this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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Linux Gaming

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm not sure. Didn't they just move the code that was previously executed in the proprietary kernel module to the new also proprietary userspace driver that's just connected to the hardware by this new and open source wrapper module? And the other half into firmware? It's still arbitrary and closed code that gets forwarded to the hardware. And running there it has access to all the memory, screen content etc... I'm not sure if this is a win concerning security. I think it's pretty much unchanged.

But there are several big advantages. Now the kernel probably won't get tainted any longer and we can have signed kernels and activate secure boot easily. And that's maybe a big plus for security. And I hope we'll get the convenience, too. In the past I had the NVidia driver crap out on me while debugging stuff with recent kernel versions or release candidates. And NVidia was lagging behind, leaving me with a console instead of the desktop environment...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Didn’t they just move the code that was previously executed in the proprietary kernel module to the new also proprietary userspace driver

Probably. And that is exactly what was expected from them since the beginning of their Linux drivers. Kernel is not a place for such big and proprietary piece of code. So this is the important change.

Yes, the driver is still proprietary, but it does not break the kernel any more the way it did.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

it does not break the kernel any more the way it did.

Hehe, yeah that'd be hard to achieve.