this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Linux

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (3 children)

So what does this mean? He was the main contributer. Is Nouveau the only open source driver Nvidia cards can use on Linux?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The article answers your question

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Read the article and was confused. Good thing there's a comment section to ask questions.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I believe so, yes. Other than that there's the official closed driver. Nvidia also "open-sourced" their driver for the RTX 20 series and up, which you could technically run, but I didn't hear much good from it.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've heard that it's not fully open source. Some components of it are still closed source.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

And the parts that are open source are basically just a code dump. No commit history, so no comments explaining things in commits. That's worse than some source code leaks.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Times like these make me really miss Omega Drivers. :(

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why go for third party drivers if you can go for AMD?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some people might have gotten their computers before using Linux, and the GPUs are either too hard to swap (in some prebuilts and most laptops), or new ones are too expensive.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's the situation I'm in. 12 year old me did not know the problems Nvidia had with Linux, especially Wayland. My server on Ubuntu did not have problems with the GT 210 after all - which was to be expected considering it was headless and just used Nouveau.
For it to be very hard if not impossible to swap in Laptops I agree, that's true. For desktops it should be a drop-in replacement tho, considering the equivalents of AMD to Nvidia all need the same, if not less, requirements (Power, Other components, Plugs). Selling my 1070 I would get ~100€, which is the price of a used RX Vega 56, the AMD equivalent of my card. Considering I want to upgrade in the near future that would be pretty pointless however.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

That's also the situation I'm in, I was also 12 when I got my PC XD

But now that I got my RTX 3080 working with NixOS, I don't think I'll swap it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Because AMD GPUs don't have proper ray tracing support. Hell, they can't even do frame generation.

Believe me, I'd love nothing more than to own an all-AMD PC, but until their GPUs are as good as their CPUs, I'm stuck with a hybrid machine.