Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Gaming on Linux, How openSUSE Stacks Up for Gamers (news.opensuse.org)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] tiddy 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That being said if youre looking for performance, the last thing you'd want is open source nvidia drivers; theyre built entirely off reverse engineering, which takes time. This allows for large performance gains like those of late.

The proprietary stack hasn't had much change in performance over the last couple updates, a couple have even result in a performance regression to push new features. As of the latest preview driver (565.77) the minimum kernel supported goes back to the 4.15 Linux kernel release. This technically means you'd be able to run the latest nvidia drivers on anything newer than Debian 10 buster, which went out of support in September 2022.

Sounds like you might have gotten some of your info sources crossed - but thats exactly why distros like Bazzite exist, you dont have to worry about any of this background compatibility bs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That being said if youre looking for performance, the last thing you'd want is open source nvidia drivers; theyre built entirely off reverse engineering, which takes time.

Pretty sure that is not true anymore since a couple of years. Only newer cards can capitalise the gains from the 'official' open drivers though.

https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-transitions-fully-towards-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/

[–] tiddy 1 points 1 day ago

Only sort of, quoting this article

much of the important graphics code isn't actually open-source. Nvidia appears to have moved much of its proprietary code into the firmware on its graphics cards, which the open-source code interacts with.

So while they did 'open source' their drivers, theyre also not accepting contributions that aren't in house. The codebase is too locked down to benefit other projects like NVK, as a true FOSS project would be.