Post Syndicated from original https://lwn.net/Articles/894861/

Phoronix reports
that the days of proprietary NVIDIA graphics drivers are coming to a close.

NVIDIA’s open kernel modules is already considered “production
ready, opt-in” for data center GPUs. For GeForce and workstation
GPUs, the open kernel module code is considered “alpha quality” but
will be ramped up moving forward with future releases. NVIDIA has
already deprecated the monolithic kernel module approach for their
data center GPU support to focus on this open kernel driver
solution (and their existing proprietary kernel module using the
GSP). Only Turing and newer GPUs will be supported by this
open-source kernel driver. Pre-Turing GPUs are left to using the
existing proprietary kernel drivers or the Nouveau DRM driver for
that matter.

The user-space code remains proprietary, though, which could inhibit the
eventual merging of this code into the mainline kernel.

Update: here is NVIDIA’s
press release on the new drivers.