Ubuntu Still Figuring Out How To Handle Hybrid Graphics

[allenmaher]

Standard forum response after months of observation:

Event:
Company is mentioned in relation to some usually peripherally related issue.

Response:
10 pages of conspiracy theory which boils down to I wish I was a full time developer for company x, but since I am not I will show through flawed logic why x is doomed and y is the root of all evil.

My response:
Read and laugh.

Keep it up. Tin foil hats unite on phoronix!

[LLStarks]

Muxless PowerXpress can't do OpenGL on the Radeon card unless there's a BIOS switch for Fixed Mode. Enduro fixed this so OpenGL just works.

[fritzls]

By the way, AMD proprietary driver in linux and muxless that work today is more a driver bug than a function.

Most of AMD muxless hardware still dont work. And the ones that work are in grace of the notebook manufacturer not because of amd..

[fritzls]

Well, if the linux support for hybrid graphics is POOR, what do you want from Canonical?

Under windows is not much different if u are using AMD.
Virtually all notebooks purchased before the windows 8 RELEASE and dont have windows 8 manufacturer released for windows 8 are having problems too.
HP is one example.
Every line DV and Envy have problems. some of them same with windows 8 drivers still dont work.

[ChrisXY]

Nvidia didn't do shit to enable hybrid graphics. They patiently waited for the linaro guys to create dma-buf, then for the X guys to do the X API changes and RANDR imrpovements, then they waltzed in with some comments (when all was done) and made a wrapper around GPL exported symbols. That's history as I remember it...

Better than doing their own proprietary solution that only works for half the use cases. Remember nvidia's "twinview" randr alternative? You want to rotate screens? You need a xorg.conf. You want to rotate only one of two screens? Nope.

On my notebook PRIME/DMA-Buf works fine with a HD 7970M. Now the only problem is that the radeonsi driver itself doesn't get much love.

[gigaplex]

Ha, that seems to be the common sentiment from fanboys, eh?

Ubuntu is great, everything they've done is awesome. No one else has done anything that isn't crap.

Oh, something sucks? Well, why didn't someone else fix it? You can't expect Canonical to do anything, can you?

Really, I'm starting to get tired of the fan boys on here. It's not just pro-Ubuntu either, the whole site is crawling with them, and Michael encourages them to drive up page hits and ad revenue.

/sigh....

Um... no, it doesn't work like that. The "fanboys" that claim Ubuntu is great and everything they do is awesome are not the same "fanboys" that claim you can't expect Canonical to do anything. They are generally two different camps that argue with each other.

[smitty3268]

Well, if the linux support for hybrid graphics is POOR, what do you want from Canonical?

Ha, that seems to be the common sentiment from fanboys, eh?

Ubuntu is great, everything they've done is awesome. No one else has done anything that isn't crap.

Oh, something sucks? Well, why didn't someone else fix it? You can't expect Canonical to do anything, can you?

Really, I'm starting to get tired of the fan boys on here. It's not just pro-Ubuntu either, the whole site is crawling with them, and Michael encourages them to drive up page hits and ad revenue.

/sigh....

[Ericg]

We've got an NVIDIA Optimus laptop at work and it doesn't flicker or stutter when Optimus kicks in.

Really? Then maybe Nvidia/MS worked it out. Both of my parents have Optimus in their laptops and when I was still at home before the semester started I know theirs flickered sometimes when I was using it and starting up something GPU hungry. If so, good for them then, it was always really annoying to me haha.

[gigaplex]

Of interesting note is the actual implementation. On Windows when the hybrid kicks in, things flicker or stutter for a half second whenever you change GPU's and then youre good until you change GPU's again. On OS X interestingly, no stuttering or flickering or even pausing. It was either Daniel or David that said they most likely did all of their hybrid stuff inside their GL layer.

We've got an NVIDIA Optimus laptop at work and it doesn't flicker or stutter when Optimus kicks in.

[LLStarks]

Nvidia didn't do shit to enable hybrid graphics. They patiently waited for the linaro guys to create dma-buf, then for the X guys to do the X API changes and RANDR imrpovements, then they waltzed in with some comments (when all was done) and made a wrapper around GPL exported symbols. That's history as I remember it...

Your timeline is accurate, but Nvidia has been quite involved on the mailing lists. Aaron Plattner has been providing lots of advice and code reviews on how to accommodate binary drivers.

There are many different groups putting work into hybrid graphics. Now it's Canonical's turn. If all goes to plan, Lankhorst's fencing work provide the necessary X infrastructure for tear-free Nvidia blob use of RandR 1.4 in Ubuntu 13.10.

Once fencing is out of the way, people will move onto multi-monitor situations and power management. Everything is babysteps.