Thread by @mattdm

Here's the conundrum with @Nvidia drivers on Linux, in a thread. I have a Fedora perspective, obviously, but I think it's a shared problem. (🧵 rant which I'm not going to bother to count or number.) #linux #nvidia #opensource #freesoftware

On the one hand, users just want their hardware to work — I've got a laptop, it's got an Nvidia card, make it go!

And I don't have anything against proprietary software. I mean, I find it boring, but, sure, keep your "secrets".

(Software patents are another issue, but this is not that thread.)

But the exciting thing about Fedora and the free and open source software endeavor in general is that we're building a shared, common good — something that belongs to all of us.

It doesn't just belong to coders, it doesn't belong to some billionaire, it doesn't belong to anonymous shareholders, it doesn't belong to an IP holdings conglomerate. It belongs to you and me, no matter who you are.

And I mean literally YOU, reading this. If you've tried a Linux distro, or if you've used Krita or LibreOffice on Windows, if you use WSL, or if you're just *interested* — this whole world of amazing software is yours, and you should feel the pride of that ownership.

We're making a "digital public good" — something that advances the world for everyone.

And many big companies are part of it, pitching in and sharing, code, ideas, paid time, other resources. That's amazing.

For graphics, that includes Intel and AMD. Because of their participation in the whole shared thing, you install Fedora Linux and *their hardware just works* — and works to the best of its potential.

Meanwhile, Nvidia is just... "nah".

They're intentionally not part of the project of building this shared thing.

Oh, they want to benefit from it, sell stuff that benefits from the collective — while keeping their own part walled off.

So going back to the first point, since they have such a dominant market position right now, there's a case to be made for papering that over, and doing a whole bunch of extra bending-over backwards work *in the shared community* to hide

... that they're not actually a participant, to make it easy for users who shouldn't have to care.

But it sucks that to spend effort that way, when we all have limited resources and time. I'd rather spend that on the graphics card companies who ARE part of the whole open source project! If we're going to do any special extra work, shouldn't it be for AMD and Intel gpus?

We could make a special thing which detects Nvidia hardware and does kid-glove special handling to hide Nvidia's lack of support. But that *really* hides that we don't have to do that for the others.

It's tempting to do that but also accompany it with a rant like this one — but that's preaching to the wrong audience at the wrong time. Again, users just want to make their hardware go, and a lecture while trying to do that is likely to backfire.

So... honestly I don't know what to do. I've heard all the arguments.

Fedora and the RH desktop team *have* done a huge amount of the papering-over (in fact, that work is why it can be so smooth out of the box on other distros!!!). But I don't think more of that will make the situation better long term.

If you work at Nvidia and happen to see this, maybe you can make a difference. Come on, join us! Work directly on the Nouveau driver so it just works on new hardware. Make it have the best performance possible — you know your own hardware!

And for everyone else, tell Nvidia the same. Redistributable binary kernel drivers really don't cut it. They make us do extra work that would be better directed elsewhere — both users and distros. They sometimes literally make us choose between security updates and graphics.

Either way, Nvidia is in the position to make it better, and that's where y'all should push.

Ok, 🧵done.