XWayland Gets Initial Support For EGLStreams To Support NVIDIA's Driver

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Uhhh.... I very much remember using bumblebee with Steam didn't work with the launcher and required the launch command in the games setting to be changed to include it. I also had to include it with Wine or virtualbox/vmware, for any DCC program etc.

You mistake with assumption that bumblebee issues could be in any way related to DRI_PRIME usage experience.

The 512MB RAM resource constraint example wasn't about the 7 series nvidia GPUs, it was about hardware over time not always being enough for software regardless of driver support, I thought the RAM with Gnome was a good example.

It isn't, because for half year or so I used Gnome Shell on 7 inch tablet (DEXP Ursus 7W) with 1GB RAM. (Now I writing this message from 2GB RAM version of Dell 5855, not because I switched to get more RAM, but just because Ursus 7W died.) With couple of tweaks Gnome is pretty much fine for such hardware (I get as low as ~300MB after boot) and there is no other choice anyway, because Win10 consume twice more RAM, Win8 phased out and Android x86 7.1 is stuck at Linux 4.9 (which makes it barely usable on Intel BayTrail/CherryTrail) until they release Android x86 8.1 in a couple of years.

If you upgrade the RAM you're opting to spend more money, in which case you could replace that GPU

Not an option (due to incompatibility, working GPU unavailability, etc.) and as I said there is no other reasons to replace this laptops besides nvidia legacy driver issues.

It's not nvidia being a dick to it's customers? You bought the laptop with nvidia GPU say, did it come with Linux or something like Windows OS installed? If you choose to change the OS, how is nvidia being a dick?

Unrelated as there is no such issue with other vendors and nvidia is only vendor who stands out and not support it's own customers. One exception I can remember is here, and another is PowerVR-based GPUs by Intel, but it's not about preinstalled OS, as you can see (in case of PowerVR-based GPUs support was dropped for Windows too, at the same time).

There isn't any major nvidia bugs that I'm aware of, for the customer base that matters to them, anything serious will get resolved.

It's good idea to tell desktop (no proper Wayland support) and laptop (no proper Optimus support while fglrx had supported PowerXpress on Linux since March of 2011 year) Linux users beforehand that they doesn't matter to nvidia. This is actually good advice which I will keep in mind, thank you and LIKE

By the way, reminded me that before this Wayland story we had Xrandr circus with nvidia proprietary driver for years.

Remind me how long Intel has not released a stable version of their drivers again, despite being open source?

You don't need to, fortunately if there is enough interest people could stand up and fix it themselves, like for example Hans de Goede from Red Hat did with Intel BayTrail/CherryTrail. Yeah-yeah, I don't need to remind you how it's impossible with closed drivers.

Not sure why you're hating.

Well, let's take bad support of desktop and laptop Linux users as an example. Because, you know, many people around here is desktop and/or laptop owners who also happened to run Linux.

> Transition period for this HW generation takes some time and was completed couple of years ago.
Eh? It held xorg version back for 6-12 month on some distros even though nvidia users were not the reason, AMD GPU users required it to be held back.

You read it right.

Not sure how that was considered completed years ago, prior to vega you mean?

Well, as was said above, Vega situation was exactly as with all nvidia hardware (go on, tell me that requirement of proprietary driver installation (hybrid in AMD case) is something bad and stuff...) so I obviously talking about transition of non-GCN GPUs from fglrx to FOSS stack.

[duby229]

Please, don't tell me about AMD support. I had radeon 5870 3 years ago, I remember how I had to wait for weeks after Ubuntu upgrade before somebody (not AMD) will fix DKMS part of their last fglrx driver. Wel, I could use opensource driver and mesa and have opengl3 instead of 4.4.
AMD couldn't give adequate support when my card was 4 years old. Geforce 7 cards are about 12 years old now. Compare yourself.

You definitely should have been on the open source driver. Basically native and ported games have worked for a long time if you do the gl override. Maybe it's an inconvenience at most, but at least you would have had a perfectly stable and usable configuration. Sure AMD deserves some grief for releasing such a horrible proprietary driver as that, but at that same time they already had a far superior driver working extremely well.

[PackRat]

Apparently, any valid points/experiences raised against AMD or Intel having issues are null and void here. Only nvidia ever has problems because it's proprietary driver you know? They don't contribute anything to the Linux ecosystem either, most definitely nothing open-source.

"Nvidia makes huge code contribution to qt with New Qt 3d Studio application." https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...A-Qt-3D-Studio

[cybertraveler]

Apparently, any valid points/experiences raised against AMD or Intel having issues are null and void here. Only nvidia ever has problems because it's proprietary driver you know? They don't contribute anything to the Linux ecosystem either, most definitely nothing open-source.

[cybertraveler]

The situation with bugs was already described in this thread. When Intel or AMD fail - someone could hire people and fix stuff, like Valve do (FOSS also give code sharing and collaboration, as a bonus). When nvidia fail - you either stuck with nouveau or sell GPUs to the next guy. Or they could fix something themselves, years later, most likely after putting your GPU into legacy branch, so one will need to pay to get bugfixes. Such business practices should be called out, and potential customers should be warned before purchase. Good to know that now there is enough people who do this favour for people choice GPU or laptop.
.

^ this

Even if the quality of the Intel or AMD drivers lapse, we are empowered as a community to clean up the code and make it work. This isn't even some purely theoretical thing. Valve & Red Hat really do hire developers to work on AMD and Intel code. I'm pretty sure there are unpaid random geeks working on this code too.

I know that if I buy any Intel or AMD graphics chip there's a very good chance that if the quality of the code isn't great now, over time it will only get better.

I don't think nvidia are a bad company. I just think their GNU/Linux support is massively inferior to that of AMD and Intel. As such, I don't support them and I encourage GNU/Linux noobies to avoid them too. If in the future nvidia start releasing more documentation and promptly provide legal access to signed firmware/microcode then I will promptly reconsider my stance on them. If nvidia go so far as actually developing open source code for GNU/Linux, then I'll buy and promote their products.

[polarathene]

Please, don't tell me about AMD support. I had radeon 5870 3 years ago, I remember how I had to wait for weeks after Ubuntu upgrade before somebody (not AMD) will fix DKMS part of their last fglrx driver. Wel, I could use opensource driver and mesa and have opengl3 instead of 4.4.
AMD couldn't give adequate support when my card was 4 years old. Geforce 7 cards are about 12 years old now. Compare yourself.

Apparently, any valid points/experiences raised against AMD or Intel having issues are null and void here. Only nvidia ever has problems because it's proprietary driver you know? They don't contribute anything to the Linux ecosystem either, most definitely nothing open-source.

[polarathene]

Nobody would complain if nvidia would program some glue code to merge which is not destroying current implementations.
But they want others (who don't profit by it) to do their work, that is the problem.
On the other side AMD worked hard to get their stuff mainline merged (so that others could profit by it if they want)- that is a huge difference.

Isn't that exactly what nvidia is trying to do with their allocator project? Develop something themselves and work hard to mainline it for the benefit of everyone?(if they want) Is that not what they've been doing with GLVND and now server-side GLVND? Another fun fact is the collaboration with Intel with nvidia for the Optimus improvements dealing with framebuffer sharing benefits eGPU support over ThunderBolt 3.0, but nah nvidia doesn't contribute shit amirite?

[polarathene]

No.

As owner of actual hardware with legacy GeForce GPUs I have no idea how sentence "hardware that had low RAM in the 512MB-1GB RAM on the system" related to 7xxx Series.

It is available for such hardware.

It isn't soldered on such hardware.

"nvidia being dick to it's own customers", as I said.

The situation with bugs was already described in this thread. When Intel or AMD fail - someone could hire people and fix stuff, like Valve do (FOSS also give code sharing and collaboration, as a bonus). When nvidia fail - you either stuck with nouveau or sell GPUs to the next guy. Or they could fix something themselves, years later, most likely after putting your GPU into legacy branch, so one will need to pay to get bugfixes. Such business practices should be called out, and potential customers should be warned before purchase. Good to know that now there is enough people who do this favour for people choice GPU or laptop.

Transition period for this HW generation takes some time and was completed couple of years ago. I perfectly remember this days because I played Dead Island and Metro: Last Lights on 6650M with fglrx when ports came out. I don't remember other games that require fglrx since then, and this days both this games should work on Mesa AFAIK.

Uhhh.... I very much remember using bumblebee with Steam didn't work with the launcher and required the launch command in the games setting to be changed to include it. I also had to include it with Wine or virtualbox/vmware, for any DCC program etc. If that wasn't the case for you that's great, only way that'd work for me is no command at all by just using the dGPU for everything.

The 512MB RAM resource constraint example wasn't about the 7 series nvidia GPUs, it was about hardware over time not always being enough for software regardless of driver support, I thought the RAM with Gnome was a good example. If you upgrade the RAM you're opting to spend more money, in which case you could replace that GPU, I'm well aware of boards with soldered RAM that you cannot upgrade/change(I guess you technically could but it's not something that's easy/cheap for anyone), pretty sure that with age RAM becomes more difficult or expensive to source? I don't even remember what RAM my old 286 used to have, pretty sure I can't upgrade it to 16GB+ though yeah? If you still don't get the point I was trying to make about it, nevermind k.

It's not nvidia being a dick to it's customers? You bought the laptop with nvidia GPU say, did it come with Linux or something like Windows OS installed? If you choose to change the OS, how is nvidia being a dick? I'm pretty sure that with plenty of products, if you change something about how it was sold to you it voids any warranty or support, if I buy software that targets nvidia hardware to use CUDA, replace the GPU with an AMD one and now it doesn't work as intended, can I say the software vendor is a dick to their customers? If you bought the GPU for your own desktop build, you should be aware of the Linux support in advance no? I assume you do some research on such things, so what exactly are they doing to be a dick to you? If you don't like it don't buy it.

Haswell was a few years old and still giving bugs, someone could fix it perhaps but who knows when. AMD support would be sorted months later, and has been since, that's true. There isn't any major nvidia bugs that I'm aware of, for the customer base that matters to them, anything serious will get resolved. They're active working on projects, several that are open-source and benefit Linux as a whole(maybe not you, that won't always be the case). Not sure why you're hating. The argument you're making was pretty much what was given to people in the past to not use AMD hardware because it was in a worse state than nvidia is in atm. Again if it doesn't interest you don't buy nvidia, it's fine to advise AMD over nvidia, but AMD isn't presently always the best choice/option compared to nvidia, not yet anyhow. Remind me how long Intel has not released a stable version of their drivers again, despite being open source? I don't disagree to the benefits of open-source software/drivers, I just don't think nvidia are as bad as they're being made out to be just because they have a proprietary driver :\

> Transition period for this HW generation takes some time and was completed couple of years ago.

Eh? It held xorg version back for 6-12 month on some distros even though nvidia users were not the reason, AMD GPU users required it to be held back. And then in 2017 it was DC/DAL kernel mainline support? Not sure how that was considered completed years ago, prior to vega you mean?

[RussianNeuroMancer]

instead you had to add these additions to each steam games launch command

No.

I was talking about hardware that had low RAM in the 512MB-1GB RAM on the system

As owner of actual hardware with legacy GeForce GPUs I have no idea how sentence "hardware that had low RAM in the 512MB-1GB RAM on the system" related to 7xxx Series.

upgrading isn't always an option either because sourcing compatible RAM isn't available at the time anymore

It is available for such hardware.

or because it was soldered on

It isn't soldered on such hardware.

Nvidia doesn't care too much for desktop market on Linux

"nvidia being dick to it's own customers", as I said.

Oh and Intel and AMD have had plenty of issues for me in the past I remember several systems that were Intel based and running off their iGPU alone where I had a multitude of problems, was around 2016-2017(haswell, broadwell, skylake). With AMD I remember performance and glitches/crashes, the AMD stuff was when I used them last around 2010 sometime before the GPU died/burned out(HD4770). While we're at it, plenty of issues even with recent AMD CPUs(ThreadRipper 1950x). It's great that you don't experience issues so much, but it doesn't really matter what vendor you go with imo, they all have pro/cons.

The situation with bugs was already described in this thread. When Intel or AMD fail - someone could hire people and fix stuff, like Valve do (FOSS also give code sharing and collaboration, as a bonus). When nvidia fail - you either stuck with nouveau or sell GPUs to the next guy. Or they could fix something themselves, years later, most likely after putting your GPU into legacy branch, so one will need to pay to get bugfixes. Such business practices should be called out, and potential customers should be warned before purchase. Good to know that now there is enough people who do this favour for people choice GPU or laptop.

AMD couldn't give adequate support when my card was 4 years old. Geforce 7 cards are about 12 years old now. Compare yourself.

Transition period for this HW generation takes some time and was completed couple of years ago. I perfectly remember this days because I played Dead Island and Metro: Last Lights on 6650M with fglrx when ports came out. I don't remember other games that require fglrx since then, and this days both this games should work on Mesa AFAIK.

[brrrrttttt]

Nobody would complain if nvidia would program some glue code to merge which is not destroying current implementations.
But they want others (who don't profit by it) to do their work, that is the problem.
On the other side AMD worked hard to get their stuff mainline merged (so that others could profit by it if they want)- that is a huge difference.

This is why AMD gets a lot of goodwill from the community. Not sure why that's hard to understand for some.