Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Thorsten Leemhuis (acct. 1/4) (kernellogger@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 05-Apr-2024 12:27:12 JST Thorsten Leemhuis (acct. 1/4)

   @ariadne did Ubuntu switch from the proprietary to the open module already?

   And if they did: did they do so everywhere (including for legecy drivers and old Ubuntu releases)? I doubt that, so they likely still are considered a problem.

   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 05-Apr-2024 12:27:11 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @kernellogger >switch from the proprietary to the open module already
     The "open" module is nothing more than a shim to the huge amount of proprietary software that is loaded onto the nvidia GPU.
   • Embed this notice
     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 05-Apr-2024 12:57:14 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @kernellogger >but that's considered Firmware
     It isn't, as it isn't microprocessor instructions in external ROM chips that can technically be replaced - it's software loaded by Linux at runtime.
     
     >it avoids the prop. driver problem on the OS kernel level
     Proprietary software is still running at the kernel level, as Linux is still interfacing with proprietary software and passing pointers around and doing DMA etc, meaning the proprietary software can still exploit Linux or cause crashes, even though the software is running in a different address space.
   • Embed this notice
     Thorsten Leemhuis (acct. 1/4) (kernellogger@fosstodon.org)'s status on Friday, 05-Apr-2024 12:57:15 JST Thorsten Leemhuis (acct. 1/4)

     in reply to

     • 翠星石

     @Suiseiseki

     sure, but that's considered Firmware and executed on the GPU – one might like it or not, but it avoids the prop. driver problem on the OS kernel level