Vulkan Support Still Isn't Ready For Ubuntu's Mir

[starshipeleven]

It doesn't unfortunately according to this article:

It's weird, they must have taken shortcuts to support other stuff with amdgpu-pro.

[bregma]

AFAIR, they have promised to implement Wayland front-end as well. So, the only difference is that Mir will have 1 additional lightweight front-end for Ubuntu phone apps.

No. We will not be providing a Mir server that uses the Wayland protocol.

Any Wayland-only software are either test drivers specific to developing Wayland servers, bespoke single-purpose applications, or will languish in obscurity as unfinished hobby projects. The same goes for Mir-only software. Everything else will be sensible and use one of the toolkits out there that hides the deets on how your frames get sent to a display, toolkits like Qt, GTK+, libSDL2, and the like.

[duby229]

It's weird, they must have taken shortcuts to support other stuff with amdgpu-pro.

That's not exactly what AMD promised though. If they keep it up at this rate amdgpu-pro will have the same problems as catalysts kernel driver. I'm not really a big fan of DAL. It's ruining the show. It should be using a completely unmodified stock upstream kernel driver, that was the entire point.

[bridgman]

There wouldn't be any differences in the kernel driver that would affect Wayland support AFAIK - more likely something related to buffer management that the closed source GL driver needs to learn about. I'm not sure there are problems btw, just don't think they would be related to open-based components.

My understanding is that DAL plugs into the standard interfaces; IIRC it also implements atomic modesetting while the upstream code does not.

[duby229]

I understand your point, I just don't agree with it. If DAL is so important for AMD then it should be upstream. I've heard contention that it only has a proprietary consumer, then adapt the oss drivers so they consume it too. My only point is that amdgpu-pro should be using a completely stock kernel driver. That it's not seems to be hurting it. There are multiple instances where the stock kernel driver works properly and amdgpu-pro doesn't. Perhaps it's true that DAL isn't the particular cause of this issue. But it must be some difference between the two.

[duby229]

And of course the reply is stuck in the mod que again...

short version is, Perhaps it's true that DAL isn't the particular cause of this issue, but it must be some difference from the stock kernel. I don't necessarily think DAL is wrong or bad, but rather that differences between them is bad. The sooner you get them totally consolidated the better.

[jo-erlend]

When is Canonical going to stop throwing good money after bad and end development of Mir? Is saving face really worth that much money? Is there any technical reason not to switch to Wayland?

They could branch libweston and play catch up within a year.

Starting completely from scratch, trying to create a display server based on Wayland, would cost more time. Remember, even after all these years of bragging, the Wayland community still hasn't shown as much as a prototype for a display server. It's still the old idea of server-less setup. When you require a server, it doesn't make sense to go for the server-less initiative. How difficult can this really be to comprehend?

[starshipeleven]

That's not exactly what AMD promised though. If they keep it up at this rate amdgpu-pro will have the same problems as catalysts kernel driver. I'm not really a big fan of DAL. It's ruining the show. It should be using a completely unmodified stock upstream kernel driver, that was the entire point.

What about you stop talking of things you don't understand?

amdgpu/-pro is still in heavy development and is barely supporting the latest GPU line from AMD, I suspect they had to make choices and decided that sheer hardware support and half-decent gaming on their newer hardware has the priority over wayland that is still not really close.

[starshipeleven]

Any Wayland-only software are either test drivers specific to developing Wayland servers, bespoke single-purpose applications, or will languish in obscurity as unfinished hobby projects. The same goes for Mir-only software. Everything else will be sensible and use one of the toolkits out there that hides the deets on how your frames get sent to a display, toolkits like Qt, GTK+, libSDL2, and the like.

Can you tell me if web browsers can stop using x11 specific code and use toolkits only instead? I was under the impression that there are quite a few programs using some x11-specific code even if most is done with a toolkit.

[Scias]

Remember, even after all these years of bragging, the Wayland community still hasn't shown as much as a prototype for a display server.

Have you been living under a Canonical rock for the past year ? Enlightenment has been working for years, GNOME 3.18 and onward can be considered daily usable and really easy to set up (just pick Wayland in GDM) - I'm writing this from my laptop that is set to GNOME/Wayland as default since 6 months without showstoppers. Speaking of GDM, Fedora launches GDM in Wayland mode by default (for supported drivers) since Fedora 22 and there hasn't been much negative noise about it yet. Latest KDE Wayland releases are also very close to the daily usability.

The only ones bragging so far have been Canonical. Remember they promised Unity 8 / Mir as alternate session for 13.10 and as default with full convergence for 14.04. Almost 3 years later and the desktop Unity 8 session is still not alpha-material yet.

It's still the old idea of server-less setup. When you require a server, it doesn't make sense to go for the server-less initiative. How difficult can this really be to comprehend?

How difficult can this be to understand that Wayland doesn't break your beloved client-server model ? The difference being that the Compositor, Window Manager and Display server are merged into one entity. Mutter-wayland, Kwin-wayland and E's Wayland compositors are the display servers.
Unity 8/Mir isn't any different besides that there's an extra binary running with an extra API between Unity 8 and Mir.