open-gpu-kernel-modules

tested on 3060, debian 13. freeing 300 megs is easy, just disable gsp. 50 megs is thanks to an undocumented NVReg key, which may or may not work on different cards. (there are similar NVReg keys that didn't work well on my card, however could be useful on others: https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/blob/main/... ) the other 50MiB is nvidia kernel module patching, 39 of which was a worst case memory reserve (32 general, and 7 for copy engine stuff). 9mb was reducing page table entry budget (12GB/4KB * 8bytes per PTE is 24megs, i couldnt go lower since it started breaking haha.). and there was around 4.5 megs of old legacy code. i only tested llama.cpp since it's my only usecase.

It is indeed the explanation: https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/pull/1014

Wow, someone in the github comments[1] noticed that one of the bug numbers assigned internally for the issue matches to the day the number of days the driver would stay up. 1: https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/issues/971...

HDR still doesn't really work on Linux w/ nVidia GPUs. 1. 10bpp color depth is not supported on RGB monitors, which are the majority of LCD displays on the market. Concretely, ARGB2101010 and XRGB2101010 modes are not supported by current nVidia Linux drivers - the drivers only offer ABGR2101010 and XBGR2101010 (See: https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/blob/main/...). 2. Common browsers like Chrome and Firefox has no real support for HDR video playback on nVidia Linux drivers. The "HDR" option appears on YouTube, but no HDR color can be displayed with an nVidia GPU. Also, video backgrounds in Google Meet on Chrome are broken with nVidia GPUs and Wayland. Ironically it works on Firefox. This has been broken for a few years and no fix is in sight. The "HDR" toggle you get on Plasma or Mutter is hiding a ton of problems behind

If I install Ubuntu 25.10, I can't get camera effects (blurred background and so on) to work in Meet because hardware compositing (or something, I'm not entirely clear on the details[0][1]) doesn't work properly on the open Nvidia driver on Wayland. Wait I thought this was all supposed to be the future? 0. https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/issues/644 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/1due6ni/hardware...

Nvidia's kernel driver is open source now [1], they just do the important HDMI bits in their closed source GSP firmware. Basically they moved the proprietary stuff to firmware and open sourced the rest. AMD could do something similar, but it would require a hardware change on their side (the GSP was a new bit of hardware added in Turing Nvidia GPUs). 1. https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules

That’s an ancient article - Nvidia have since open sourced their kernel mode drivers - https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules Yes the user mode side is still closed, but that was never really the issue.

Saying "and future" is like taunting fate Anyway, in case someone was interested it seems the code itself is cited as MIT, however it has a "when it becomes a Linux .ko it becomes GPLv2" clause https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/blob/580.7... and they do go out of their way to say "lol, needs binary blobs" https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/blob/580.7... That XFree86.run has always struck me as "you're gonna what*?"

> Both AMD and Intel provide well maintained open-source drivers for many years[1]. Nvidia doesn't. You need to use closed-source drivers with Nvidia in practice. Is that what this is? https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules

> It looks to me that if you want to have a working computer under Linux, it's worth the extra cost to avoid AMD. I think this is a rather hasty conclusion. The popular opinion is the opposite. If you want a working computer under Linux, it's worth it to avoid NVIDIA, especially for laptops. Sure, AMD are not perfect contributors to the kernel, but they are contributing more than NVIDIA[0]. NVIDIA has made some moves recently[1], but the AMD GPUs are still better integrated. Notably since the Steam Deck had been released, the situation has been excellent. Anecdotally, my laptop with an NVIDIA GPU has many issues that have persisted over the years with things like high idle power draw or frequent straight up crashes, or incomplete Wayland support. My 3 devices that have an AMD GPU (1 desktop, 2 laptops) however, have been working flawlessl

It's hard to tell what components are now written in spark. The driver is mostly c, and none of the open source repos are identified as spark. https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules https://github.com/NVIDIA/

Some of it is open source: https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules

They have been making real improvements the last few years. Most of their proprietary driver code is in firmware now, and the kernel driver is open-source[1] (the userland-side is still closed though). They've also significantly improved support for wayland and stopped trying to force eglstreams on the community. Wayland+nvidia works quite well now, especially after they added explicit sync support. 1. https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules/