AMD Catalyst Will Not Support Wayland Anytime Soon

[pingufunkybeat]

A number of companies that write code and invest in it disagree.

I was under the impression that the major players are adopting a mildly optimistic "wait-and-see" strategy, actually.

The number of people regularly contributing to Wayland is tiny. I don't mind the slow pace, if they are really going to completely re-arrange the way GUI works on Linux, I'd rather that they get it right than rush something half-baked. The major (promised) advantages of Wayland are primarily infrastructural -- cleaner code, less cruft, more direct interfaces, the actual benefits for the end-user will not be huge performance improvements (all relevant stuff like 3d and GUI toolkits can bypass X almost completely already), but hopefully more stability and reliability. And this takes TIME.

[89c51]

Wayland is a Phoronix wet dream that might or might not become important in a very distant future.

A number of companies that write code and invest in it disagree.

[energyman]

fortunately, I ONLY use PC of "Intel inside" exclusively,I own a Intel ivb now without any discrete GPU! I'm very satisfied!I'm looking for default Intel driver for Wayland!!!

hm, low performance and monthly driver rewrites (which fits nicely with intel's inability to provide good working windows drivers). No thank you.

Catalyst works fine. The open source drivers come along fine. Wayland is a Phoronix wet dream that might or might not become important in a very distant future.

[vortex]

who the fuck cares? really? It will take years until wayland is ready for the masses - and I still don't understand what is so great about it.

So if it is years away and doesn't even have an api yet, why should nvidia or amd waste precious (and expensive) ressources on it, as long as their is X11 stuff to be done?

Exactly, why make such a big issue out of this, when the target is so far away ?

[russofris]

Even on 300+ DPI screens, AA is noticeable.

I would appreciate it if you could convince me, as it is the opposite of the conclusion that I reached when evaluating retina.

If I cannot perceive the pixels, there's no "aliasing" to begin with when rendering at the screen's native resolution. Perhaps "when rendering at the screens native resolution" is the cause of our opposing perceptions. I would concede that your statement holds true when rendering below the native resolution, as we can demonstrate its benefits without high-ppi displays.

F

[russofris]

Course, neither really compares to a higher res screen. The death of AA can't come soon enough, in my opinion.

The end of AA will be the beginning of scaling/filtering/postprocessing. We'll see an brief technology arms race as GPU designers do their best to make old assets look good on new hi-ppi displays (like the fake 2.5D on 3D television tech race). It might be a fun time, it might be a horrible time.

We'll likely see resolutions stabilize at 2k and 4k, followed by exponential increases in scene complexity as outward scaling GPUs and CPUs begin to share memory.

After that, it's probably going to paradigm shift towards LF rendering, or voxels/rays, or some other emergent fringe tech. I've seen a number of compelling LF expositions out of Stanford and MIT in the past few years. Neat stuff.

[LinuxID10T]

MSAA offers better image quality at a higher performance cost and is still the defacto AA stadard. The newer AAs are almost all based around doing a quick messy job and the choice is yours where you draw the performance / image quality line. It has nothing to do with MSAA being primitive.

Course, neither really compares to a higher res screen. The death of AA can't come soon enough, in my opinion.

I really wouldn't mind some SSAA and I know they are working on MLAA but MLAA has some problems. Even on a high res screen though, you will still want AA. Even on 300+ DPI screens, AA is noticeable.

[bwat47]

I remember Berlin/Fresco, YWindow and a couple more 'great next things'.

You know why they really failed?

They could not run X programms.

Wayland may be a nice thing, but apart from a nice looking architecture what does it have for the user? Why being excited about something that is a) a long way away b) doesn't even have a stable api yet?

Wake me up if wayland becomes a viable replacement for X. At the moment I can take a 10 year old Xapp and just run it. Do that with wayland and it might have a future.

Until it is ready, all those phoronix postings about drivers supporting it or not are just a waste of ressources.

Are you forgetting that wayland/xwayland *DOES* have x compatibility?

[bwat47]

Proprietary drivers are crap anyway, so glad I moved to intel. was so sick of amd always being so damn to support new kernel/xorg versions and the general buginess of catalyst.

[ownagefool]

You did see how I said primitive, right? MSAA just really isn't very good compared to the newer AA methods available.

MSAA offers better image quality at a higher performance cost and is still the defacto AA stadard. The newer AAs are almost all based around doing a quick messy job and the choice is yours where you draw the performance / image quality line. It has nothing to do with MSAA being primitive.

Course, neither really compares to a higher res screen. The death of AA can't come soon enough, in my opinion.