Nvidia doing what Nvidia has always done; proprietary closed drivers. Weird choice to cryptographically protect the power settings. Key problem is that we've allowed a company that's always been this way to form a monopoly. Other brands exist, perhaps it is now worth the effort to migrate and rebuild elsewhere.

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r3trohack3r an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Key problem is that we've allowed a company that's always been this way to form a monopoly.

I don’t think anyone “allowed” them - quite the opposite. They’ve made generational bets that ended up being right, bets that IIRC the industry did not agree with for a long time. Them pursuing CUDA resulted in a draw down of something crazy like 75% of their valuation. They bet the farm multiple times to get to the point they are - and it’s only “obvious” in hindsight.

If you want folks to make generational bets as a matter of course (which I think most folks do), centralizing the downside of those bets and socializing the upside of those bets is not a great strategy. Almost as bad as socializing the downside.

Competition will eventually close that gap. We’re only a few years into this thing.

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afarah1 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

New generations such as Blackwell have open source kernel modules, there is not even a proprietary option. I thought there was a move in this direction?

https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-transitions-fully-t...

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maxhille 2 hours ago | parent [-]

AFAIK the open source kernel driver pushes a signed proprietary 500Mb firmware blob into the GPU.

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NekkoDroid 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The total linux-firmware-nvidia package for Archlinux uncompressed (outer, the firmware blobs are also compressed on top of that) is ~160MB (Mb would be Megabit), with the biggest individual compressed blob being ~50MB.

	▲	maxhille an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You are right the firmware packages are smaller. I mixed it up with the VRAM the GSP uses after being loaded. Point was about the kernel drivers being open-source enabling hackability - they don't, the card hardware is just as closed as before.

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dist-epoch 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not weird at all, they know people will buy these laptops, put linux on them and stash them in data-centers, so they are trying to prevent this.

	▲	aurareturn an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, exactly this. Nvidia does something to prevent abuse so that regular people who want the laptops can buy one. Nvidia gets knocked on.

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NoidFonsense 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

how are they going to sell you a subscripton to overclock your GPU otherwise?

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jleask 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Sad but probably close to the truth. I'm old enough to remember when companies were able to make money without actively robbing their customers

	▲	jack_pp 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		they could make money that way right now but they figured out they can make even more money by doing this. but jokes on them, people will figure it out, unlock / jailbreak and they just lose good will long term

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wqtz 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> we've allowed a company

When did "we" have a say in this? I don't get these types of comments from the "open-source as a community."

Nvidia has been doing this for decades, and there are two possible arguments:

1. They are successful despite it.

2. They are successful because of it.

There is no mythical collective "we" representing the open-source community in Nvidia's supply chain of success. It's Nvidia and its consumers.