What is NVIDIA "Open" driver?

Support Graphics & Display
1

Hello fellows,

Manjaro GNOME has installed an NVIDIA “Open” driver on my PC.

See the following image:

Is it better than the closed source driver?

My graphics card is a Gigabyte RTX 2060 (with 6 GB memory).

I am interested in running Steam games.

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Given that it’s open-source, it should be better — and guaranteed to have a faster maintenance cycle — but whether it is the better choice for your particular hardware or not is something you will have to try for yourself.

The open-source driver will either way be newer than the proprietary variant, and should thus also support newer hardware. If the Manjaro installer selected that driver for you, then this means that your video adapter is listed as supported.

Open-source Nvidia drivers are either way expected to become the norm from here on. It has taken Nvidia an eternity to yield to the pressure, but now they have finally made open-source drivers available, and one can expect their next driver generations to also be open-source from now on.

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3

it’s the new version from nvidia that’s dedicated to nvidia-cards from the 20xx series upwards. they claim it#s “open” but i doubt that it is really open-source.

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4

The kernel modules are open source but the userspace stuff isn’t, at least not yet.

Their user-space software is remaining closed-source but as of today they have formally opened up their Linux GPU kernel modules and will be maintaining it moving forward.

It’s genuine open-source kernel code - MIT/GPL dual licensed!

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5

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1hk4r2o/is_nvidia_opensource_a_good_idea_if_i_want_to/

QUOTE
"
No, the Nouveau and NVK drivers aren’t an option at the moment if you want to play games, even more if you have an RTX 4000 card.

Performance are even worse, some tech like DLSS won’t work, and some games like Indiana Jones or FF XVI will require a specific Nvidia driver. If you use something old or something different, they won’t start.

People here are, as usual, mistakenly switching the word “driver” with “module”.

The open module won’t add anything better in this moment over the proprietary module.

For the drivers instead, the Nvidia ones are the way to go.
"

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The person you’re quoting on Reddit doesn’t know the difference between Nouveau/NVK and the official NVIDIA open source drivers. People treat reddit like it’s a great source for information, but many people on reddit are not the experts that they think they are.

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7

I fixed that for you. :wink:

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Read from Nvidia on what it means …

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the question remains what works better ? open source or proprietary

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See here Clarifying 560 series drivers' open sourced'ness vs kernel-module-type=proprietary - Linux - NVIDIA Developer Forums

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11

Why don’t you try, test various scenarios, and tell us?

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nvidia-driver-assistant                                                                                                                                                    ✔ 
Detected GPUs:
  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER - (pci_id 0x2705)

Detected system:
  Manjaro Linux 

Please copy and paste the following command to install the open kernel module flavour:
  sudo pacman -S linux614-nvidia-open

sure that everything will work afterwards? Exactly the same or better than with the propritery ?

I have installed it once. Everything works so far

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Sounds like they do.

  1. Open source drivers aren’t great, especially for new hardware
  2. Some things don’t work with open source drivers
  3. People confuse the open source modules from nvidia with the open source drivers
  4. The open source modules from nvidia will offer no advantage over the closed source modules from nvidia
  5. Go for the nvidia driver

The only thing they got wrong was 4, from what I’ve read there’s been quite a lot of work on the open source modules. Whether we notice any difference or not… :man_shrugging:

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the reason for nvidia to release parts of their source-code is just the simple fact that they want to sell their products to big companies that have strict rules not to use propietary code. if they want to sell their ai-scrap to the companies they are forced to release the source-code.
nevertheless nvidia drivers suffer a lot of poor quality actually cause leatherjacket-jenson gives a $hit on “ordinary” consumers. they sell the h200 cards (and all the other ai-scrap) for a fortune and throw the consumer-customers under the bus. that’s in general and i think the actual linux-drivers are not as worse as the windows-drivers who suffer much more pain with their cards at the moment. nevertheless there is still the actual exploit that makes a nvidia driver to a piece of malware.

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