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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

NVidia has had more reliable and, at least until recently, more featureful drivers on Linux and FreeBSD for decades. They're just not open-source, which doesn't seem like it would matter for something like the Steam Deck.

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Here's a secret: a lot of the featurefulness of AMD's current Linux drivers is not due to AMD putting in the work, but due to Valve paying people to work on GPU drivers and related stuff. Neither AMD nor Nvidia can be bothered to implement every random thing a customer who moves maybe a million low cost units per year wants. But with open source drivers, Valve can do it themselves.

Pierre-Loup Griffais recently re-tweeted NVK progress with enthusiasm, given that he used to work at Nvidia on the proprietary driver it's replacing I think it's a sign that Valve wouldn't particularly want Nvidia's driver even given the choice, external bureaucracy is something those within the company will avoid whenever possible.

Going open source also means their contributions can propagate through the whole Linux ecosystem. They want other vendors to use what they're making, because if they do they'll undoubtedly ship Steam.

Reliablie is very moot when they simply support only what they care about and don't support the rest for those decades. Not being upstreamed and not using standard kernel interfaces makes it only worse.

So it's not something Valve wanted to deal with. They commented on benefits of working with upstream GPU drivers, so it clearly matters.

NVidia are the upstream for their drivers, and for a big client like Valve they would likely be willing to support the interfaces they need (and/or work with them to get them using the interfaces NVidia like). Being less coupled to the Linux kernel could go either way - yes they don't tend to support the most cutting-edge Linux features, but by the same token it's easier to get newer NVidia drivers running on old versions of Linux than it is with AMD.

(Does Valve keep the Steam Deck on a rolling/current Linux kernel? I'm honestly surprised if they do, because that seems like a lot of work and compatibility risk for minimal benefit)

The current SteamOS (what Decks run) is based on Arch but is not rolling. The original for Steam Boxes was based on Debian.

Reasoning for the switch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS#Development

> The decision to move from Debian to Arch Linux was based on the different update schedule for these distributions. Debian, geared for server configurations, has its core software update in one large release, with intermediate patches for known bugs and security fixes, while Arch uses a rolling update approach for all parts. Valve found that using Arch's rolling updates as a base would be better suited for the Steam Deck, allowing them to address issues and fixes much faster than Debian would allow. SteamOS itself is not rolling release.

Upstream is the kernel itself and standard kernel interfaces. Nvidia doing their own (non upstream) thing is the main problem here. They didn't work with libdrm for years.

Being a client or even a partner doesn't guarantee good cooperation with Nvidia (Evga has a lot to comment on that). As long as Nvidia is not a good citizen in working with upstream Linux kernel, it's just not worth investing effort in using them for someone like Valve.

Stuff like HDR support or anything the like are major examples why it all matters.

Yes, but none of that is important for a console. You're talking about integration into libraries of normal desktop distros which aren't that important when the console can just ship the compatible ones.

Valve disagree. And the fact that they made an updated version that supports HDR demonstrates that it's important.

Form factor (console or not) has no bearing on importance of this issue.

But Valve contributes directly to AMD drivers, they employ people working on both on Mesa and DX => vk layers. And kernel. It's very neatly integrated system.

I mean Nvidia goes All out in AI/ML Spaces, they even rebranded their company lol

I doubt they care to work with valve to release steam deck as much as high end compute market

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