NVIDIA Continues Discussing Their Controversial Wayland Plans With Developers

[rob11311]

Nvidia isn't implementing a design meant for nvidia. They simply don't like the current method of doing things.

No they wanted a proprietary world.. seeking to maximise what they felt was their closed source trade-secret proprietary advantage.
They had the chance to architect a better future implementation, allowing more commonality and simpler drivers and they chose to be aloof from that effort.

[jmcharron]

No they wanted a proprietary world.. seeking to maximise what they felt was their closed source trade-secret proprietary advantage.
They had the chance to architect a better future implementation, allowing more commonality and simpler drivers and they chose to be aloof from that effort.

It's really neat to see what AMD are doing with the new amdgpu stack but if you buy a Nvidia card and run their drivers you can expect to see 95%-105% OpenGL performance parity between Windows and Linux. AMD and Intel can't say the same thing.

• http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...0_winlin&num=2
• http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...-windows&num=4
• http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...inuxopen&num=2

We might see a day where the amdgpu open stack will give Nvidia a run for it's money, Polarus could usher in that new era but I wouldn't gamble $400 on it...

[computerquip]

No they wanted a proprietary world.. seeking to maximise what they felt was their closed source trade-secret proprietary advantage.
They had the chance to architect a better future implementation, allowing more commonality and simpler drivers and they chose to be aloof from that effort.

Dude, the developers are people just like you and me. They don't have this grand scheme of making everything proprietary. At the same time, I'm sure they want to secure their jobs, but they're not these evil schemers that people make them out to be.

EDIT: That said, if you disagree with they way they do things, simply don't buy their stuff. There's no need to put on a tin foil hat and start with conspiracy theories.

[microcode]

Ehhem, what is wrong with using EGL? And if this won't be mainlined, wouldn't it be easy to implement an extension/plugin package named something like "wayland-nvidia" or "wayland-EGL" or something that simply adds support for Nvidia's chosen approach? Also wasn't open source software about more "developer and user freedom" to begin with? Nvidia clearly thinks this is the way to do things, who are we to tell them "No, you're not allowed to do it this way." when we constantly blather about "freedom" in Linux and the open source world? Are we hypocrites now?

Also whats wrong with having an alternative way of using EGL for buffer management rather than GBM? Couldn't it just simply perform faster when you are on hardware that supports it?

I don't see the problem, I just don't, I'm probably going to be buying AMD next because I generally don't like Nvidia's way of things over the past couple of years, but this is not one of the things I find "controversial" about them... I don't see any problem here... Unless there are some serious downsides to using EGL for buffer management, I think Nvidia should stand their ground.

The problem is that to get any support for NVIDIA's driver, they would need to implement two codepaths. Weston, and all of the other compositors, already have the GBM codepaths, to make use of NVIDIA's driver they would need to write and maintain both. On top of that NVIDIA seems to be the only vendor who is suggesting this approach. I seriously hope they have a good reason for it. I don't think NVIDIA folks have said specifically why they want information that is available at commit time but not until after allocation; then again, I'm perhaps not qualified to say that there aren't good reasons for it. Just from a glance I'm not seeing hard facts.

[microcode]

Ehhem, what is wrong with using EGL? And if this won't be mainlined, wouldn't it be easy to implement an extension/plugin package named something like "wayland-nvidia" or "wayland-EGL" or something that simply adds support for Nvidia's chosen approach? Also wasn't open source software about more "developer and user freedom" to begin with? Nvidia clearly thinks this is the way to do things, who are we to tell them "No, you're not allowed to do it this way." when we constantly blather about "freedom" in Linux and the open source world? Are we hypocrites now?

Also whats wrong with having an alternative way of using EGL for buffer management rather than GBM? Couldn't it just simply perform faster when you are on hardware that supports it?

I don't see the problem, I just don't, I'm probably going to be buying AMD next because I generally don't like Nvidia's way of things over the past couple of years, but this is not one of the things I find "controversial" about them... I don't see any problem here... Unless there are some serious downsides to using EGL for buffer management, I think Nvidia should stand their ground.

Also, NVIDIA is perfectly free to distribute an incompatible fork of weston; it just won't do any good for their broader integration with the community. They have ultimate freedom, but without collaborating they will get nothing for it. They are totally allowed to do it this way, it's just counterproductive; so no, nobody here is being a hypocrite as far as I can see.

[liam]

It of course doesn't affect the decision of other Wayland compositor devs. They could add as many vendor specific code paths as they want, but I doubt they will.

Although THAT'S a possibility.

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2014-August/065931.html

The hope, however, would be for someone to create an API that exposes the hardware capabilities to userspace.

Rob Clark suggests something similar to openwf, but some needs to write it.

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2014-August/065941.html

[rob11311]

Nvidia isn't implementing a design meant for nvidia. They simply don't like the current method of doing things.

Come on, that's so naive.. they stayed out of a multi-vendor open source design .. now they "just want" EGL which allows Vendor encapsulated data.
Tough.. why should the FOSS display server guys work for Nvidia in their aim of maintaining fragmentation?

[rob11311]

I think the kernel has a similar policy, they add no stuff that only is used by a proprietary driver. So the new amd kernel module is used by the free and the proprietary driver so they add it.

I think this here is similar, if a free driver will use it (that could be easily done if nvidia helps nouvou guys to make use of it if that even would make sense what I doubt), much of the design how they implement stuff is to trick the gpl so its technicaly not violated (or to not violate it depending on how you see it).

And its only rational, if you make a project opensource, and a company makes a special driver that needs work on your side to support it, and not only the initial support, you have to maintain that, you have a bigger code base, you cant even answer to bugs because its impossible to track down bugs on code you cant see so you have to reverse engineer kind of.

It gets completly retarded in any way.

the point is you have more work and YOU get nothing for it. You have all the work and cost and nvidia all the benefits... thats a loose loose deal. And it hurts actualy the other wayland users, cause they have to waste much time with that bigger code base, where they could invest in a better general support.

Nothing except the developers from many companies got together and decided to implement something different.

[rob11311]

It's really neat to see what AMD are doing with the new amdgpu stack but if you buy a Nvidia card and run their drivers you can expect to see 95%-105% OpenGL performance parity between Windows and Linux. AMD and Intel can't say the same thing.

• http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...0_winlin&num=2
• http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...-windows&num=4
• http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...inuxopen&num=2

We might see a day where the amdgpu open stack will give Nvidia a run for it's money, Polarus could usher in that new era but I wouldn't gamble $400 on it...

Look Nvidia blob drives have caused crashes in kernel.. un-debuggable ones. I've found Nivida proprietary drivers a royal PITA..
if I'm going to run blobs like that... I may as well just boot windows + nvidia, like I'm doing right now.

When I'm running Linux, I don't give a monkeys about parity with Windows performance.. I just want Linux programs to run well enough, and basically the Intel/AMD open source stack has doen that for years, with eveh the work rounds I used to use to do power management uncessary.

Nvidia, makes for a tainted kernel and problems.... for what I do with my Linux machines, so it's all moot how fast they run compared to windows.. when even old AMD Hardware works very very well with Linux

[rob11311]

Dude, the developers are people just like you and me. They don't have this grand scheme of making everything proprietary. At the same time, I'm sure they want to secure their jobs, but they're not these evil schemers that people make them out to be.

EDIT: That said, if you disagree with they way they do things, simply don't buy their stuff. There's no need to put on a tin foil hat and start with conspiracy theories.

No this is silly.. NO developer, goes to work for Nvidia, without being very aware of their stance. When you go for a SW job with a high profile company, you BET you do your homework. It's not a new thing..

Just because end-users who run games like Nvidia drivers, doesn't make it the best thing for the FLOSS world to accept Nvidia suggestions, when there was a multi-vendor discussion which decided on another framework. Nothing stopped Nvidia from being involved with the creation of that API, except Nvidia's management & long running policies