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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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Linux 6.6 To Better Protect Against The Illicit Behavior Of NVIDIA's Proprietary Driver (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Luis Chamberlain sent out the modules changes today for the Linux 6.6 merge window. Most notable with the modules update is a change that better builds up the defenses against NVIDIA's proprietary kernel driver from using GPL-only symbols. Or in other words, bits that only true open-source drivers should be utilizing and not proprietary kernel drivers like NVIDIA's default Linux driver in respecting the original kernel code author's intent.

Back in 2020 when the original defense was added, NVIDIA recommended avoiding the Linux 5.9 for the time being. They ended up having a supported driver several weeks later. It will be interesting to see this time how long Linux 6.6+ thwarts their kernel driver.

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[–] ArbitraryValue 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Would having their own distro even help? It seems like working around this would require forking from Linux at a lower level, and even that would only circumvent technical (rather than copyright) barriers.

[–] planish 6 points 1 year ago

They can probably just drop some kernel packages in their driver PPAs or whatever. You don't need to fork the whole distro to customize the kernel. But it will still be a huge pain.

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

They can beef of linux support of freebsd a little and do some other help to the desktop experience there. Freebsd has always been more pragmatic, and for most uses of an os you can't tell a real world difference. (pkg instead of apt, and other such differences are minor)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The userland differences are not too great, but I would assume a kernel module as significant as a modern GPU driver is pretty deeply tied to Linux's kernel internals.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nvidia maintains a driver for FreeBSD already, same version as Linux and everything. IIRC the closed-source portion is “unified” and they just build the interface for whatever OS.

The “Linux support” piece is on the application side.