NVIDIA, nouvean, and opencl

[lars_the_bear]

Hi folks

I only have the vaguest notion what OpenCL is, but I know that Darktable can use it. When I've tried it on my Fedora system, enabling OpenCL makes a huge difference to rendering performance. So I'd quite like to use it on Gentoo as well. But my Gentoo systems are much older, and have ancient NVIDIA GPUs.

I'm currently using the nouveau driver, which I believe is open source. I tried installing the proprietary NVIDIA driver, but `emerge` said "Your hardware is known not to work". So I didn't go any further with this.

So my question is: what do I have to do, on Gentoo, to make OpenCL work with the nouveau driver? I believe it's supported, in principle; at least, Google hints that it is. But I have no idea how to set it up in Gentoo.

Please be patient, if possible. I know next to nothing about graphics, and I don't even understand what most of the jargon means. On my Fedora system I just installed the proprietary NVIDIA driver and everything else just worked, as if by magic. Which is good, but not a learning experience.

BR, Lars.

[stefantalpalaru]