback Vulkan extension.
PPS: Indeed thanks for the reminder of 3rd party IP, this may indeed play a much bigger role than it seems.


Last edited by jens on 9 August 2019 at 7:53 pm UTC