GTK4's Vulkan Renderer Is Close To Complete

[jrch2k8]

People in Linux world need to realize that macOS [OS X/NeXTSTEP] the WindowServer and Display Postscript were highly optimized and worked with no middleware. We ported it, dropped DPS due to Adobe's retarded $10/unit fee and created Display PDF; an end around seeing as us at NeXT co-developed DPS with them. When Quart/Quartz Extreme came along and later Metal API all communicates from top to bottom with as seamless a messaging system as possible, and as low level as possible.

With Vulkan you'd be an idiot to build a middle layer between Wayland and Vulkan and then add GNOME/GTK+ on top of that. Cut the fat, unify the messaging system and move as much of the processing to the GPU as you can. Cairo won't compete. It will lose and badly once Wayland/Vulkan/GTK+4 are mature and on the same page.

The backport for OpenGL seems like a legacy target to transition everyone later to Vulkan, and wisely so. That includes Blender who will benefit greatly and allow them to make the port to OS X with Metal much more coherent and less redundant coding.

I agree, Mac OS X (Sierra+) have the smoothest GUI I've seen so far(seen in my dual boot hackintosh). On Linux the closest is probably Weston(without Xwayland).

Also I agree Linux need a better IPC/Messaging system and probably a global security system like on OS X but certainly vulkan+wayland could really put Linux on top as long as its done smartly tho I don't expect it for a while seen that probably everyone will implement their own renderer like today so it will greatly vary between apps

[Guest]

I would be glad if anyone knowledgeable could help me out on this: what is the benefit of this compared to the opengl renderer? more performance, stability,...? thank you!

At least on nvidia pascal cards, cairo is very good, opengl is only 15% as fast as cairo, vulkan is around 10 times as fast as cairo.
If I am to place a score, opengl = 15 points, cairo = 100, vulkan = 1000.
But this is just because the vulkan backend in gsk is better quality and cairo (while leaky) is very mature already.
And this is surprisingly accurate.

[R41N3R]

I think the performance benefits are a nice side effect of Vulkan, what I think matters the most is the fact that drivers are simpler and that the applications have more control. Therefore I'm looking forward to GTK4 with Vulkan support. As a KDE user I hope that something similar will be done for Kwin, though I know at the moment there are no spare resources with the transition to Wayland.

[Vistaus]

This will be awsome when XFCE gets gtk4 support

And when do you expect that happen, exactly? 'Cause they still haven't finished porting Xfce to GTK3.

[Guest]

I think the performance benefits are a nice side effect of Vulkan, what I think matters the most is the fact that drivers are simpler and that the applications have more control. Therefore I'm looking forward to GTK4 with Vulkan support. As a KDE user I hope that something similar will be done for Kwin, though I know at the moment there are no spare resources with the transition to Wayland.

I wish mutter (gnome's window manager) would gain a Vulkan backend.

[Kendji]

And when do you expect that happen, exactly? 'Cause they still haven't finished porting Xfce to GTK3.

Exactly my point

[Vistaus]

I wish mutter (gnome's window manager) would gain a Vulkan backend.

Talk to Canonical. If they like your idea, they will push the GNOME Team to pick it up, just like they did for a lot of things found in GNOME 3.26

[grok]

The backport for OpenGL seems like a legacy target to transition everyone later to Vulkan, and wisely so. That includes Blender who will benefit greatly and allow them to make the port to OS X with Metal much more coherent and less redundant coding.

Is there a Vulkan for i945, geforce 6150 and Radeon HD 5000? That's what I'm asking myself lol.