It's Been Three Years Since Linus Torvalds' Huge NVIDIA Rant

[Serafean]

Actually OS X does offer such feature for Nvidia GPU (as well as AMD's by the way). So this is clearly possible beyond Windows world.

The way I see it, this is a To-Be-Implemented WM feature. Kwin window/app rules sound like an excellent place for this.

[Tomin]

I can see Mir hitting mobile devices first

What do you mean? Jolla uses Wayland in Sailfish OS.

[mdias]

Optimus out-of-the-box is what I am missing more today.

It may be easy to install but for a beginner it is awkward. The performance should also be the same as on Windows, which is far to be the case, considering both Optimus and Primus eat fps...

By the way every Linux OS using Optimus should have a menu/option/checkbox that would indicate : "Run this program with the dedicated graphic card"
I can't believe we have to run command lines in 2015 for desktop use.
(Do not mistake me, I run commands all the day but how can a Linux beginner understand those optimus / primus / anus stuff... this is just madness.)

I think this is actually on of the big issues with open source software; it lacks integration between components.

What you describe doesn't really look that difficult to implement, but it requires a standard way of dealing with multi GPUs (and let's be realistic, no one will want to implement an nvidia-only solution) and Desktop Environment awareness of this to be able to expose this functionality.
However when you think about it, it's stupid to implement it this way. It should be the application's responsability to allow the user to choose which device to use (just like it's common to see a "select audio device" option in games).
Out of the game what the user should be able to do is have a white/black list of which devices are exposed to the game.

So yeah,it's a difficult thing to coordinate with all these projects involved. Much easier for a company that controls the whole OS. Perhaps Canonical is the one in best shape to achieve this.

[EDIT] Perhaps there should be "run profiles" that set a bunch of stuff (such as environment variables) before running an application and this could be used as a way to expose the GPU-selection functionality in an easy way...

[jo-erlend]

From the looks of it, as far as desktop/laptop Linux systems are concerned, Wayland is leaps and bounds ahead of Mir. I can see Mir hitting mobile devices first, but as far as taking over for X beyond just regular ol' Ubuntu, I don't think they have a chance. They jumped ship too quick and wanted to try that piss-against-the-wind stuff when a solution was already in progress.

I would be surprised if any other distro that wasn't Ubuntu and not mobile defaulted to Mir over Wayland.

Which Mir-like Wayland display server is it you're referring to that's "already in progress"? I don't know of any. You make it sound as if the goal of Mir is to defeat Wayland. It seems that parts of the community now thinks this applies to everything and that everything must be a conflict and a battle to be won. Different ideas must not coexist any more, I guess. If you like Chromium, then you must continuously attack Firefox, because it doesn't use WebKit. Of course, in this new philosophy of Free Software as a ?submit and obey? culture, it is WebKit that should not be allowed to exist, because we already have Gecko. I personally think it's great that we have both.

It's not like Ubuntu has decided not to support Wayland, you know. Ubuntu was the first distro that supported Wayland, continues to do so, and always will. And of course, Ubuntu still is used as the basis for the official Wayland reference distro.

Why has it become so important for people to split the Free Software community this way? I support all Free Software development, even if I'm more interested in some projects than others.

[GreatEmerald]

It should be the application's responsability to allow the user to choose which device to use (just like it's common to see a "select audio device" option in games).

Uh, what? That's silly. No games should ever allow selecting audio devices, that's not their job. They should use the default device, which is selected by the user prior to launching the game. Same thing could apply to PRIME as well, and just as easily: simply have a GUI tool that exports the DRI_PRIME variable.

[mdias]

Uh, what? That's silly. No games should ever allow selecting audio devices, that's not their job. They should use the default device, which is selected by the user prior to launching the game. Same thing could apply to PRIME as well, and just as easily: simply have a GUI tool that exports the DRI_PRIME variable.

So you're saying that, for example, if you use audio daw software, you should be limited to use whatever audio device you've set as primary/default in your operating system? Because games aren't special kinds of applications, they run code and interface with your OS just like any other application.

Defaults are just that, defaults. A game should default to using the device you've set in your OS, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to select a different device.
In fact, as I said, many applications/games already offer you the options to choose an audio device. Not sure about linux, but in windows many games allow you to choose the graphics device too.

[GreatEmerald]

So you're saying that, for example, if you use audio daw software, you should be limited to use whatever audio device you've set as primary/default in your operating system? Because games aren't special kinds of applications, they run code and interface with your OS just like any other application.

Games aren't audio DAW software. The latter need more sophisticated controls, the former don't. And games are special applications when compared to spefic audio software. The latter can require JACK, but for games that's not acceptable, plus games are typically closed-source binaries. I don't have faith in them to handle audio selection right at all, nor should the developers spend time on that, since the OS controls are specifically made for that instead.

[haagch]

By the way every Linux OS using Optimus should have a menu/option/checkbox that would indicate : "Run this program with the dedicated graphic card"
I can't believe we have to run command lines in 2015 for desktop use.
(Do not mistake me, I run commands all the day but how can a Linux beginner understand those optimus / primus / anus stuff... this is just madness.)

Who is "we"? I use a laptop with intel + amd hybrid and with all open source drivers I can can simply set up in driconf what gpu an executable should render on:

https://github.com/ChristophHaag/gpuchooser

Can nvidia not implement like this?

[bridgman]

Very nice !

[BradN]

Games aren't audio DAW software. The latter need more sophisticated controls, the former don't. And games are special applications when compared to spefic audio software. The latter can require JACK, but for games that's not acceptable, plus games are typically closed-source binaries. I don't have faith in them to handle audio selection right at all, nor should the developers spend time on that, since the OS controls are specifically made for that instead.

I don't know, games can have some pretty complicated use of audio. Let's say you're gaming away on your PC-connected stereo, and the wife and kid get home... then you want to switch to a headset. Are you supposed to quit your match in the middle to deal with that?