A Wayland Developer Shares His Concerns About NVIDIA's EGLStreams Proposal

[starshipeleven]

Nvidia does have a driver that already works well on several platforms. It isn't unexpected they're looking to add Wayland support with as few changes as possible.

Linux has GBM that works fine already, and is used by A LOT of things already, doing a CRITICAL pain in the ass job (low-level protocol of graphics subsystem) that is CRUCIAL for many things that are necessary for linux's future (Wayland and friends). It isn't unexpected that they are looking to NOT just switch to or add random crap to the side of it just because a hardware manufacturer that does NOT contribute a damn (apart a few things in the embedded sector) can save some pennies in driver development.

Seriously, stop being a goddamn fanboy.

Linux isn't NVIDIUX, OS developers's needs MUST have priority over hardware manufacturer's, or we go back to embedeed world hell and everyone gets raped by hardware manufacturers.

It's true that AMD and intel had no problem adapting to Wayland, but they don't have a shared driver across platforms (and the performance they offer sucks, thus if GBM was a real bottleneck, they probably wouldn't notice anyway).

Quit bashing others for their drivers dumbass, the issue here isn't on the driver side. Only NVIDIA claims (without any kind of proof) that THEIR hardware could run better with their own implementation, others play nice and comply to common standards without being pussies.

Here the issue is (mostly) for the userspace side. All people that write direct-rendered programs or frameworks (the DE's compositors, or web browsers or games) need to add another way to the side of GBM to target NVIDIA hardware.

This means that programs will run like crap on both protocols if devs split efforts, or that they will have to make a choice on who gets the short end of the stick.

It's total and utter bullshit, only paid people and fanboys like you can still defend NVIDIA on this.

[CppMan]

Weston folks should at least make a ( small ) effort to release a good quality experimental EGL Streams branch so that people ( Phoronix, I bet ) are in a position to easily do the relevant measurements.
I'd love to see nouveau vs proprietary EGL Streams on weston.
I don't understand all the fuss about this.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Isn't that sort of the whole point of Wayland?

Please remind me what I have to write into xorg.conf to use HiDPI and normal display with different DPI per-output. Thanks in advance.

[johnc]

Please remind me what I have to write into xorg.conf to use HiDPI and normal display with different DPI per-output. Thanks in advance.

If you're using a real video driver (e.g., nvidia Linux binary) you haven't needed to touch a config file in years.

[johnc]

So just to wrap up the desktop experience in a nutshell, we have:

Xorg: supports AMD, Intel and Nvidia
Mir: will support AMD, Intel and Nvidia because even though Canonical is insane they're not dumb
Wayland: will be AMD and Intel only

Duly noted.

For me and most people, the hardware is more important than the choice of display server.

[computerquip]

So just to wrap up the desktop experience in a nutshell, we have:

Xorg: supports AMD, Intel and Nvidia
Mir: will support AMD, Intel and Nvidia because even though Canonical is insane they're not dumb
Wayland: will be AMD and Intel only

Duly noted.

For me and most people, the hardware is more important than the choice of display server.

You do understand that Wayland isn't explicitly tied to GBM right? It's up to the compositor to support the new EGL interface. GBM isn't defined in the Wayland protocol at all.

[starshipeleven]

If you're using a real video driver (e.g., nvidia Linux binary) you haven't needed to touch a config file in years.

Nice try, 4/10 can do better. Especially for some laptops it's a pain in the ass. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA

When it works automagically it's awesome. The issue is that it doesn't always work automagically.

Of course for single-screen setups it works automagically most of the times.

For me and most people, the hardware is more important than the choice of display server.

Assuming your prediction isn't total bs (which probably is, especially the fact that Canonical has the resources to do anything that isn't mostly cloning someone else), you're probably forced to use ubuntu with Mir as Xorg gets nuked for good.

[grndzro]

- Nvidia has some important position in the PC Desktop market and on scientific clusters. But they are dwarfed on gaming console (in the current generation, they got owned by AMD) and embed (they're just one among many other there).
And light compositors like Mir and Wayland *DO* matter in these markets (specially embed).

AMD is getting the next 3 consoles as well. Backwards compatibility is a huge selling point. Nintendo is even making a high end console to compete with PS/XB.

[geearf]

Wayland: will be AMD and Intel only

The nouveau guys would probably say hi.

[johnc]

You do understand that Wayland isn't explicitly tied to GBM right? It's up to the compositor to support the new EGL interface. GBM isn't defined in the Wayland protocol at all.

Uhhh... that's kind of what all these threads are about. Nvidia has some patches for Weston, but every Wayland compositor and toolkit developer is saying no to EGLStreams. So in effect, there will be no nvidia support.

The nouveau guys would probably say hi.

Umm, who?