Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Only Works On Some GPUs

The alternative OS gurus over at Phoronix found something interesting while working with the latest open-source drivers for NVIDIA based video cards.

With being in the process of checking out several new NVIDIA GeForce 700 GPUs on Linux, now that I have out of the way the GeForce GTX 760 / 770 / 780 Ti / TITAN Linux benchmarks and Windows vs. Linux NVIDIA benchmarks, I decided to see how these four "Kepler" graphics cards are working with Nouveau, the open-source NVIDIA graphics driver that's written through clean-room reverse-engineering.

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While I can appreciate the work that goes into the Nouveau drivers I don't understand why anyone would even try and seriously use them over the Nvidia binaries when running a higher end card. Presumably if you paid a lot for a video card you want to use it for some 3D accelerated purpose and Nouveau is only going to kneecap it. Now if you're running some older midgrade card and don't need blazing speed and are wholly beholden to open source zealotry then have at it.

I like open source but I'm a realist and sometimes I just want my shit to work like I expect it to.

The POINT is, if you ever want to be free of Corporate control, the drive to "Cloud" everything so you RENT instead of own your software in the future ... and ... the NSA.

Then the open source alternatives have to be real. The Graphics drivers are likely the most complex element besides the core of the OS as a whole. Beyond that we will need open source DVD/BluRay codecs, etc.

Otherwise what you enjoy as a PC environment now will go the way of the buggywhip eventually and you will be paying Verizon $90/mo to send an email just like you do for phone calls and text messages.

"Gee Grandpaw, you mean once upon a time you could just do stuff on a computer that YOU owned, and didn't have to pay per megabyte for writing your homework?"

^^When I hear "cloud" I often think of remote server farms that "keep" your data and personal information. I believe it's largely about controlling access to your data and also about controlling access to IP. It's rife with privacy and ownership concerns. I know that's not all "cloud" is or means.

The way people are accepting this paradigm, it feels like we're destinied for a future of renting everything and owning nothing.