The unthinkable has happened: Nvidia has finally embraced open-source GPU drivers
No, hell hasn't frozen over, and April Fools Day has long since passed. Nvidia has indeed announced it's moving over to an open-source Linux GPU kernel for its latest and greatest graphics cards. Previously open-source GPU anything was the sole preserve of AMD, but as of right now you can go to GitHub and download the source code for Nvidia's kernel modules on the Nvidia Open GPU Kernel Modules repo.
The green team is calling this «a significant step toward improving the experience of using NVIDIA GPUs in Linux, for tighter integration with the OS and for developers to debug, integrate, and contribute back.» And, as someone who has bounced off various Linux distros hard in the past, I'm going to join in with the chorus of folk saying that it's about time.
Mainly I struggled in the past because I couldn't get my modern Nvidia graphics cards playing nice with such exotic things as a desktop environment or a multi-monitor setup. Let alone actually playing games. With this recent change, however, it means developers and distro providers will be more able to tightly integrate driver support into their software.
Previously it was a bit of a crapshoot.
You had to go with Nvidia's proprietary drivers, which had a one-size-fits-all approach to distro support, where it most certainly did not. Y'know, fit all.
So, is this the Nvidia panacea to gaming on Linux? I spoke with Jonni Bidwell, technical editor of premier Linux publication, Linux Format, about why this has happened and what this announcement will actually mean for the end user.
«It's a good start certainly,» he tells me. «They have a huge range of hardware (much of the older stuff is now only supported via the reverse-engineered Nouveau driver) and they've chosen to
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