Wayland's Weston Nukes Its Raspberry Pi Backend/Renderer

[starshipeleven]

For the record - I don't personally give a crap if drivers are open source or not. I just care if they work properly.

For the record: only NVIDIA updates their blobs regularly enough to keep the user experience good for a PC, embedded devices are born and die with the same kernel version more often than not due to proprietary drivers.

So yes, unless you are making an embedded product that will NOT get updated anyway, opensource drivers matter.

[schmidtbag]

For the record: only NVIDIA updates their blobs regularly enough to keep the user experience good for a PC, embedded devices are born and die with the same kernel version more often than not due to proprietary drivers.

So yes, unless you are making an embedded product that will NOT get updated anyway, opensource drivers matter.

I see you're the type who likes to rant for the sake of ranting. I said I personally don't care if they're open source. I said nothing about whether open source drivers matter or not. Of course they matter, but in the end all I want is something that works. Anyway, most embedded devices don't benefit from changes made in newer kernels. I don't really care if I use something outdated as long as it does what I want it to, and as long as I'm within 5% of the hardware's full potential.

[starshipeleven]

I see you're the type who likes to rant for the sake of ranting. I said I personally don't care if they're open source.

I see you're the type who likes to troll for the sake of trolling. I just pointed out a well-known fact about embedded devices, hoping you would understand.

But you still seem to completely miss the point of people wanting opensource drivers in these boards.

For most people here the use-case is "running a full linux distro on the embedded device" not "manufacture a fleet of embedded consumer products".

Anyway, most embedded devices don't benefit from changes made in newer kernels.

It is also true that most people here aren't after making one of such devices that won't benefit from newer kernels with a relatively expensive dev board anyway.

I don't really care if I use something outdated as long as it does what I want it to,

The point here is what you want it to do. I mean do you develop crappy consumer products in your spare time or something?
Do you have any idea of how fun that is (fighting against dumb and usually buggy binaries you cannot change)?

and as long as I'm within 5% of the hardware's full potential.

Only NVIDIA closed drivers have that level of quality. In embedded the drivers are crappy cheapo things as the manufacturer rarely cares that much about high performance. Opensource would allow more quality drivers by allowing code reuse and the usual things.

[pal666]

First of all, yes, nvidia does contribute toward nouveau for Tegra.

first of all, no, it doesn't. it contributed few lines of code two years ago.

Second, why does it matter? It's still open source drivers, and they work.

it matters because sane people want to support with money vendors who do give a fuck about them

Well I do know for a fact there are Freescale products with working OpenGL and GLES. Whether they're open source, I'm not sure.

you could look into mesa sources to get answer for sure

In terms of open source drivers. From what I heard, there are still closed-source binaries.

isn't it nice that when you hear about freescale opengl, you are not sure whether they are open source, but when you hear about binaries from broadcom, you are sure they can't be fully replaced by mainstream mesa and kernel

For the record - I don't personally give a crap if drivers are open source or not. I just care if they work properly.

then what are you doing here, you have woring drivers on windows

[slacka]

The article talks about switching from the standard EGL/GLES paths to the open source VC4 driver stack. How does the performance compare? I think this would make a good topic for a future Phoronix article.

[starshipeleven]

The article talks about switching from the standard EGL/GLES paths to the open source VC4 driver stack. How does the performance compare? I think this would make a good topic for a future Phoronix article.

You got it wrong.

They are dropping a raspi-only backend based off a raspi-only API (DispmanX API) to use the standard DRM, EGL/GLES paths from the opensource driver.

Would be nice to have some performance benches of that tho.

[daemon32]

Just a reminder, the VC4 uses proprietary blobs to initialize the hardware and bootstrap Linux.

[unperson]

Just a reminder, the VC4 uses proprietary blobs to initialize the hardware and bootstrap Linux.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK that is (almost?) not the case anymore. I recently did some research on this, because I always kept forgetting the status quo and how the bootprocess/driverstack looks like. This is what I found:

1st stage bootloader:
-runs on the GPU
-is read from a tiny ROM in the SoC
-initializes the videocore and codec licenses, loads the second stage bootloader
-not open (it is probably just a few lines of very simple harmless code and its a ROM anyways, so...)

2nd stage bootloader (bootcode.bin):
-runs on the GPU
-is read from a file on the SDcard (FAT)
-initializes some HW incl. the ARM CPU (and maybe some other things that I didn't note down)
-is often called "the fimware"
-is open soon: https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11703842

3rd stage bootloader (start.elf):
-runs on the CPU
-is read from a file on the SDcard (FAT)
-reads config.txt, cmdline.txt and boots kernel.img
-is also often called "the fimware" (confusing, isn't it?), but Broadcom calls it "VideoCoreOS"
-implements OpenMAX, OpenGL and OpenVG
-is open: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/ope...arm-userspace/ (there might be a better source, that specifically mentions start.elf)

And on top of this there is Arnold's VC4 O.S. driver.

So as far as I can tell, the RasPi will be 99% O.S. within the next months. Only the few bits in the SoC ROM will stay closed/irreplacable for ever I guess.

[schmidtbag]

I see you're the type who likes to troll for the sake of trolling. I just pointed out a well-known fact about embedded devices, hoping you would understand.

You clearly don't know what trolling is, since you're the one who picked a fight with me over a personal opinion. That being said...

But you still seem to completely miss the point of people wanting opensource drivers in these boards.

For most people here the use-case is "running a full linux distro on the embedded device" not "manufacture a fleet of embedded consumer products".

It is also true that most people here aren't after making one of such devices that won't benefit from newer kernels with a relatively expensive dev board anyway.

... I get the point of people wanting open source drivers. I'm not favoring closed source. I understand the benefits of open source drivers for ARM. You're preaching to the crowd here. So I stand by my point that you're ranting for the sake of ranting.

The point here is what you want it to do. I mean do you develop crappy consumer products in your spare time or something?
Do you have any idea of how fun that is (fighting against dumb and usually buggy binaries you cannot change)?

Do you personally take advantage of open source drivers? Again - I know the benefits of them, but the vast majority of Linux users do not build their own kernels or drivers, even if they're given all the resources to do so. If you do it, great, good for you. But you're the minority.

Only NVIDIA closed drivers have that level of quality. In embedded the drivers are crappy cheapo things as the manufacturer rarely cares that much about high performance. Opensource would allow more quality drivers by allowing code reuse and the usual things.

I agree. I wasn't disputing that.

first of all, no, it doesn't. it contributed few lines of code two years ago.

Right... Mind explaining how nvidia can time travel?:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Tegra-FOSDEM-2015

it matters because sane people want to support with money vendors who do give a fuck about them

Vendors are not legally obligated to do a damn thing for you just because you bought their product. If they don't state anywhere on the box, website, or manual that they support Linux, they don't have to do anything you say regarding Linux. It's your own fault for buying something that isn't supported.

you could look into mesa sources to get answer for sure

Sure, but I'm not the one who cares.

isn't it nice that when you hear about freescale opengl, you are not sure whether they are open source, but when you hear about binaries from broadcom, you are sure they can't be fully replaced by mainstream mesa and kernel

What's nice is having something that works as advertised. If it does what it says it will, that's all that should matter. The only time you have a right to complain is if you are missing out on performance improvements or security updates that definitively affects you directly.

then what are you doing here, you have woring drivers on windows

Gee, I wasn't aware being a Linux user or Phoronix reader required me to use strictly open-source drivers. Thanks for the enlightenment - after much consideration, I realized there has never been a single article on this site discussing closed-source software. </sarcasm>

[starshipeleven]

You clearly don't know what trolling is, since you're the one who picked a fight with me over a personal opinion. That being said...

I'm just answering in a funny way to someone that called "rant" a simple stating of facts.

Do you personally take advantage of open source drivers?

Yes. NAS and networking equipment mainly. As that's what can be used currently, GPU drivers don't exist yet.

Not having crap drivers bog down the kernel and require hacking other software to work with them is a godsend.

but the vast majority of Linux users do not build their own kernels or drivers, even if they're given all the resources to do so. If you do it, great, good for you. But you're the minority.

Please note, we are talking of running ARM dev boards and embedded systems, not PCs so stop copy-pasting the same arguments you use when discussing these matters in PC space (where you are right to some extent). People that buys an ARM dev board or is tinkering on an embedded device is usually able to do so, or plans to learn how to.

Raspi/clones crowd... much less so, they usually just slap in a SD card with a firmware and off they go, but there is a whole bunch of "firmware makers" that enjoy the freedom of not having to wrestle with crappy binaries.
Just look at how much pre-made raspi SD card images there are around.