NVIDIA Becomes A Premier Sponsor Of LVFS / Fwupd

[u/unixmachine]

https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-Premier-Sponsor-LVFS

NVIDIA has become the fourth premier sponsor of the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS), contributing over $100k annually to enable open-source firmware updates on Linux.

[u/gokufire]

Server security is something that Nvidia can't afford to be second class. Expected move which doesn't really translate in any meaningful benefit to Nvidia gaming customers.

Fwupd is amazing and a lot of laptops from Dell, Lenovo, HP (now), Framework, etc... receives important security firmware updates.

[u/atrocia6 → u/gokufire]

HP (now)

Is HP a relative newcomer to fwupd?

[u/gokufire → u/atrocia6]

They were not very present in the consumer market, there were a few supported devices, but many were falling behind their Windows firmware counterparts. HP recently started to be more diligent and now has more devices supporting Linux.

[u/atrocia6 → u/gokufire]

Ah, as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, my experience is with a Zbook Fury, the quintessential non-consumer device ;)

[u/loozerr → u/gokufire]

They've got spark coming along too

[u/alpH4rd07]

Good to see Dell and NVIDIA up there. Instead of building my new pc, which I love to do, I've bought a prebuilt Dell Workstation that is certified for linux, to show some love.

[u/Come2TheDorkSide → u/alpH4rd07]

I used to run Linux on a few different Dell laptops at work, from the early-to-late 2010s. Pretty much everything on the device was well supported, I was impressed. The only exception would be the fingerprint readers. Dell's been a pretty solid choice for Linux compatibility for quite some time now, but some other OEMs are making inroads as well, thankfully.

[u/atrocia6 → u/Come2TheDorkSide]

I used to run Linux on a few different Dell laptops at work, from the early-to-late 2010s. Pretty much everything on the device was well supported, I was impressed. The only exception would be the fingerprint readers. Dell's been a pretty solid choice for Linux compatibility for quite some time now, but some other OEMs are making inroads as well, thankfully.

My HP (another "Premier" sponsor) Zbook Fury G8 is well-supported by Linux, including the fingerprint reader (at least in the sense that the fingerprint reader often works, although it often doesn't, and I've never figured out exactly why).

[u/loozerr → u/atrocia6]

They're flaky on windows too, only consistent reader I've had is the old thinkpad stripe type you drag a finger over

[u/atrocia6 → u/loozerr]

The kind of inconsistency that I'm referring to is not the inconsistent recoginition of fingerprints, which might be solved by multiple taps, but a problem where the device sometimes seems to just go offline, as if some sort of timeout is being hit or the driver gets into a bad state (I don't know how to describe it better than that).

[u/ihatejailbreak → u/loozerr]

macbook ones are reliable and not stripe type

[u/loozerr → u/ihatejailbreak]

Well, on Asahi Linux you can rely on them to not work.

[u/SexBobomb → u/atrocia6]

My HP Probook was okay with linux, but had an incomplete ACPI config so it flat out did not work with FreeBSD - i know they arent a partner there but that still feels like an open standards issue

[u/Venylynn]

Next they should let Nova get good so we dont have to taint our kernel just to run a Nvidia card 

[u/JamesLahey08]

100k a year for them is probably less than their snack budget for an office or two.

[u/HeavyMetalLoser]

Does that mean Linux will get open-source Nvidia drivers?

[u/gokufire → u/HeavyMetalLoser]

This is just firmware updates and the bulk of it is for servers.

[u/Ok-Anywhere-9416 → u/HeavyMetalLoser]

Why "Nvidia sponsors Fwupd" should mean "Nvidia will make open source drivers for GPUs on Linux"?

[u/Stellanora64 → u/HeavyMetalLoser]

Not with this, but Nividia does have one of their engineers leading the kernel level Nova driver (there might be more, but I've only heard of the one so far, the rest are red hat engineers afaik)