✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago
problematic trait of mine: i actually like the Linux NVIDIA graphics driver. it's always worked really well for me, it's fast, it's got good compatibility with games i run under wine, it handled render offload, hotplug, and hot-unplug of GPUs (less so the latter but to an extent) about as well as you can do with Xorg
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧
nvidia.ko is one of the most singularly reviled things in the broader Linux sphere, maybe even more so than systemd, and honestly i don't think it deserves that level of hate
Apr 9 at 10:23pmWeb
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago
people don't like that NVIDIA management chose to allocate resources in such a way that they ship a copy of their Windows graphics stack entirely parallel to any community efforts on Linux, and that's a fair thing to disagree with, but it's hard to argue with the utility of having basically the same codebase (except for the HAL) on both platforms because it means that if a game works on Windows it will probably work under wine too
Show threadRandom Damage 🌻1d ago

@whitequark I like NVidia because they actually support Linux in a clearly tangible way.

And have for a *long* time

Show threadOwen Anderson1d ago
@whitequark To be honest, while everyone complains about Nvidia drivers on Linux, they've always worked perfectly and with good performance for me. Having my games library Just Work is worth a fair bit of ugliness under the hood to me.
Show threadHenri1d ago
@whitequark but the performance has been lower on Linux than on Windows, at least on benchmarks I saw last year.
Show threadRa (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩1d ago
@whitequark I think systemd absolutely does, nvidia.ko is..... fine? at least nvidia.ko isn't trying to replace your whole OS
Show threadJosh Simmons1d ago
@whitequark hater opinion: i feel like most of the hate these days is simply because wayland folks refused to work with nvidia and so the wayland desktop was broken for years.
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago
@dotstdy something like that yeah
Show threadJosh Simmons1d ago
@whitequark you could argue that eventually it worked, but oh my what a painful and drawn out process. which i suppose is not exactly a unique problem in the area...
Show threadGlyph1d ago
@whitequark new metaphor for my moral compromise with macOS: it’s like nvidia.ko, but bigger
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago
@glyph hahaha yeah I can see that
Show threadGlyph1d ago
@whitequark yeah it’s kinda funny but not really a joke
Show threadAMS16h ago
@whitequark My one and only gripe about it is the amount of grief it gave me on my W520 (sandy bridge i7 and GF108 Quadro 1000M) first with primus/bumblebee but that eventually worked well, then dropping support so I'd end up stuck on a pretty old Xorg. The intel driver worked fine the whole time. I realize this is a silly complaint.