NVIDIA Shifts Gears: Open-Source Linux GPU Drivers Take Center Stage

[AleksandarK]

Just a few months after hiring Ben Skeggs, a lead maintainer of the open-source NVIDIA GPU driver for Linux kernel, NVIDIA has announced a complete transition to open-source GPU kernel modules in its upcoming R560 driver release for Linux. This decision comes two years after the company's initial foray into open-source territory with the R515 driver in May 2022. The tech giant began focusing on data center compute GPUs, while GeForce and Workstation GPU support remained in the alpha stages. Now, after extensive development and optimization, NVIDIA reports that its open-source modules have achieved performance parity with, and in some cases surpassed, their closed-source counterparts. This transition brings a host of new capabilities, including heterogeneous memory management support, confidential computing features, and compatibility with NVIDIA's Grace platform's coherent memory architectures.

The move to open-source is expected to foster greater collaboration within the Linux ecosystem and potentially lead to faster bug fixes and feature improvements. However, not all GPUs will be compatible with the new open-source modules. While cutting-edge platforms like NVIDIA Grace Hopper and Blackwell will require open-source drivers, older GPUs from the Maxwell, Pascal, or Volta architectures must stick with proprietary drivers. NVIDIA has developed a detection helper script to guide driver selection for users who are unsure about compatibility. The shift also brings changes to NVIDIA's installation processes. The default driver version for most installation methods will now be the open-source variant. This affects package managers with the CUDA meta package, run file installations and even Windows Subsystem for Linux.



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[Double-Click]

This is great news

 

[Solaris17]

This is great news

It is! and for what its worth nvidia drivers in general have taken such a drastic turn in 2 years its crazy how well they perform. I anticipate even more progress since they sniped Ben.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

This is great news

The fact that the drivers won't even be beta, just alpha is good news?

 

[Double-Click]

^ Nvidia drivers for Linux have been horrible to say the least, this is a huge step in the right direction.

 

[xeph713]

Finally!
I don't exactly love AMD, but as a GNU/Linux user I don't have much of a choice.
Perhaps my next GPU will be RTX 6090, when my 7900 XTX is no longer sufficient for my needs. I really wanted a RTX 4090, but being stuck on X11 and having driver issues is not something I want. I know, that a colleague of mine is running RTX 3080, but with the proprietary drivers and with X11.

 

[unwind-protect]

Well, it also means that they moved more stuff into the firmware.

And it sounds like userland libraries will not be open source.

 

[Neo_Morpheus]

The fact that the drivers won't even be beta, just alpha is good news?

Thats the sad state that we are. Ngreedia simply does no wrong.

 

[Wasteland]

Yeah, I'm torn between "this is great news for the future," and "oh boy, the driver for my older Nvidia GPU is gonna break more often now, isn't it?"

Just the other day an Nvidia driver update completely bricked my video output. Turns out that the new driver wasn't compatible with DVI adapters. Swapping the cable therefore fixed the problem, but this sort of episode doesn't exactly inspire confidence with respect to ongoing support for legacy features/hardware.

 

[Shihab]

The fact that the drivers won't even be beta, just alpha is good news?

The good news is the change of priorities. Having hardware now require the open drivers is a significant milestone.

Besides, NV has been working on this open drivers for at least two years now. They aren't releasing something entirely new here, technically speaking. And their drivers aren't exactly vapourware. r560 being a coupla months from gold isn't really an issue.

 

[HisDivineOrder]

Pretty clever way to incentivize even more people to move beyond Pascal.

 

[ScaLibBDP]

>>...older GPUs from the Maxwell, Pascal, or Volta architectures must stick with proprietary drivers...

This is Not a problem since most of these proprietary drivers are Very Stable.

 

[GoldenX]

You do realise this is just the kernel module drivers, right?

 

[user556]

You do realise this is just the kernel module drivers, right?

I'd guess most people, me included, are clueless as to what that even means. What does the kernel module do?

 

[unwind-protect]

I'd guess most people, me included, are clueless as to what that even means. What does the kernel module do?

The kernel module is what you would call the actual driver.

The other parts are libraries (equivalent to *.DLLs) and userland utilities such as the program to change settings.

The two latter are probably staying closed source.

 

[JLP]

No kernel module is not the actual driver, far from it, it is only a very very small piece that enables the actual driver to talk with the hardware. The actual opensource Vulkan/OpenGL (sometimes even OpenCL, although AMD has this in ROCm open source project) driver would be part of Mesa 3D project, which is a much much bigger part of code. Also some of the legacy code for the actual driver used to be in Xorg server package. But now with Wayland graphical system it uses OpenGL drivers directly. So it is a step in the right direction for nvidia, but it is a very very small step. Far away from what AMD and Intel offer in terms of open source drivers.

 

[unwind-protect]

To my knowledge the current NVidia drivers don't use Mesa at all.

 

[wolf]

Great news for the Linux crowd; they've been asking this for some time, no?

Thats the sad state that we are. Ngreedia simply does no wrong.

I'm so sorry this happened to you, my condolences.

 

[GoldenX]

This change just means NVIDIA users will no longer have to fear kernel updates messing with their driver (as NVIDIA was known to take their while in updating the kernel modules for the new kernel versions). But if you want the full feature set and performance of NVIDIA cards, you still have to use the proprietary driver.

Mesa now has a Vulkan driver for the cards, but it's in early stages, and that's not including CUDA or the like, for that, proprietary only.

 

[Patriot]

Yeah, I'm torn between "this is great news for the future," and "oh boy, the driver for my older Nvidia GPU is gonna break more often now, isn't it?"

Just the other day an Nvidia driver update completely bricked my video output. Turns out that the new driver wasn't compatible with DVI adapters. Swapping the cable therefore fixed the problem, but this sort of episode doesn't exactly inspire confidence with respect to ongoing support for legacy features/hardware.

The main reason for this was they had a breach and the source stolen... instead of pay the ransom, they released the code themselves.
They aren't going opensource out of the goodness of their heart.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Ubuntu 24.04, (Noble) (at least the usual version) has a severe bug that makes my GeForce GTX 1660 Super literally unusable, even for the GUI, so I popped in my Arc A770 8 GB and it went smoothly, just like in 2009, IIRC and the very-early-2010s, when Intel did only integrated graphics.