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

[bearoso]

The GBM disadvantages aren't really disadvantages, it was purposefully designed that way. Because of that, I doubt existing Mesa developers feel a need for a "new" cooperative API.

Looks unfortunately like we've hit a stalemate.

[omer666]

All this is getting tiresome, although I understand the technical debate is quite interesting. I hope we'll all be able to move to Wayland in less than 10 years time...

[jrch2k8]

this is what i dislike about wayland, every compositor must implement EVERYTHING(now libweston and wayland protocols should help)
mir even if less developed/supported does not have this problem

this problem actually affecta Mir too, this is not a wayland specific issue but low level driver implementations for Buffer Allocations on EGL and it happens before even reach wayland and/or Mir.

Quoted from Mir page

"Make sure your hardware is supported. That means you're using a Mesa driver ...."

Please note this would also affect X11 if it was using EGL only.

[theriddick]

I can see this argument continuing 10 years from now, and not much progress being made... such is life.

[uid313]

Source: xkcd

[Tomin]

That's why I said "Vulcan + some new specs". I don't know specifics, but yeah... I assume that if these things are not in Vulcan already, they may not belong there, and will need to be something on the side.

Could you please spell it Vulkan as that is the name of the API. Thank you!

https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/

[finalzone]

Regardless, some compromise is needed. It's a pain that Nvidia won't provide a conventional Linux driver that uses the same Mesa-based infrastructure other hardware does. But you can also appreciate from their point of view that cross-platform is a big deal... their own existing infrastructure is what's allowed them to provide high-quality Linux support for so many years.

That high-quality Linux support comes with the cost of using non-standard method of implementing OpenGL and other infrastructure creating vendor locking.
Another issue is how Nvidia videocard aged badly compared to Radeon. The former may perform well but upon close look, some features are removed from the hardware.
EGLStreams is nothing more than an attempt at locking from Nvidia. The latter will be forced to use GBM to survive as the company is quickly losing the stream than expected.

[Mystro256]

All this is getting tiresome, although I understand the technical debate is quite interesting. I hope we'll all be able to move to Wayland in less than 10 years time...

Eh, people will be moving on in the next 5 years. If Nvidia wants to be stubborn, they will lose Linux marketshare when distros drop Xorg driver support.

Could you please spell it Vulkan as that is the name of the API. Thank you!
https://www.khronos.org/vulkan/

Haha, looks like I wasn't the only one with that pet peeve

[finalzone]

Eh, people will be moving on in the next 5 years. If Nvidia wants to be stubborn, they will lose Linux marketshare when distros drop Xorg driver support.

Nvidia is gradually losing market share in Microsoft Windows world and has virtually no hardware in console gaming world.
The company has an anti-competitive history that is coming to haunt it.

[xeekei]

Luckily the RX 480 has finally dropped in price in Sweden somewhat. I was holding out to see if Nvidia was gonna budge on this GBM vs EGLStreams thing, and now I know.