[tenebrisalietum]

Nah. Not in this day and age. Most of that software can be recompiled - hopefully no one is writing stuff in assembly, at least not to the point where it can't easily be ported. With many-core CPUs cheap and common, everything is fast. Hardware drivers matter less in the 2020s - there is far less diversity of hardware than there was in the 1990s. x86 "know-how" is vendor lock-in, not a benefit.

[immibis]

Will you recompile the proprietary Nvidia driver for a GTX260? (not a typo)

[anthk]

Nvidia would. Most of the work it's in the firmware blob after all.

[IshKebab]

Nvidia obviously wouldn't.

[anthk]

Nvidia's drivers are semifree today.

[tenebrisalietum]

No but Nvidia can with all their money.

GPUs are really the only thing requiring their own hardware drivers that's commonly installed. Everything else common and meaningful to the masses is pretty much USB, an old-school serial port, a network interface, or a block device. Bus/interconnect drivers like NVMe, SATA and all that are very standardized and your x86 know-how doesn't buy you any advantage.

Certainly there may be some issues with the trash heap that is ACPI/UEFI; and DTB can go ahead and steamroll that dumpster fire along with the rest of the x86 cruft - there was an x86 world before ACPI after all.

[immibis]

Irrelevant. Nvidia WON'T.

[tenebrisalietum]

Also irrelevant as well really. x86 isn't making Nvidia refuse to do it.

[anthk]

Nvidia has libre drivers and a firmware blob. Once you stick a PCIE card on a Risc-V port, all the FUD goes away.

[snvzz]

It's easier to stick an AMD card tho.

Unlike NVIDIA, AMD open source drivers are actually excellent.