NVIDIA Outlines Current Wayland Limitations & Upcoming Driver Features

[piotrj3]

I read the article, and the 3 things mentioned that won't work are:

* Stereo rendering using GLX/EGL/Vulkan. This seems like a big negative, but... Immediately after it says that it will be supported, just via Vulkan Direct to Display instead. So seems like a complete non-issue.
* Implicit SLI Mosaic. I don't really know what this is, but it sounds like an Nvidia specific feature with SLI in the name, so I'd say it's up to Nvidia to figure out how to make it work if they care about it. They could certainly provide an extension if they want, like they do for GL/Vulkan drivers. Seems like mostly a non-issue, and can be handled explicitly by apps that care. I get the impression nvidia doesn't care about it enough to do anything, and if they don't it's pretty doubtful anyone else will either.
* The control panel won't control wayland settings because there's too many to deal with. Cry me a river Editing the X-settings there always sucked anyway.

Based on that, claiming Wayland is a toy seems like an overstatement.

SLI mosaic is mostly about...

Well imagine you have computer with 4GPUs and 4 display outputs each. That is 16. Imagine you want to run 16 displays from one computer. You will run into synchronization issues and so on etc. Mosaic is literally about matching those outputs/switching them if screens are connected wrong etc. More used in serious industry. But the problem also makes it clear you need to integrate it into Wayland right, and when they bypass wayland (vulkan direct) they bypass issue as they have full control themselves.

Problem is forcing apps to implement it by themselves is big issue because many giant commercial displays often run on linux and wayland is meant literally the most for that use intention wise.

[ssokolow]

Because kde3 is exactly the same as kde6 really? That's your argument

I'm not even sure how you got that from what I wrote.

EDIT: I think I figured out what you were focused on and that's not my argument. My argument is that I don't file bugs on KDE anymore because it's a waste of my time to spend a decade saying "Yes, it's still a problem in the new version. Go fetch me an actual human." to a bot, until they finally decide to just kill off the application in question altogether and write a new one.

Literally what JWZ was complaining about in GNOME with his classic post, The CADT Model.

This is, I think, the most common way for my bug reports to open source software projects to ever become closed. I report bugs; they go unread for a year, sometimes two; and then (surprise!) that module is rewritten from scratch -- and the new maintainer can't be bothered to check whether his new version has actually solved any of the known problems that existed in the previous version.

[anda_skoa]

Problem is forcing apps to implement it by themselves is big issue because many giant commercial displays often run on linux and wayland is meant literally the most for that use intention wise.

I imagine that in such a use case they would just use one of the Wayland compositors that uses the exposed Vulkan API to provide one virtual output.

[Weasel]

Based on that, claiming Wayland is a toy seems like an overstatement.

Call me when it can set or query absolute window positions. The most basic of necessities. Until then it's an understatement.

[anda_skoa]

Call me when it can set or query absolute window positions.

KWin can do that.
All its APIs for plugins, effects or scripts remained equally applicable regardless of whether it is a Wayland or X11 compositor.
Setting window geometry can even be done with rules.

[MorrisS.]

when?

[mrg666]

KWin can do that.
All its APIs for plugins, effects or scripts remained equally applicable regardless of whether it is a Wayland or X11 compositor.
Setting window geometry can even be done with rules.

Well, obviously, Mutter can do that too. Neither Plasma nor Gnome has no problem with window positions and sizes in Wayland. He has been repeating this window position thing whenever throws his absurd Wayland tantrum. He will just shut up when he finds his next hate object.

[omer666]

AMD gpus suck - especially, the last two generations - of power hungry hogs and tons of issues even some AMD gpu owners admit.

That is absolutely not true, the most power efficient GPUs of the penultimate generation were the RX 6800 and RX 6600. Nvidia just happened to take the lead on current gen, it doesn't mean Radeon GPUs are "hungry hogs" in comparison.

• RX 7900 XT offers roughly the same performance as RTX 4070 Ti SUPER and is just as efficient.
• RX 7800 XT is pretty close and RX 7700 is doing a damn fine job too, not as efficient but filling a performance segment in which Nvidia current gen simply doesn't compete.
• Lower mid-tier segment is a joke with both competitors, with RX 7600 being basically like an overclocked RX 6600 with 21% more performance for 25% more power draw in comparison, and RTX 4060 being essentially an RTX 4050. Hard pass on those

I'm not saying Radeon is the better product, but the gap between both companies' hardware isn't as wide as some pretend it to be.

More on topic, I may have switched to AMD right now, I think Nvidia's efforts are nice nonetheless and I'm eager to see how it turns out in the future, especially with NVK

[MrCooper]

Wayland issue.

Which doesn't affect other drivers because ... ?

Essentially they are saying that they will be exposing certain features via Vulkan APIs instead of higher level APIs like EGL.
So compositors which want to make use of these features such as SLI need to use Vulkan.

It's about functionality for apps, not for compositors.

[hsci]

Buy AMD or Intel. Support the companies which support you and Linux

General recommendation. Don't buy what is right available and just one some benchmarks. Who cares about the benchmark, when the 30% slower solution works finally better? Reliability matters, efficiency matters, open standards matter. Nvidia didn't made a wrong business decision, that decided a decade ago not the open-source their drivers. Nvidia decided not to provide documentation. And Nvidia decided not to support Wayland a decade ago.

The are changing these things now. Slowly.

- Multi-monitor VRR.

What an irony. The company which tried to lure us into proprietary GSYNC?