NVIDIA Presents Over GBM vs. EGLStreams, The Big Wayland Support Debate Continues

[SystemCrasher]

Hey, nvidia, let VMS experts to teach you way of doing it right: http://www.dourish.com/goodies/see-figure-1.html

If nvidia is unhappy with the lesson, maybe they should stop feeding others with stupid blobs and join Linux development the way other companies do it. Until nvidia does that, they surely deserve "Worst Company Ever" badge and should take a look on Figure 1, as suggested by best VMS experts.

[starshipeleven]

Because Q3 isn't over yet?

And there is no reliable data about it?

[starshipeleven]

But i said past couple of months didnt I. Thats q3.

And you got these info from? You have a link (not from bstech... erm I mean ccftech)

[edoantonioco]

Is there a solution on the way? Nvidia wont do it, that's for sure. For what I see this won't happen in the upcoming years.

[smitty3268]

The numbers we have so far for Polaris vs. Pascal are a complete disaster for AMD. Horrific. Terrible.

Wayland might as well go with EGLStreams... Nvidia will be the only GPU company left soon.

The vast majority of users run Intel systems, and that's been true for a very long time.

[Delgarde]

So let me get this straight: they prefer to develop a entirely new API, but will not adere to GBM. Bravo Nvidia, bravo.

I assume they have technical reasons for this - something like a mismatch between their driver architecture and the GBM model that makes the latter too hard to implement. So pushing everyone else to ELGStreams is their preferred option, but failing that, they'd rather collaborate on a new compromise API than to work on implementing GBM.

I mean, it could just be pig-headed stubbornness, insisting on doing it their way. But that doesn't make a lot of business sense, so it's more likely that the rejection of GBM is technically driven... that they can't practically implement it, rather than that they won't.

[c117152]

Is there a solution on the way? Nvidia wont do it, that's for sure. For what I see this won't happen in the upcoming years.

If my text mode console is any indication, either of the two will happen:
1. Someone will write a shitty low-performance userland shim for EGLStreams <> GBL+Vulkan.
2. The linux desktop will use nouveau exclusively while a script will execute games full-screen with the nvidia driver in a separate virtual console. Kinda like a retarded Optimus... Only worse.

[Mystro256]

But i said past couple of months didnt I. Thats q3.

Considering how their business works, I would wait until q3 comes out before making any opinions.

If you look at the graph, you'll notice that Q2 is always bad and it shoots back up for Q3, Q4 and Q1. Notice the trend for every year since 2010?

Note that this is not based on my preference (I'm pretty Team Red to be honest), but just basic understanding of market trends and analytics.

[geearf]

It would be great if you could just use the nouveau driver for the desktop and switch on the fly to the nVidia driver for gaming.

Shouldn't you be able to do that with GLVND?
Or maybe the desktop being on nouveau means nouveau locks onto the GPU till it's closed.

[Tomin]

Shouldn't you be able to do that with GLVND?
Or maybe the desktop being on nouveau means nouveau locks onto the GPU till it's closed.

No. Nvidia driver is more than just libGL.so (or whatever it is now with GLVND). It also has it's own DDX (X11 driver) and kernel driver that both (well, at least the kernel driver) are needed to use the OpenGL driver. That OpenGL driver can't talk with nouveau and therefore it's not possible to switch the drivers just like that. (Edit: And it doesn't work the other way either for the same reasons)

In AMD's hybrid approach, both drivers can use the same DDX and kernel drivers so technically it might be possible to switch them. Sadly AMD doesn't yet support GLVND, so we can't test it now, but from what I've understood they are interested in supporting it.