I'm formally stepping down as a nouveau kernel maintainer.
I want to stress out this is only for the kernel side of things and has and will not have any impact on my involvement in mesa.
Don't really want to add too much here, just that things need to change. Recent events (tm) is just another example of the deep disagreement.
I won't be able to convince people I made up my mind on my own here, so I won't bother with it anyway.
Full upstream and public statement here: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/2025-February/046677.html
Following the R4L debacle “you are cancer, you are the problem, we are the thin blue line”, another maintainer steps down from the Linux Kernel
Nouveau is important because Nouveau is the default driver in Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian, and ever other distro.
Linux distributions can’t easily distribute the proprietary nvidia drivers or the slightly less proprietary nvidia-open drivers so they depend on nouveau as the default nvidia driver. When you install a distro it usually has to use the nouveau drivers before downloading the proprietary blobs from Nvidia.
Nouveau is the only reason anyone can use Linux on an Nvidia card long enough to install the other drivers.
It’s also actively maintained, receiving updates that get upstreamed almost daily.
I’m not sure what about those things says “defunct”.
And the rust developments in Asahi for the M1+ series of CPUs don’t just benefit Mac but all the ARM CPUs as well.
Man you better hope the kernel community gets its shit together then, cause Krummrich (the primary developer for nova and getting those changes upstreamed) is one of guys that got told their project was cancer by the “thin blue line” maintainer (Hellwig) from the article.
Nouveau is important because Nouveau is the default driver in Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian, and ever other distro.
Linux distributions can’t easily distribute the proprietary
nvidiadrivers or the slightly less proprietarynvidia-opendrivers so they depend on nouveau as the default nvidia driver. When you install a distro it usually has to use the nouveau drivers before downloading the proprietary blobs from Nvidia.Nouveau is the only reason anyone can use Linux on an Nvidia card long enough to install the other drivers.
It’s also actively maintained, receiving updates that get upstreamed almost daily.
I’m not sure what about those things says “defunct”.
And the rust developments in Asahi for the M1+ series of CPUs don’t just benefit Mac but all the ARM CPUs as well.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/03/nova-a-rust-based-linux-driver-for-nvidia-gpus-announced/
It’s days of being the driver that’s used long enough to install the proprietary driver that actually works are numbered.
Man you better hope the kernel community gets its shit together then, cause Krummrich (the primary developer for nova and getting those changes upstreamed) is one of guys that got told their project was cancer by the “thin blue line” maintainer (Hellwig) from the article.
This new driver is also written in Rust, so nothing changes