The Tighter NVIDIA GeForce vs. AMD Radeon Linux Gaming Battle With 396.54 + Mesa 18.3-dev Drivers

[bridgman]

What they don't list, but we all know factors in, is the minimum IQ requirement. To run any given game on GNU/Linux, the minimum IQ requirements is considerably higher than that of Windows. I'm not saying this to be elitist and it certainly isn't a selling point of the GNU/Linux platform. It's just a reality brought about by some of the inherent complexity of our beloved platform.

This minimum IQ requirement will continue to make GNU/Linux inaccessible to a large subset of Windows gamers until something like the Steam Box becomes successful.

This is exactly what we are trying to fix by focusing on upstream drivers.

[perpetually high]

Agree that someone who has just moved from Windows to Linux is likely to think about downloading packaged drivers, but even there my impression is that between Windows Update and auto-updaters in the vendor-specific control panels most of that is automatic these days as well.

The big problem AFAICS is that the internet does not clean up after itself, so after a decade most of the information that comes up in response to a search is obsolete.

Yeah and not just Windows -> Linux, it's also NVIDIA on Linux -> AMD on Linux. Lots of users in both camps for the potential to be confused. I'm seeing tons more people on reddit excited about ditching Windows 10 for Linux so this is likely to definitely increase.

And to your second point, bit decay is real and things are moving fast. I use duckduckgo exclusively now but I imagine most who use Google will suffer the same fate. This is also why I'm extra descriptive in some of my posts in the hopes that some random bloke may across my phoronix post someday and it'll help them with their issue... maybe even a "that perpetually high feller. He's a swell guy."

I registered on phoronix in 2017 (after getting my AMD card! I didn't care when I had my GeForce 650 Ti) so that's more proof that AMD on Linux is the best. I've said before that getting that RX 480 was the best thing I ever did. It opened this whole new world for me in linux (I got by before but nothing to ssh home about). Now, I'm not intimidated by too much anymore, and even finally compiling my own kernels. (which reminds me, I should share my script)

[creative]

perpetually high Yes, it was fulfilled by Amazon. It has been well over a year. It does seem there is a 10% chance stuff goes wonky no matter what with any kind of shipping from anywhere.

If it croaks for whatever reason I will have my 1050 ti on hand which is nothing to shake a stick at. Hopefully it last for years and years though and I get a lot of use out of it. Zotac seems to have a low failure rate. Plus I use a high quality power conditioner/filter surge protector.

[perpetually high]

Then I bet you what happened was around that time some exec in an Amazon meeting had the bright idea of "Wait a second, why don't we just ship the packages without the box! It's a more intimate experience. The user doesn't want to open a box just to get to another box. Just have them sign for it and they're ready to open their new toy. We'll save money also!"

Nice going, Karen. It was a bad idea and you should feel bad. We want the freaking box.

[cybertraveler]

This is exactly what we are trying to fix by focusing on upstream drivers.

I think that will help a lot.

If your average user installs Ubuntu or a similar user-friendly OS and their AMD hardware just-works (due to the built-in Open Source drivers) and their Steam games all seem to run great, then hopefully they wont go fiddling with their system and trying to install alternative drivers. At least not straight away.

The out-of-box Intel graphics experience on GNU/Linux is amazing. If AMD can get up to or even surpass that standard with their current hardware, then I think it will help out new, and sometimes... less intelligent, users a lot.

[Girolamo_Cavazzoni]

If your average user installs Ubuntu or a similar user-friendly OS and their AMD hardware just-works (due to the built-in Open Source drivers) and their Steam games all seem to run great, then hopefully they wont go fiddling with their system and trying to install alternative drivers. At least not straight away.

Trust me, they will. They're spoiled from their Windows habits and don't understand the joys of a monolithic kernel and sane package management. First thing they do is crawling the Internet for drivers, becoming frustrated and dumping their anger in Linux forums. (Some on the other hand become enlightened, praising all the new advantages.)

Looking back at my Windows age I wonder how I could stand this steaming pile of crap regarding taking care of up-to-date drivers and applications, some having their own updating tools and others not. What a waste of time.

[cybertraveler]

Looking back at my Windows age I wonder how I could stand this steaming pile of crap regarding taking care of up-to-date drivers and applications, some having their own updating tools and others not. What a waste of time.

I hate that aspect of Windows. Almost every app has an in-house developed updater. You can easily end up with a system tray full of updaters periodically polling their server for updates and pestering your in a myriad of different annoying ways. They slow down system startup, they are all configured differently and some of them probably have security issues (eg not downloading binaries over an encrypted connection or not verifying signatures of files).

Microsoft should have provided an API to handle app updates long ago. It should have been simple for developers to use, end-user configurable and not reliant on MS servers.

[IreMinMon]

Maybe we should have done a fancy press release, but the open source driver has been our focus for anything but workstation/CAD for maybe two years now. The closed source GL driver picks up some game-related improvements via Windows but that's about it.

The message is "go with AMDGPU-PRO drivers on Linux for workstation/CAD, and for everything else go with upstream open source".

I know this might be considered impolite, but hell, I'll ask it anyways.
I'm thinking of buying Kaby Lake G laptop or something similar. 2 questions:

1. All I've seen so far on the internet on Kaby Lake G linux is this (https://www.reddit.com/r/spectrex360...eon_rx_vega_m/). Do you guys ever test these laptops, does graphics switching work? Do you think user experience is good enough? IS it going to bee good enough anytime soon? I'd just like to know how it works since nobody on the entire internet is reviewing it (if you would know about it ofc).
2. Honestly, it would be really cool if I could use both Wayland and KDE on my laptop. You're probably not allowed to tell me whether next-gen AMD graphics will see the same kind of collaboration with Intel or when is it to happen (wink wink). But if your answer to first question is that user experience isn't quite ready on Kaby Lake G and neither will be too soon, tell me, could you tell me whether you would wait or just get something like ThinkPad P1, if you were in my position? Honestly I'm even willing to wait half a year or so(for Ice Lake G or whatever, with decent support). I'd very much like to be able to use both KDE and wayland sometime in the future. "I'd get an nvidia laptop" or "I'd wait" would be great, but I understand if you're not allowed to say anything.

Thanks!

[humbug]

This minimum IQ requirement will continue to make GNU/Linux inaccessible to a large subset of Windows gamers until something like the Steam Box becomes successful.

There are loads of people who still have sea islands GPUs which are fantastic 1080p GPUs. They get bewildered when they try to switch to Linux because they learn that they can only game on openGL unless they switch the kernel driver from radeon to amdgpu in order to enable Vulkan. I see lots of conversations on that on YouTube comments and various foums.

Also the Linux community is not good at providing step by step instructions to newbies with explanations. Most people who do offer help end up just listing a couple of console commands or they will say something like "you need to change your boot parameters". But people want step by step help and explanations of what is going on.

And all the while they are thinking why is there no easy GUI for this, why does a 2018 operating system ship without working Vulkan (when windows does) etc..

[perpetually high]

First and foremost, NVIDIA has demanded that its AIBs tell NVIDIA who will be reviewing the AIB's custom RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti cards. We were forwarded emails from other reviewers, from the AIBs that were asking specifically, at NVIDIA's direction, "Who will be performing the review content?" "What is that person's phone number and email address?" That is a bit odd, as we have never seen this before in 20 years of reviewing video cards. AIBs in the past have been left to pretty much operate their own review campaigns on new video cards, but that seems to have come to an end. From these lists of reviewers submitted to NVIDIA by the AIBs, NVIDIA has put together its own list of "approved reviewers," and sent their approved list back to the AIBs in order to let them know who they are allowed to sample review cards to.

Reading shit like this makes me want to return my NVIDIA card. At the very least, the 1060/1070/1080(Ti) might be the last respectable generation.