Open-Source NVIDIA Vulkan Driver "NVK" Merged Into Mesa 23.3
Open-Source NVIDIA Vulkan Driver "NVK" Merged Into Mesa 23.3
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The NVK open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver has finally been merged into mainline Mesa for easing development of this driver moving forward.
This complements the long-standing NVC0 Nouveau Gallium3D driver that has provided open-source OpenGL support.
This NVK driver though is contingent on new Nouveau user-space APIs that have yet to be mainlined.
Until all the NVIDIA GSP bits are squared away in the Nouveau DRM kernel driver upstream, the performance with recent generations of NVIDIA GPUs is also to be very slow -- an unfortunate state we've seen since the GeForce GTX 900 series due to signed firmware restrictions around power management / re-clocking.
At least getting NVK upstreamed into Mesa now will help in easing development of this driver moving forward and making it easier for enthusiasts to experiment with this open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver once the kernel bits are merged.
He confirms the changes to the Nouveau kernel user-space API will be sent in for Linux 6.6.
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Such a huge step to finally ridding ourselves of that garbage proprietary driver stack. There’s still so much work to do but hats off to the team!
In the end, is there any use case for Nouveau? Assuming you're running a GUI?
Or is it for all those people that are just running a text interface on top of their GPU?
Plenty.
For older cards that do have reclocking, it works exceptionally well, including for gaming.
For many newer cards, even though it won't reclock it will get you into a desktop, and even give you a good accelerated wayland experience.
Moving forward, once the new open source nvidia kernel driver and nouveau bits land, and the driver matures it will probably be the best nvidia driver on linux.
It will give you an image, even if not accelerated. It's important to have a FOSS driver that works with your proprietary card at all times and gives you a basic desktop — and for some people that's all they need.
It’s also likely this userspace driver will one day work with Nvidias new open kernel module.