Mir Will Support NVIDIA's EGL Streams Approach

[Delgarde]

I think that's the crux of the problem. After more than a quarter of a century a Linux box still needs to be "configured". A Windows or OSX box Just Works.

But Windows and OSX only "just work" because someone configured it before the user bought it. If the likes of Apple or Dell simply shipped their hardware with install media and blank storage, how many users could cope with installing an OS?

Don't get me wrong, I don't claim that Linux is easy. But saying Windows and MacOS "just work" without configuration is only true if you ignore the fact that all the configuration was done at the factory when the OS was pre-installed.

[cj.wijtmans]

But Windows and OSX only "just work" because someone configured it before the user bought it. If the likes of Apple or Dell simply shipped their hardware with install media and blank storage, how many users could cope with installing an OS?

Don't get me wrong, I don't claim that Linux is easy. But saying Windows and MacOS "just work" without configuration is only true if you ignore the fact that all the configuration was done at the factory when the OS was pre-installed.

that is bs. have you ever used windows 10? To be honest it is what linux should have been. But windows NT still just sucks.

Also this might be goodbye kde.. (except kate. dolphin and kioslave)

[jacob]

But Windows and OSX only "just work" because someone configured it before the user bought it. If the likes of Apple or Dell simply shipped their hardware with install media and blank storage, how many users could cope with installing an OS?

That is partly true, but only partly. Take Ubuntu, which is as close as it gets to a Linux-based equivalent of Windows or MacOS. Today you still can't expect your laptop's dual GPUs to "just work" and simply be able to select which app should use which. Installing 3rd party software still isn't for the faint of heart (granted, snap and flatpak will make that much easier, but still NOT as easy as on Windows. Let's not even talk about 3rd party drivers...). Suspend/resume sometimes still requires you to google around and manually edit /etc/whatever/stuff.conf. DNS settings have been broken on Ubuntu literally for YEARS and are STILL not going to be fixed in 17.04. Enabling full disk or home directory encryption on an installed system is ridiculously complicated compared to Windows (yes, of course, once enabled it's probably backdoor free... but that's not the point here).

I DO love Linux and in particular Ubuntu, the fact that it's open source alone means that I will always prefer it to Windows or OSX no matter what. There are many things that the Linux-based desktops do right. In some aspects they are more user friendly and easier to use than Windows or OSX. But for some strange reason after 25 years of Linux, these desktop distros seem unable to take the last step from 'nearly there' to 'truly, undeniably there'.

Truth be told, the community also sometimes does more harm than good by insisting on steering users to an "UNIX" mentality that simply has no place on a general purpose desktop. If you struggle to set up your printer, on Windows you will be told to download this, click on that, you are done. On Linux, it can be and effectively is every bit as easy, but more often than not the beginner will find instead instructions telling him to compile and configure CUPS....

[Vistaus]

that is bs. have you ever used windows 10? To be honest it is what linux should have been. But windows NT still just sucks.

Also this might be goodbye kde.. (except kate. dolphin and kioslave)

I've given Windows 10 a shot last year when my dad was dual-booting once again because of one app he needed to use that doesn't work under Wine. I really didn't like the experience, esp. the way MS apps work with that crooked sidebar in all of their apps. Nothing against sidebars, I do like them in some implementations, but not in the Windows 10 implementation. I also didn't like that bar at the right with all of your notifications and quick settings and stuff. It felt very disorganized to me. Also, if you care about your privacy, Windows 10 needs to be configured as well. I do agree that Windows 10 is not the worst Windows version aside from the things I mentioned, but the whole OS/workflow is too complicated for me. I like a simple workflow, like I currently have with Solus (Budgie).

[cj.wijtmans]

But it works out of the box. It even installs nvidia drivers for you. You nees 0 tinkering to install and use it.

[Jabberwocky]

I've found that most applications "just works" on Windows. I however find a lot of problems with Windows itself. On Linux I don't find problems with the OS very often, it's usually the applications that gives issues. Windows works as long as you do what they want you to do, in that sense it's like OS X just less intense.

Mir + EGL Streams seems like one of those scenarios where I will find a problem with Linux OS/system and not applications, which is a step backwards for Linux. This looks like another Nvidia optimus waiting to happen all over again. Ubuntu supporting flash was okay to me since it was something that already existed and most people were already trying to phase it out. Mir + EGL Streams is a whole new beast. I'll be moving away from Ubuntu for my desktop just like I have moved away from Nvidia.

I agree with Delgarde about factory configuration. I had a lot of pain installing Windows 10 on my new kaby lake laptop. In a unrelated case last week I tried setting up UEFI partitioning in Windows installation, did you know you can't format a partition to FAT32 in Windows 10 Pro installation? I had to write a Linux ISO to USB drive just format the UEFI partition to FAT32. I am one of those that still uses an USB printer/scanner from 2005. My drivers have been working since Linux 2.6, however windows did not work past Vista. Windows 10 installation is also more complicated and takes longer than user-friendly Linux distributions I have tried. Lets not get into Windows policies, it's a whole new can of worms.

[Jabberwocky]

But it works out of the box. It even installs nvidia drivers for you. You nees 0 tinkering to install and use it.

AMD needs 0 tinkering
Intel needs 0 tinkering
Hell these days even the raspberry Pi needs 0 tinkering

Nvidia needs to install correct version of proprietary drivers, make sure you don't have legacy cards or else you're screwed.

[Holograph]

I hope Wayland gets over it and follows with this. I would've previously been against this, but after previous discussions, EGLStreams seems the better approach for performance, and doesn't need to be Nvidia-specific. Wayland devs seem against it mostly just because it would be a bunch of work to implement, but Linux 3d performance is nowhere near good enough and performance is something that needs to be improved. And, well, here's a way to do so.

Edit to clarify: This is just my current understanding of the situation, and is probably not 100% accurate.

[Sonadow]

I agree with Delgarde about factory configuration. I had a lot of pain installing Windows 10 on my new kaby lake laptop. In a unrelated case last week I tried setting up UEFI partitioning in Windows installation, did you know you can't format a partition to FAT32 in Windows 10 Pro installation? I had to write a Linux ISO to USB drive just format the UEFI partition to FAT32. I am one of those that still uses an USB printer/scanner from 2005. My drivers have been working since Linux 2.6, however windows did not work past Vista. Windows 10 installation is also more complicated and takes longer than user-friendly Linux distributions I have tried. Lets not get into Windows policies, it's a whole new can of worms.

You don't even need to do that at all, and I am very certain I know what I am talking about because I have been doing it since the Win8 days. You just select the giant unpartitioned block and click on 'Next'. Windows automatically creates 4 partitions with the correct filesystem format in the background and immediately starts installing the OS without the need for any further user input. Those 4 partitions are:

1. an MSR reserved partition
2. a 100MB EFI system partition
3. the main partition for installing Windows
4. a 4th partition which I always seem to forget what it is for.

This is not like Linux where we have to first create the / partition, then a /swap partition, then a /boot, then a /boot/efi, then finally /home (if you use a separate /home partition) manually.

[TheBlackCat]

But it works out of the box. It even installs nvidia drivers for you. You nees 0 tinkering to install and use it.

If you are lucky. My wife's laptop needed a ton of tinkering to work around numerous bugs under Windows 10. If I were to install it under my laptop it would need an enormous amount of tinkering to boot at all, yet Linux (openSUSE) installs and runs fine with no tinkering.