Will Nvidia Spark a New Generation of Linux PCs? (zdnet.com) 27
"I know, I know: 'Year of the Linux desktop ... yadda, yadda'," writes Steven Vaughan-Nichols, a ZDNet senior contributing editor. "You've heard it all before. But now there's a Linux-powered PC that many people will want..."
He's talking about Nvidia's newly-announced Project Digits, describing it as "a desktop with AI supercomputer power that runs DGX OS, a customized Ubuntu Linux 22.04 distro." Powered by MediaTek and Nvidia's Grace Blackwell Superchip, Project DIGITS is a $3,000 personal AI that combines Nvidia's Blackwell GPU with a 20-core Grace CPU built on the Arm architecture... At CES, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed plans to make this technology available to everyone, not just AI developers. "We're going to make this a mainstream product," Huang said. His statement suggests that Nvidia and MediaTek are positioning themselves to challenge established players — including Intel and AMD — in the desktop CPU market. This move to the desktop and perhaps even laptops has been coming for a while. As early as 2023, Nvidia was hinting that a consumer desktop chip would be in its future... [W]hy not use native Linux as the primary operating system on this new chip family?
Linux, after all, already runs on the Grace Blackwell Superchip. Windows doesn't. It's that simple. Nowadays, Linux runs well with Nvidia chips. Recent benchmarks show that open-source Linux graphic drivers work with Nvidia GPUs as well as its proprietary drivers. Even Linus Torvalds thinks Nvidia has gotten its open-source and Linux act together. In August 2023, Torvalds said, "Nvidia got much more involved in the kernel. Nvidia went from being on my list of companies who are not good to my list of companies who are doing really good work." Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company, has long worked closely with Nvidia. Ubuntu already provides Blackwell drivers.
The article strays into speculation, when it adds "maybe you wouldn't pay three grand for a Project DIGITS PC. But what about a $1,000 Blackwell PC from Acer, Asus, or Lenovo? All three of these companies are already selling MediaTek-powered Chromebooks...."
"The first consumer products featuring this technology are expected to hit the market later this year. I'm looking forward to running Linux on it. Come on in! The operating system's fine."
He's talking about Nvidia's newly-announced Project Digits, describing it as "a desktop with AI supercomputer power that runs DGX OS, a customized Ubuntu Linux 22.04 distro." Powered by MediaTek and Nvidia's Grace Blackwell Superchip, Project DIGITS is a $3,000 personal AI that combines Nvidia's Blackwell GPU with a 20-core Grace CPU built on the Arm architecture... At CES, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed plans to make this technology available to everyone, not just AI developers. "We're going to make this a mainstream product," Huang said. His statement suggests that Nvidia and MediaTek are positioning themselves to challenge established players — including Intel and AMD — in the desktop CPU market. This move to the desktop and perhaps even laptops has been coming for a while. As early as 2023, Nvidia was hinting that a consumer desktop chip would be in its future... [W]hy not use native Linux as the primary operating system on this new chip family?
Linux, after all, already runs on the Grace Blackwell Superchip. Windows doesn't. It's that simple. Nowadays, Linux runs well with Nvidia chips. Recent benchmarks show that open-source Linux graphic drivers work with Nvidia GPUs as well as its proprietary drivers. Even Linus Torvalds thinks Nvidia has gotten its open-source and Linux act together. In August 2023, Torvalds said, "Nvidia got much more involved in the kernel. Nvidia went from being on my list of companies who are not good to my list of companies who are doing really good work." Canonical, Ubuntu Linux's parent company, has long worked closely with Nvidia. Ubuntu already provides Blackwell drivers.
The article strays into speculation, when it adds "maybe you wouldn't pay three grand for a Project DIGITS PC. But what about a $1,000 Blackwell PC from Acer, Asus, or Lenovo? All three of these companies are already selling MediaTek-powered Chromebooks...."
"The first consumer products featuring this technology are expected to hit the market later this year. I'm looking forward to running Linux on it. Come on in! The operating system's fine."
\o/ (Score:2)
What big eyes you have Grandma
All the better to do user-subsidised distributed-AI with my dear, *licks lips*
dumbest article yet (Score:1)
Not just anyone can steal such a dumb article, it takes EditorDavid.
Probably not (Score:2)
But microsoft might... who wants to buy new hardware? Somebody needs to put a bit more polish on UI's and things though before the Luddites start to use linux.
Why would anybody pay for this? (Score:2)
LLMs are mostly useless.
Why MediaTek? What are they doing? (Score:2)
Normally they're the cheap, basic parts. They take designs from people like ARM and just make them. Other companies will tweak and fix stuff, trying to make a better product than everyone else while leveraging the rest of the work they bought.
I know NVIDIA has their own CPU design, has had a few of them actually. Some much closer to ARM's version than others. Obviously NVIDIA is supplying the GPU/Accelerator (are we going to stop calling them GPU's anytime soon?).
Is MediaTek involved just so NVIDIA does
Re: (Score:2)
Modems.
They're competing with Snapdragon, so they need to be 5G capable on these connected devices.
Local sounds nice, but... (Score:2)
Isn't it normally local, then remote? They released the 'as a service' version first.
Typically buying a device I only need part of is a bad idea. Especially versus renting someone else's.
And how is this so different from an x86 PC with a GPU? I'm sure the costs will differ, but capability wise... I don't know the payoff is there for the work it'll require. All those x86 game tools gone (deep innards of a PC differ, so tools must differ). And unless Linux has a binary translation layer I'm forgetting,
Most people doing AI already use linux (Score:2)
So, no market gains there.
Meanwhile, people who want a desktop for desktop stuff will buy the mediatek laptop that will soon come out with Winn on ARM
So no, nVidia will not spark a new generation of AI PCs, and this will not bring the year of the linux desktop in 2025
JM2C
YMMV
I'd be curious to hear what specific work... (Score:2)
I know NVIDIA's effectiveness at capitalism puts them at odds with typical OSS people like Torvalds, but it's nice to hear some praise. As I think NVIDIA has tried to do right already.
I know they were working to open source more of their driver. That's nice. Think it was mostly about organizing and making a stub for the stuff they really worried about. Not work that makes much profit for them, but could get some good will. And let other people help them.
I'm curious if the latest work they're praising w
The PC tech problem (Score:3)
Amongst the many IT roles I've held over the last 30+ years PC tech has been the most rewarding as it never ends and is always evolving. That said, 99.99% of tech work I have done deals with Windows and the Intel architecture, Wintel if you will. I have knowledge of fixing Windows issues going all the way back to Windows 3. Put a Windows machine in front of me with an issue and I will figure it out and fix it. However, put a Linux machine in front of me with an issue and there's a 50/50 chance I'll be able to fix it without resorting to wiping the system and reinstalling. I just don't have enough experience with Linux because there has been so little call for it (I'm getting better though as I have Linux machines I use daily now). This is more than likely the case for many of PC techs out there. Linux is crazy powerful but can also be crazy confusing to use. The mind-boggling array of command line tools available is impressive but also convoluted to use and remember. With Windows on the other hand I rarely had to resort to the command line to repair something. My point being that the new generation of PC techs need to get up to speed with repairing Linux systems proficiently. What would really help is less reliance on the command line. PC techs don't want to be uber Linux gurus, they just want to be able to fix it quickly and efficiently for the customer that brought it to them. Also, that command line needs to be completely transparent to the average computer user. Many Linux distros have made great strides toward this but it's not quite there yet. Just my 2 cents.
The operating system is largely irrelevant (Score:2)
Amongst the many IT roles I've held over the last 30+ years PC tech has been the most rewarding as it never ends and is always evolving. That said, 99.99% of tech work I have done deals with Windows and the Intel architecture, Wintel if you will. I have knowledge of fixing Windows issues going all the way back to Windows 3. Put a Windows machine in front of me with an issue and I will figure it out and fix it. However, put a Linux machine in front of me with an issue and there's a 50/50 chance I'll be able to fix it without resorting to wiping the system and reinstalling. I just don't have enough experience with Linux because there has been so little call for it (I'm getting better though as I have Linux machines I use daily now). This is more than likely the case for many of PC techs out there. Linux is crazy powerful but can also be crazy confusing to use. The mind-boggling array of command line tools available is impressive but also convoluted to use and remember. With Windows on the other hand I rarely had to resort to the command line to repair something. My point being that the new generation of PC techs need to get up to speed with repairing Linux systems proficiently. What would really help is less reliance on the command line. PC techs don't want to be uber Linux gurus, they just want to be able to fix it quickly and efficiently for the customer that brought it to them. Also, that command line needs to be completely transparent to the average computer user. Many Linux distros have made great strides toward this but it's not quite there yet. Just my 2 cents.
I would agree with you 20 years ago, but the majority of people rely on a browser and a handful of simple clients to cloud services...like e-mail, messaging, etc. Nerds like to install programs. Casual users are happy with Google Docs, the .0001% of the time they need to do something productive from home. My sister is a successful, educated professional in a knowledge-based field. She only uses default apps....safari, apple mail, messages, etc. I am the similar. All I have installed on my personal Mac
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with you. However, Linux still does crash and in my experience the main cause is from installing/updating applications. Some rogue dependency needs to be added or updated and upon a reboot ... panic. These are a real PITA (in my experience, YMMV) to find and correct. The underlying OS can still have issues.
Re: The PC tech problem (Score:2)
Summarizing my experience with fixing Windows issues since, say 5 years ago:
1. Uninstall some update
2. Add or change some cryptic Registry value
3. Set some cryptic Group Policy Editor value
4. Execute some cryptic PowerShell commandlet.
5. Execute some cryptic command line tool
Hardly better and/or more intuitive than what I would do in Linux.
Widevine DRM ranks linux lower then windows (Score:1)
Widevine DRM ranks Linux lower then windows.
Also some steam games flag Linux play as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously, Digital Restriction Management will have a problem with any open system. Duh.
What's the point? (Score:2)
Unless you are generating porn, it's far more efficient to use the cloud. Especially for LLMs, incredibly inefficient locally because performance scales nearly linearly with batch size.
Almost true. (Score:2)
"Nowadays, Linux runs well with Nvidia chips."
Kernel 6.8.51 did not get along with my GTX 680. It started fine, but one trip to system reports and I end with gibberish left and bottom and a blue swish center to upper right.
Reverting to 6.8.49 fixed everything back up.
If you are wondering, the system is a 2010 Mac Pro which probably isn't helping things. It usually runs Mint 22 without problems although there was some software that didn't work due to a lack of AVX instructions.
Windows on Arm is not far behind in availability (Score:1)
Huang also boasted on the CES presentation how well WSL2 works on windows too. That suggests Windows on Arm is not far behind in availability. I don't see how Microsoft would cede this space so easily.
"now"? (Score:2)
>"But now there's a Linux-powered PC that many people will want..."
There are already Linux-powered PCs that millions of people want and use every day. Kind of a strange statement.
No (Score:2)
No
doubt (Score:2)
There was a class of Linux-powered PCs that many people wanted, it was called netbooks: small, inexpensive but somewhat limited in features. Now those AI supercomputers are at the other end of the spectrum, much expensive.
Think you have drunk too much coolaid (Score:2)