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points by nonethewiser 3 days ago | 0 comments

Please read the article. Comments here are wildly misinformed.

This is a lack of linux driver support for firmware designed for windows laptops.

This is a problem on the MSI Prestige laptop using the RTX Spark platform. Lets assume it also applies to the Asus and Dell machines using RTX spark.

RTX Spark is a new platform and all of these laptops ship with Windows. You cant get Linux on any of these machines from the factory. There is also precedent for NVIDIA shipping linux support well after Windows (2 years in the case of Dynanmic Boost, a similar power sharing feature).

[–] callamdelaney 3 days ago

It doesn’t matter if its designed for windows, it should work as well on Linux.

[–] alex43578 3 days ago

It’s not the OEMs job to ensure compatibility with every OS. They shouldn’t have to ensure it works well with Windows XP, for example.

[–] herpderperator 3 days ago

Windows XP went EOL on April 8, 2014. "Linux", assuming you mean the latest Linux kernel, is not.

[–] alex43578 3 days ago

Do they also need to support MacOS, Chrome OS, and FreeBSD? They made these laptops to work with Windows. It’s not on them to ensure compatibility with anything more than they were marketed for.

[–] bigyabai 3 days ago

> Do they also need to support MacOS, Chrome OS, and FreeBSD?

They basically do. ChromeOS runs a Linux kernel, so the userland has everything it needs to run CUDA. FreeBSD is a first-class target for Nvidia drivers, and macOS used to be supported too but stopped signing Nvidia code. Nevertheless, AArch64 is still supported for CUDA et. al..

It is up to Nvidia to support whatever platforms they want users to be on. In their case, it means supporting many OSes.

[–] alex43578 3 days ago

The article says "A real fix depends on Nvidia, specifically on porting the platform controller’s power management logic into its Linux driver, which would effectively turn the laptop into a portable version of the DGX Spark."

My point is that's not Nvidia's responsibility. The article itself admits the laptop "ships with Windows on ARM", so support for another OS shouldn't be expected, even if NVIDIA supports other platforms and other product lines differently.

[–] bigyabai 3 days ago

These aren't "other product lines" though. They are RTX and Spark SOC products that do support Linux as a first-class citizen with all of their hardware. The RTX Spark is the outlier, and the breakage is not on the GPU product, but the SOC devicetree drivers. This is only a problem because Nvidia avoided standard Windows power management a-la ACPI/UEFI, and has to port the remainder to Linux by hand. Non-laptop products like the DGX Spark support this via UEFI natively.

There are OEMs that refuse this responsibility. If that's the vindication you wanted, there you go. This specific issue is not a catastrophic oversight though.

[–] mrheosuper 3 days ago

Last time i check, Both HaikuOS and React OS is still being actively developed

[–] incompatible 3 days ago

They should at least be releasing sufficient hardware specs so that people can use the hardware they've purchased how they like.

[–] unethical_ban 1 day ago

They can do whatever they want, of course. But why wouldn't they support Linux? It's a weak argument to compare Ubuntu and Fedora, modern freely available operating systems in wide use by the tech community, to Windows XP.

[–] bayindirh 3 days ago

> This is a lack of linux driver support for firmware designed for windows laptops.

Personally, I don't care. If you don't support open drivers, you have to provide first class drivers on Linux on day 1, because NVIDIA's majority of business is running on Linux already.

On top of that, they claim to have the best Linux support, and claim to have best drivers in their class.

So, it's better to act like that and provide support. If any other company has done that, they have been incinerated with the flame of internet's hate thrice already.

[–] Zak 2 days ago

This isn't just a matter of lack of a good driver because they didn't bother making one for an OS they didn't intend to support. Encrypting the firmware's power table serves no purpose other than frustrating any third-party effort to develop a good driver.

It is not obvious to me why they would want to do that.

[–] yunnpp 3 days ago

You are asking to read the article in a vacuum and ignore the context in which the driver support is missing. That doesn't make for very good reading comprehension.

> There is also precedent for NVIDIA shipping linux support well after Windows

There is also a precedent for NVIDIA nerfing drivers on Linux and pulling anti-competitive shenanigans against competition, so it's only reasonable that people look at the "missing" driver support with suspicion.

[–] keybrd-intrrpt 3 days ago

And the DGX Spark and DGX Station both are Ubuntu based linux.

How does your conspiracy theory hold up to that?

GB10 and N1X are both Blackwell cousins. So they've had consumer-level Linux machines for a while now.

This was simply a partnership with Microsoft, so of course development of drivers and firmware focused heavily on Windows. Especially since I'm sure Windows required a LOT of updating to run nicely on ARM as well as the N1X unified memory model.

[–] wtallis 2 days ago

> GB10 and N1X are both Blackwell cousins.

GB10 and N1X are the same thing. It's the same silicon.

> Especially since I'm sure Windows required a LOT of updating to run nicely on ARM as well as the N1X unified memory model.

Windows has been shipping with ARM64 support for 8 years; Microsoft and Qualcomm already took care of those hurdles, which was almost certainly a key factor in NVIDIA's decision to build a laptop SoC in the first place.

They have not figured out how to make Windows work nicely on a unified memory model: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/rtx-spark-on-windows-c... Either you deal with those problems and having to reboot to change how much memory is reserved for the GPU, or you run with minimal reserved memory and most of your GPU memory accesses take a ~4x latency hit. Most RTX Spark systems seem to be shipping with a 50/50 split out of the box.

NVIDIA has had a full year since shipping DGX Spark (which was already clearly quite late to marker) to finish polishing the Windows support and power management. For them to ship in this state and regress the quality of Linux support on the same silicon is quite convincing evidence that they're half-assing this and really don't care about this platform the way they care about their datacenter cash cows.

[–] yunnpp 3 days ago

They have data centers to sell, and it's not out of this world for Microsoft to have requested a nerf as part of their "partnership".

You may as well be right, I am speculating and this theory might be baseless (I don't think it is.) But GP's comment is wrong to ask people to simply read the article at face value. That is bad reading.

[–] m3kw9 3 days ago

This is the same reason misinformation works so well on these people they have to stuff and they don’t critically think if there are other reasons. They’d write more headlines and others will act the same, like wild fire.

[–] qwerpy 3 days ago

Unfortunately HN commenters as a group are not any more intelligent or resilient to emotionally-appealing misinformation than the general public, contrary to what we'd like to believe. We see a headline that confirms our biases, we turn off our brains, and then we make in-group noises to show that we belong. Pretty much the same as religious groups and rituals that we turn our noses up at.

[–] callamdelaney 3 days ago

Is it misinformation that the driver is slower on linux? There’s no such thing in my book as ‘windows’ hardware. It should work as well everywhere on day one, or we should have the ability to make it do so.

[–] keybrd-intrrpt 3 days ago

> There’s no such thing in my book as ‘windows’ hardware.

Then you misunderstand how hardware, software, firmware, drivers, and operating systems have worked for the last few decades.

[–] vondur 3 days ago

We used to have things called WinModems back in the day. Skipped using hardware modems and ran it on software that only worked under windows.

[–] ThrowawayB7 3 days ago

> "There’s no such thing in my book as ‘windows’ hardware."

Good luck with that. A PC is more or less defined by specifications laid out in Microsoft's Windows Hardware Compatibility program and tested by their Windows Hardware Lab Kit. Before that, it was defined by IBM.

I've heard that ARM has had a standard for ARM-based servers, their Server Base System Architecture, but I've never seen any compliant hardware in the wild.