Google Still Doesn't Trust Linux GPU Drivers Enough To Enable Chrome Video Acceleration

[duby229]

Well, remember what happened when a certain KDE dev said "fuck Nvidia" in regards to GPU features with KWin and all the backlash that caused? How some defended Nvidia? That's probably why.

Yeah, and perhaps that's also why numerous devs don't like va-api. Truth is, in it's earliest forms va-api wasn't anywhere near as stable as vdpau. Of course that's old news now and is no longer even true, but I think it's where this idea that linux video acceleration isn't stable was born from. And it still gets defended by nVidia fanboys even though it's no longer true,

[schmidtbag]

Well, remember what happened when a certain KDE dev said "fuck Nvidia" in regards to GPU features with KWin and all the backlash that caused? How some defended Nvidia? That's probably why.

I see your point, but KDE is a much smaller team and didn't support Nvidia out of principle. Google has the money and the resources, and them not supporting Nvidia would be more due to technical problems.

Yeah, and perhaps that's also why numerous devs don't like va-api. Truth is, in it's earliest forms va-api wasn't anywhere near as stable as vdpau. Of course that's old news now and is no longer even true, but I think it's where this idea that linux video acceleration isn't stable was born from. And it still gets defended by nVidia fanboys even though it's no longer true,

Unfortunately, nobody likes to drop first impressions.

[dungeon]

There are exactly three GPU drivers for desktop Linux available:

- mesa
- nvidia proprietary
- amdgpu-pro proprietary

On this hardware decoding regard, there are only two drivers actually... amdgpu-pro uses same thing as mesa, so it is just mesa and nvidia.

Basically Chrome only needs to target to support stable nvidia drivers and stable mesa drivers, really nothing else.

And that will cut off new hardware support since drivers there are often not finished yet or are buggy even for old That is how thing goes, as if your hardware is so new and/or if your drivers are buggy or broken, then good bye try Chromium maybe

[cybertraveler]

Millions of Windows users all over the world build their own DIY PC from off-the-shelf component and successfully get a perfectly working system installed within two hours maximum. With perfect up-to-date drivers that enable full power management and unlocks the full capabilities of the hardware they paid money for.

Unlike Linux. Look at the shitfest when Ryzen was released. Windows users had 0 problems on launch day; Linux users had to put up with black screens and kernels panicking on boot.

1. These are not normal WIndows users. They are a minority. They are techies/geeks doing something which most people don't understand.
2. GNU/Linux techies/geeks are likely smart enough to pre-select hardware that they know will work with their system. It's not hard to look this stuff up.

I'm not even sure that Windows 7 & Windows 10 support more hardware than GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux has great support for old hardware and it also runs on lots of non-x86 platforms.

I have a USB game controller next to me that is plug-and-play on GNU/Linux but does not run on Windows 7 or 10: there are no drivers available for it. It used to run on Windows XP.

Windows users do that everyday and the OS doesn't shit on them for doing so. Install a package from elsewhere in Linux and there's a risk that the distribution won't even boot anymore after a reboot.

Software applications like web browsers can auto-update on the fly in Windows; even today, Google and Mozilla can't even turn on the auto-updating features of their software in Linux by default because Linux's userland is so damn monolithic and glued together with stupid dependencies that result in the application suddenly failing to launch after an update.

There are some upsides to how Windows does things: this is why so much effort has been put into Snap, Flatpak, Appimage & Steam. So GNU/Linux is gaining all these upsides.

GNU/Linux users have long benefited from amazing repo integration that Windows users could only dream of. Everything install/removed/updating from one place (just like Android and iOS app-stores adopted).

I use both Windows and GNU/Linux. There are things I like about Windows, but over-all the experience on GNU/Linux is a million times better. Choosing to do DIY/techy stuff is optional on GNU/Linux. Buy a nice GNU/Linux PC from Dell, System 76 or similar (I suggest not with an NVIDIA graphics card) and stick to using the repos, Steam, Flatpak, Snap & Appimage and you will have an amazing experience: as good as, or better than Windows.

It's different though: GNU/Linux is not windows. Same with Mac OS X. It's different to Windows. Any arguments that I can't do this exact action like on Windows or install Windows application X, are bad arguments. You have to do the equivalent for the OS you use. If there is no equivalent then maybe that OS isn't right for you.

[LeJimster]

I must have been using video acceleration without issue for months, but recently I was getting annoying stuttering,hickups when playing youtube videos especially. After disabling video acceleration, much better.

[dungeon]

On both AMD drivers I had issues with GCN 1.0 hardware for video accel.

That is another mess that AMD created with (non)supporting GCN 1.0/1.1 with several drivers, radeon or amdgpu or fglrx or amdgpu-pro or ...

Users of these have minimum four heads

So Google might be right after all?

Of course they are right, just look of just that AMD drivers situation for the same GCN 1.0/1.1 hardware - these are glorous example of a mess

How they can enable anything for one same hardware with so many drivers combos and versions on all supported distros, it is mission impossible

Also GCN1.0/1.1 are not just one or two hardware envoroments, there were about 150 ASICs of these (OK, some minority of that did not had UVD) So works for me, does not work here... as you need at least plain majority to prove it working, preferably even above 90% so we can claim some sort of perfection

To ignore mess, maybe GCN 1.2+ could be more clearly targeted here as they only do amdgpu... but that is short so just 4+ year old hardware He, he, and some 1.2 were supported by FGLRX yeah, so no So no, maybe just 1.3+ but these are just new ones, still sold... OK just forget about anything

[Guest]

With that mindset linux will still be shit, the problem is elsewhere

One new distro per day, and yet nothing is usable

On other hand Chrome OS is smooth as fuck, maybe the problem is these distro makers "hey i wanna create my own OS because i'm haxor, go download it, it's called Ultimate Linux OS"

........it is very usable. Much more so than Windows or macOS in some cases. This is just Google deciding not to support open source software - now that they have "Linux app" support on ChromeOS, other Linux distros are competitors.

[rhysk]

It's unfortunate, but understandable, that the Chrome team make this decision.
As said however, the video decode drivers in Linux are open source -- wouldn't it be great if Google allocated some resources (employees, consultants, contractors) to improve this situation. Whilst the starting point would likely be for the hardware shipping on ChromeOS devices, these investments could benefit the entire ecosystem of common hardware if properly abstracted.

[Guest]

I must have been using video acceleration without issue for months, but recently I was getting annoying stuttering,hickups when playing youtube videos especially. After disabling video acceleration, much better.

Might be due to a different issue with Chromium's GPU driver workarounds. Chromium has been janky and unresponsive for me for a few months, regardless of the HW acceleration setting - as soon as I disabled GPU driver workarounds, it started working perfectly fine. They haven't bothered fixing it.

[Britoid]

The last time I had an issue like that, like 6 or 7 years ago

This was ~10 months ago, application needed newer version of libvala (I think?) than what was in the 16.04 repo. Downloaded a newer deb of libvala, installing application worked. Now a bunch of other applications no longer work as they didn't like that version of libvala. Yes maybe it didn't happen to you, but it does still happen and it shouldn't.

Windows has issues but this doesn't happen on Windows, partially because applications bundle their dependencies or by using runtimes (redistributables). Flatpak/Snap solves this by bundling dependencies and/or using runtimes. Android also bundles dependencies.

The Linux desktop has issues, and people can blame nVidia, Google etc all people want but it doesn't solve that they're there.