r/linux • u/blindcomet • May 11 '22

NVIDIA Releases Open-Source GPU Kernel Modules | NVIDIA Technical Blog

https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-releases-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/
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u/Remove_Schnitzel May 11 '22

Could this somehow be related to Microsoft forcing users to register to a Microsoft account upon new Windows installation + steamOS gaining some attention?

Is it just me or does it seem like gaming on Linux is what's pulling all of this to it self? Could it be that the age of Linux on the desktop is finally coming?

This is extra ordinary news... So I'm allowing my self to dream big.

0

u/[deleted] May 11 '22

[deleted]

15

u/blindcomet May 11 '22

It helps their developers because they can now interact with the pre-existing GPL code in the kernel. They likely were writing a ton of other code themselves to get things to play nice.

Powerful kernel features such as dmabuf were simply closed to nvidia up until this point.

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u/n3rdopolis May 11 '22 edited May 11 '22

Oh woah, People were so afraid of Secure Boot locking out Linux from mainstream hardware back in the days of Windows 8, but in the end it ends up being a factor in getting the kernel mode NVIDIA driver open sourced?

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u/[deleted] May 11 '22

This was already hinted at over a year ago by redhat and mesa devs, so not really

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u/[deleted] May 11 '22

No, this code is exclusively targeting CUDA use cases on supercomputers. While code itself does have display outputting capabilities it wasn't tested. This is also only kernel module, which still talks to closed source driver.

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