GTK4 Now Allows More Efficient Usage With Its Vulkan Renderer

Good news for mobile. Eventually Purism phones will move to GTK4. This is the only phone provider smart and brave enough to work on a truly free phone product with software and hardware tightly integrated.

The term "free phone" is an oxymoron, as it's nothing but a glorified tracking device. If it was truly free, you'd only have old Wi-Fi built in, as baseband processors run software provided over the air by your carrier.

Purism is a scam company full of hacks rather than people who can be taken seriously. A laptop with a stripped ME binary is about as free as a newer (as in, newer than xx00) ThinkPad with coreboot and me_cleaner. Their definition of freedom leaves a lot to be desired. If their devices were truly free, their laptops would be stuck with core 2 duo, or slightly newer AMD chips.

[Michael]

I know, but I don't think anybody here expect it to stay this way by the time Gnome software stack start migrate to GTK4.

Considering that the Freedreno and Raspberry Pi Vulkan drivers are barely moving along and they have more resources than Etnaviv, I wouldn't hold my breath.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

The spec sheet says that Purism has a Vivante GPU. There is currently no Vulkan driver for Vivante in mesa.

The hardware can, but there is no driver. Just like Purism's specs also say "OpenGL/ES 3.1" when there is only OpenGL 2 currently. Likewise, no OpenCL driver either.

I know, but I don't think anybody here expect it to stay this way by the time Gnome software stack start migrate to GTK4.

[polarathene]

GTK4 applications can use Vulkan to render, this is an optimization for that renderer.

Ok, so on Wayland you'd still have EGL handling the compositing and window management? GTK windows/viewports would just be rendering their content with Vulkan like a windowed game that supports Vulkan?

[Britoid]

This is unrelated to Wayland? Or does this mean a Wayland compositor that uses Vulkan? Or it's just something GTK4 does irrespective of the compositor and X11/Wayland, like a game rendering with Vulkan?

GTK4 applications can use Vulkan to render, this is an optimization for that renderer.

[Michael]

Check specification: https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-smart...ecs-announced/

The hardware can, but there is no driver. Just like Purism's specs also say "OpenGL/ES 3.1" when there is only OpenGL 2 currently. Likewise, no OpenCL driver either.

[Venemo]

Check specification: https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-smart...ecs-announced/

The spec sheet says that Purism has a Vivante GPU. There is currently no Vulkan driver for Vivante in mesa.

[polarathene]

This is unrelated to Wayland? Or does this mean a Wayland compositor that uses Vulkan? Or it's just something GTK4 does irrespective of the compositor and X11/Wayland, like a game rendering with Vulkan?

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Does the Purism phone support Vulkan? Probably not.

Check specification: https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-smart...ecs-announced/

[Venemo]

Good news for mobile. Eventually Purism phones will move to GTK4. This is the only phone provider smart and brave enough to work on a truly free phone product with software and hardware tightly integrated.

Does the Purism phone support Vulkan? Probably not.