KWin Maintainer On KDE Wayland Remains Uninterested In NVIDIA's Driver

[grok]

If you are a linux user, there is no reason to have an nvidia card. With AMD you have a competitive GPU (Intel cannot be good enough for a gamers) with the following advantages:
1) OpenGL compliance up to the last version
2) Vulkan driver compliance to the last specifications
3) DC proposed for inclusion in linux 4.15
Everything is finally in place to have a class A experience.
I have a RX580 and work perfectly: fedora update frequently the kernel (right now 4.13.9), but I'm no more scared by I new kernel installation, praying that after the boot I still have a desktop on the screen.
Everything works out of the box now, finally!
So, coming back to the start: if you are a linux user, there is no more reasons to have an nvidia card.

There can be reasons. Want a low power GPU with VGA out? There's the Geforce GT710, and about nothing else in fact (no low power desktop GPU, no graphics card with VGA out. Although there is GT1030 as overpriced low power GPU without VGA)

Not great though, it's an "old" Kepler GPU so it might fall out of mainstream support eventually. Might be good for years though .
You can order a Radeon 5450 or 6450 from ebay or similar but performance is low and in particular.. it's "old" thus I don't think you can ever expect all these great new driver things. Feels like having an ATI Rage Pro.

I ought to go back to Windows XP so that I can play offline games. When amdgpu will support GCN 1.0 I will have much less reason to rant though, if so radeon 7750 and R7 240 become good.

[chithanh]

For VGA out you can use adapters, DisplayPort->VGA and HDMI->VGA are inexpensive and work well for moderate resolutions.

Funniest thing in these texts is "everybody else use GBM". Who are these "everybody"? The only "everybody" that counts is AMD. And they've got hiperf driver which works well with Wayland, OpenGL and Vulkan couple of months ago. If somebody wants sway/plasma on wayland and sees Intel or Broadcom as good enough solutions, well, he can use nouveau and reboot to windows to play.

That comment displays misinformation bordering on self-delusion. Nouveau's feature set is not in any way comparable to the Intel driver. And yes, "everybody" literally means every company which supports Wayland except NVidia. From desktops to POS terminals to smartphones to IVI systems.

[Steffo]

(c) https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html

I need CUDA and a fully featured driver and full performance. And AMD lacked in AI support until recently and I'm not sure if their recent efforts with ROCm can compete with CUDA.

[Khrundel]

That comment displays misinformation bordering on self-delusion. Nouveau's feature set is not in any way comparable to the Intel driver. And yes, "everybody" literally means every company which supports Wayland except NVidia. From desktops to POS terminals to smartphones to IVI systems.

You can play words as you wish, but fact is: only NVidia and AMD offer solid 3d with desktop Linux and only half of them (lesser half) uses GBM. So, most of these "everybody" are no better than nouveau. If that sway guy wants to stick with Broadcom users - that is his right, but saying that Nvidia should support his marginal project because everybody like Intel and Broadcom... well, it just ridiculous.

[buzzrobot]

I'm sure Nvidia knows how much money it makes by supporting Linux. I'm also sure any investment or cost-bearing change in its Linux development effort is balanced against that, not against the revenue it generates from Windows, Apple, etc. sales. It's just pointlessly naive to assert that Nvidia should throw some of its "billions" against Linux.

Arguing that Linux users should avoid Nvidia and use AMD is a poor way to attract new people to Linux. Video cards are not cheap. How many current Nvidia owners would switch to Linux if it costs the price of a new AMD card? If you are a committed Linux user and it's time to buy a new card, then *right now* AMD might be the better option.

As a Linux user for umpteen years, and an Nvidia card owner, I have no reason at the moment to use Wayland. Prospects of me using it are weakened by individual developers being obstinate about what they see as points of principle.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

weakened by individual developers being obstinate about what they see as points of principle.

Nope, read it: https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/bl...stream-or-not/

[amehaye]

I need CUDA and a fully featured driver and full performance. And AMD lacked in AI support until recently and I'm not sure if their recent efforts with ROCm can compete with CUDA.

You can use CUDA headless and use an iGPU or an AMD APU for the display and enjoy both worlds. I had a setup like that, and actually got better CUDA performance because the card (the 'new' Titan X) didn't waste resources on display.

[Steffo]

You can use CUDA headless and use an iGPU or an AMD APU for the display and enjoy both worlds. I had a setup like that, and actually got better CUDA performance because the card (the 'new' Titan X) didn't waste resources on display.

Buying for policy reasons and a little bit more performance two graphic cards? Not interested.

[starshipeleven]

Metal isn’t popular outside apple. Literally 2000x the install base of any Linux. Next.

If we count gaming systems this figure is reversed. Basically only the Mac Pro and the new iMac Pro have a GPU capable of gaming.

Gee. Free os, free updates. Professional tech support. I think I am set for the next half decade.

-You pay for the OS when you buy the hardware (same as with Windows)
-Every OS around has free updates
-Tech support does not extend beyond the 1-2 years of warranty, and while it is indeed decent any power user and above can figure everything out on his own already on MacOS
-If you're not gaming or doing something heavy, anything will last you a decade if not more

[smitty3268]

You can play words as you wish, but fact is: only NVidia and AMD offer solid 3d with desktop Linux and only half of them (lesser half) uses GBM. So, most of these "everybody" are no better than nouveau. If that sway guy wants to stick with Broadcom users - that is his right, but saying that Nvidia should support his marginal project because everybody like Intel and Broadcom... well, it just ridiculous.

Intel offers a solid 3D desktop experience, and has 90% of the market, so I'd argue that they're the (only?) ones that actually matter. NVidia's marketshare in comparison is tiny.

Unless you're only talking about gamers or professional gpu markets - and why would kwin or other compositors care that much about that tiny market when they're presumably focused on the overall desktop market?