this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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Linux Gaming

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago

Wow, fantastic news. I only learned about NVK a few weeks ago (been around for a couple years), so it's awesome they're moving at such a good pace!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I-know-some-of-those-words.jpg

As a regular user / game player on Linux, how does this affect me?

[–] LupertEverett 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you're using the proprietary drivers: Absolutely nothing will change for you.

If you're using the Nouveau/NVK drivers: Soon the OpenGL driver will be entirely replaced by Zink, which implements OpenGL over Vulkan (think DXVK, but for OpenGL); as the aforementioned driver is in a quite broken state, and nothing short of a complete rewrite can "revive" it.

Sooo... if you're already able to use NVK, you'll keep using NVK, but this time you can utilise it for OpenGL applications as well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thank you. That helped a lot. (I am still using the Nvidia proprietary driver, so.... yeah)

[–] LupertEverett 3 points 10 months ago

Np at all! Glad I could help!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Basically, it means recent Nvidia GPUs will become viable using open drivers sooner, since developers won't need to update/port the older open OGL driver, and can instead just use Zink (OGL -> Vulkan wrapper). OGL support itself is important because accelerated compositors (like those that use Wayland such as recent Gnome/KDE etc) and older games native games rely on it, as well as many other pieces of a typical Linux desktop.

In the long run, competitive open drivers will mean greater longevity for these cards. There are AMD cards that are pushing 15+ years that are still usable today because they have open drivers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Approximately not at all. They're changing the way they implement OpenGL for those cards, which will make their development and maintenance work simpler.

[–] Unyieldingly 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

it means once all of this is added to the desktop OS you use, it will be plug and play for Nvidia GPU's.