Linux Graphics Drivers explained: AMD, NVIDIA, INTEL, Open Source and Proprietary

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:
Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits:

👕 GET TLE MERCH

🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST:

🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE:

#Linux #Drivers #Nvidia #AMD #Intel #linuxdesktop #linuxdistro

Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:30 Sponsor: Squarespace
01:28 How Linux drivers work
03:56 NVIDIA: Nouveau FOSS driver
05:13 NVIDIA: NVK
06:09 NVIDIA: Official open source drivers
06:58 NVIDIA: proprietary drivers
09:09 AMD: open source drivers
10:33 AMD: proprietary drivers
11:36 Intel: Open source drivers
13:02 Parting thoughts
14:04 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers
14:56 Support the channel

[PhoticSneezeOne]

I have to admit that to this day.. after years of using linux... i dont FULLY understand how drivers work under linux. It´s confusing as hell.

[シミズルリ]

If I recall correctly, AMD proprietary driver intall is customizable, so you can use the MESA stack to play your games with better performance and have the OpenCL magic too! Very nice of them. 😁

[MyReviews_FOSS]

Buying all AMD when I built my first PC was the best decision ever. I did nothing. Literally plugged things and booted up the system. I had my system installed on an nvme in a laptop, just put that in the PC and turned it on. I love it. I'll never ever get near Nvidia until their driver is open source like AMD and Intel.

[garrettrinquest]

Linux isn't more complicated unless you use Nvidia. I've actually spent time getting AMD graphics drivers working on my work computer running Windows. It's still not that hard, but it does take some small amount of time and effort. On Linux, my AMD card just works.

[olnnn]

MESA also covers open source drivers for some GPUs on ARM systems like the VideoCore GPUs used on the Raspberry PIs, Adreno GPUs Qualcomm Snapdragon, Linux drivers for the Apple ARM SoCs, the reference ARM Mali GPUs and others

The old AMD/ATi cards before the GCN arcitecture use the R600 or even R300 (for very old cards) user space side MESA drivers for OpenGL (they don't support Vulkan) which surprisingly still have someone tinkering on them.

Intel Broadwell and older use the HasVK vulkan driver which was split off from the ANV driver to ease maintainance.

[huntercz]

11:50 i965 got replaced by iris (newer Intel GPUs) and crocus (Intel iGPUs from 2014 and older). I think i965 is only available on amber branch, or as a fallback incase these OpenGL drivers don't load.

[seansingh]

I’m always gonna buy AMD after infuriating time with nVidia. AMD plays nicely along with even FreeBSD not just Linux.

[Triro]

Thank you. I would love to see AMD's frame time difference for games. As AMDVLK might yeild lower frame times. Making it smooth.

[Kris-odsj]

Since you've asked whether you missed/misunderstood something:
- New Nouveau reclocking support only applies to Turing (GTX1600/RTX2000 series) and newer, Kepler (GTX600 series) and older were already reclockable.
- The video chapters make it seem like NVK is separate from Nouveau (kernel driver), which it isn't. It should've been also mentioned that there was NO Nouveau Vulkan until this userspace driver (as Nouveau kernel driver used to only be coupled with the Nouveau (or NV40/NV50/NVC0 to be more specific) userspace OpenGL driver).
- Nvidia Open is NOT "compatible with most of the cards they [...] made in the past" – it only supports 3 generations of their cards so far: Turing and newer (you even highlighted the text yourself on the website in 6:32, come on..).
- "Chances are [Nvidia Open] is not going to work at all" is completely false. It works and performs almost identically to the proprietary driver (relying on proprietary userspace included). Some distros even ship it in main repos as an alternative.
- One might also prefer an older proprietary driver with an old Nvidia card rather than Nouveau, it's worth at least a mention.
- The ATI driver stack for older AMD cards is also worth a mention.
- All the other GPU brands supported by the Mesa stack were also worth a mention, like Qualcomm, ARM, Apple, PowerVR, etc. at least to highlight that on Linux you can run all of these and more, as opposed to other proprietary systems. The Mesa Matrix (a website, not the communicator) is a good resource if you need a refresher on the names of all Mesa drivers.
- In the userspace and kernel driver list at the end 13:43 missing are Nouveau as the Mesa userspace OpenGL, Nvidia proprietary as the non-Mesa userspace, and Nvidia Open as a kernel driver.

[luanlmd]

I've been using Linux for 15+ years and switched my gaming computer to Linux since Valve launched Steam for Linux in 2012. I never completely understood the mess of these drivers and I don't want to be messing around with NVIDIA crap all the time, for that reason, I just buy AMD cards that run well with the free drivers and forget this mess even exists.

[ptzzzs]

Nice to see a video like this. I had to research regarding the Linux graphics drivers and I am still confused by some parts.
The drivers being in the kernel is still very nice and with modern Linux a lot of stuff is included, but some stuff is just proprietary like Nvidia (except for NVK but that's still very much in early stages). Not GPU but some Epson stuff requires userspace (I think its userspace since there's no DKMS modules) drivers to be usable like some scanners and printers.

[danielton]

Been using Linux since 2004, and the best advice I have is to quit buying nvidia if you plan on using Linux as your main OS. I'm so sick of other Linux users defending nvidia's garbage drivers because they're the default choice for gaming or because they just don't like Linus Torvalds. AMD and Intel just work on Linux. I've owned two PCs with nvidia and will never buy from nvidia again unless they have good open-source driver support on Linux. AMD, on the other hand, is awesome and actually cares about us.

[valerianmp]

7:12 Learnt this the hard way lol. Need to tinker around with the kernel after doing some mistake in the process. Lots and lots of headache.

[idk-syiu]

9:52 want to add that for older gpu there's radeon for kernel driver and r600 (and the other ones) for the mesa driver

[Magicmedo]

Perfect nick, I'm actually about to buy a high end invida card so this video is right on the money. Keep it up.

[idk-syiu]

12:01 the userspace part is wrong. For new card it's iris (for OpenGL) and ANV while for older ones it's crocus. i965 was the old driver which was deprecated

[givemecoffeeee]

What a wonderful video!
You explained a complicated topic in a simple way but quite in depth so great job and thank you!

[kepszlok]

In these days, put a Radeon on your PC, install some fresh Linux distro on it and that's all, you can play AAA titles like Cyberpunk... And you may have some extra fps too because of your lightweight OS compared to W10 or 11.
It is nice to see progress like that. Some years ago, using AMD hardware under Linux was not an easy road. I hope the NVK driver will keep up the rate of progression!

[idk-syiu]

6:54 actually its a bit more different than that. They work fine but they aren't actually open source, only the kernel part is. The userspace part is still closed source so it fixes nothing

[autohmae]

I've had a Tuxedo laptop in the past and was happy with it, I've ordered a new one today. 🙂 Don't know if the sponsorships helped, as I already knew them, but at least they kept them in mind.