Posted on Tuesday, February 16 2016 @ 17:06 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Phoronix
reports NVIDIA finally released signed firmware images and support code for its GM200 and GM204 based GeForce GTX 900 series video cards. This will enable the Noveau developers to deliver an open-source Linux driver for these cards.
NVIDIA's Alexandre Courbot pushed out the signed firmware this morning for the GM200/GM204 hardware and the related Nouveau code. He began his message with, "I know, it's about f**king time and I apologize for the time it took us to finally put this together. m(__)m"
This signed firmware fiasco has held up the open-source Linux driver from supporting hardware acceleration on NVIDIA's latest generation GPUs. We're now just months away from Pascal while Maxwell can only now move on with open-source 3D, but at least NVIDIA's official, proprietary Linux driver continues working great. This change in requiring the firmware to be signed is what led Nouveau developers to call the Maxwell GPUs "VERY Open-Source Unfriendly".
