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Firefox Developers Have Issues With Linux GPU Drivers Too

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  • #21
    Originally posted by birdie View Post
    It seems like most people in this thread are running Windows or MacOS.

    Have you ever bothered peeping into freedesktop's bugzilla and counting bugs filed against X.org server, MesaGL and other components? Literally there are hundreds if not thousands of bug reports and most of them have next to zero activity.

    E.g. you still cannot run both recent Unigine demos on Intel drivers. Also it's worth noting that Intel drivers have abysmal OpenGL performance in many games (up to ten times slower than in Windows).

    Or take for instance this core X.org bug. It's absurd thinking that any Windows or MacOS release could have been made available with such a bug. Even though X.org project lacks manpower I fail to see why such critical bug reports don't have the utmost attention.

    X.org project and open source X.org video drivers severely lack manpower. Alas, I don't see it changing in the foreseeable future.
    I had this one to. Problem was Mesa (intel) and it's already fixed.

    At least if nobody in this thead states that is still existent.

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    • #22
      And I hate those stupid bugreports where someone is whining about but not actually giving any useful information.

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      • #23
        Originally posted by birdie View Post
        E.g. you still cannot run both recent Unigine demos on Intel drivers. Also it's worth noting that Intel drivers have abysmal OpenGL performance in many games (up to ten times slower than in Windows).
        At first glance it seems that the Unigine demos need MSAA (or at least need the driver to lie and say that MSAA is supported ) in order to run; it's probably fair to say that the driver dev community sees MSAA as a lower priority than some of the other things being worked on (performance improvements, shader compiler improvements to support more complex apps, bug fixes etc..). Do you disagree with that assessment ?
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        • #24
          Originally posted by bridgman View Post
          Take all of the following with a grain of salt because I'm just coming up to speed on it myself, but...

          The only part of that discussion I have problems with is "Heck, we?re even disabling WebGL for most Linux drivers, last I checked?". The statement implies that WebGL is a relatively easy thing to support, and if *that* has problems then everything *else* must be worse.
          As a firefox nightly tester, my understanding is that from the get go they've been developing their webgl implementation to work over OpenGL(even on windows).

          Roughly a year ago Google and Transgaming announced that it would be creating opengl/es 2 directx abstraction layer and so Mozilla decided to adapt that on Windows as it would interop well with their directx HW accelerated compositions layers.

          Then a couple of months later AMD announced it would support opengl es in their desktop drivers too. The Mozilla devs were really happy about this as webgl is essentially opengl es wrapper for the web(I'm oversimplifying it a bit, but still).

          Then finally a couple months later Nvidia announced the inclusion of a new opengl-dx-interop extension in their drivers, which Mozilla will be using shortly.

          Mozilla is using opengl and opengl es for webgl on Windows, Mac and Linux. The code is pretty mature now and is well tested. Which is why i think they're really surprised it doesn't work well on Linux.

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          • #25
            Originally posted by Tares View Post
            Well, I hope I will be able to force hardware acceleration on my nvidia blob if not I will be not pleased xD
            You will be able to force hardware acceleration via about:config, it'll just be off by default. Though i think in your case you wont need to as i think the nvidia blobs have been deemed pretty good and stable.

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            • #26
              Originally posted by Harsh View Post
              As a firefox nightly tester, my understanding is that from the get go they've been developing their webgl implementation to work over OpenGL(even on windows).
              Just to agree on semantics, when you say OpenGL do you mean "including GL ES" or "regular GL rather than GL ES" ?

              Originally posted by Harsh View Post
              Roughly a year ago Google and Transgaming announced that it would be creating opengl/es 2 directx abstraction layer and so Mozilla decided to adapt that on Windows as it would interop well with their directx HW accelerated compositions layers.
              Is this what is being used on Windows today rather than the native GL drivers ?

              Originally posted by Harsh View Post
              Mozilla is using opengl and opengl es for webgl on Windows, Mac and Linux. The code is pretty mature now and is well tested. Which is why i think they're really surprised it doesn't work well on Linux.
              If I understand correctly, I think you're saying :

              Windows : GL ES over DX (so the native GL drivers aren't getting exercised)

              Mac : not sure

              Linux : GL ES (rather than GL)

              Is that correct ?
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              • #27
                Please also note that KDE 4.7 (and Kubuntu 11.04 may already backport it) will use OpenGL ES for the window manager/desktop effects, so Mozilla isn't the only one using it.

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                • #28
                  When the GLES-over-DX shim was announced last year one of the big concerns at the time was that it would result in poor Linux support, since most of the testing and bug fixing work would improve the shim and the DX driver implementations, and that the browser GL ES code would end up being tweaked for the GLES-over-DX implementation rather than for real-world GL drivers.

                  IIRC the consensus was "hey it could have been worse, WebGL could have been implemented natively over DX" and the pushback died down, but IIRC the decision to use the GLES-over-DX shim was because there were problems running with GL drivers on Windows, and at first glance it seems as if we are just running into those same problems now on Linux (having avoided them on Windows by using DX instead).
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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by d2kx View Post
                    Please also note that KDE 4.7 (and Kubuntu 11.04 may already backport it) will use OpenGL ES for the window manager/desktop effects, so Mozilla isn't the only one using it.
                    Is that GL ES itself or "the GL ES subset of GL" which was what the X devs recommended ?
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                    • #30
                      Originally posted by bridgman View Post
                      If I understand correctly, I think you're saying :

                      Windows : GL ES over DX (so the native GL drivers aren't getting exercised)

                      Mac : not sure

                      Linux : GL ES (rather than GL)

                      Is that correct ?

                      Windows :
                      Nvidia: Regular OpenGL with GL-DX-Interop Extension(Not yet turned on yet but will land shortly)
                      AMD: OpenGL ES (They're hoping AMD will add a DX interop extension too, which would AMD ideal as they already provide OpenGL ES)
                      INTEL and others: ANGLE (OpenGL/ES to DirectX9/10 abstraction layer) Its basically a reverse Wine3D library

                      Mac : OpenGL, i presume though apple's CGL library.

                      Linux :
                      GL ES if its available if not Regular OpenGL.

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