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NVIDIA switching to open kernel modules by default in future driver update for Turing+
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
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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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It's a weird time to live in, but not confusing. It's obvious to see that what you really want as a vendor is control over the operating system stack itself, and relying on Microsoft has become challenging.
In essence what NVIDIA is doing is bringing it's entire GPU driver stack open source side, so that entire industries say go on buying tons more hardware.
Us Linux enthusiasts get to reap the benefit, what with entire open source movements bringing libraries to Linux side first that can turn GPU hardware into whatever tool you'd like. Projects like PyTorch and ffmpeg run as first class citizens on Linux.
Windows still relies on either shared DotNet stack (which will make a monkey out of you - cough cough) or the nearly ancient MSYS2 build environment. Microsoft of course prefers you run all that software inside their Linux container system known as WSL - and there's a reason for that.
The Linux graphics stack is looking more "feature complete" by the month, bringing up the question of where you actually get the best hardware support. This is a good question to have.
Now, if only the open source desktop movements could clean house, figure out funding and get their stacks in order, we might finally, for the umpteenth time, maybe see the year of the Linux desktop.
I grow old with anticipation, but seeing what NVIDIA did in the before time versus what they do in the now puts a smirk on this haggered face.
Onwards to the future.
i always say this has to be done at the license level. gpl but paid for corporations.
Interesting, but seems difficult to enforce