How VP9 Video Encode/Decode Compares To H.264/H.265

[SystemCrasher]

Hell yeah! That was some interesting reading for me. Thanks. All my problems with Linux summed up.

Well, I'm using Linux here and there so I'm relatively well-aware of problems one can face.

My friends were like "You're blind, I get no tearing whatsoever with vsync enabled" but I always got it...

It depends on settings, desktop environment, whether you use compositing or not, etc. Compositing + vsync usually would make desktop more or less tear-free unless video driver is totally broken in terms of vsync. Yet there is catch: compositing can slow down stuff like 3D games. Modern compositors can autodetect fullscreen windows (aka games and somesuch) and get off the way. Partially solving slowdown issue.

Decent video players have many options for video output. It depends on video driver what works best. Often its OpenGL, unless your driver sucks at it, or VDPAU or VA-API, if your system and player support it. But browsers under Linux are ... not good with all this so far.

well I thought let's replace this ATI card with nVidia. So I did. Better experience, still I got tearing.

It also depens on definition of "better experience". Nvidia haves own issues. Poor system integration is their hallmark. You can't properly integrate blob with opensource system, and it would have specific odds, no matter what nvidia zealots yell.

Nobody believed me again. So indeed Xorg is a bad thing that somehow survived since 70s? Well, I try to use Wayland as much as possible,

Whole story is a bit more complicated. Graphic system evolved a lot and continues to do it. If you're curious, see http://ppaalanen.blogspot.ch/2014/06...nd-global.html to get some idea. But its small part of larger saga. This overview only covers it since ~2007, and only low level parts. And ... nvidia still walks their own ways, so its not about their blob either. While NV sworn to implement KMS in blob, it yet to be seen. Three years later. Sure, there're some reasons. Some of them are funny enough.

At least all this should give idea why people are messing with Wayland and Mir. Why google used something called "SurfaceFlinger" in Android, etc. Xorg is quite troublesome thing and there are multiple, hard-to-fix issues.

but window positioning is weird and I have to use nouveau which is not so good.

Speaking for myself I dislike nvidia, due to their opensource strategy, or, actually, lack of it. And making opensource drivers development much harder than it should be. Its just amazing how some company can be so hostile to opensource. Yes, Nvidia has got Torvalds's midle finger. Not even Microsoft managed to achieve it. Nvidia simply got it wrong. And when it comes to Linux development, nobody cares what would happen to nvidia and their blobs. That's just not how Linux development works.

Mir and ubuntu's experimental desktop is unusable as of my last attempt to use it.

Wayland is WIP as well. And can have bugs or shortcomings. And not mainstream yet. But you see, it had orders of magnitude less manpower thrown into it compared to xorg. Same goes for Mir. And btw, nvidia can be troublesome for such wishes. Because ... those blobmakers always think they know better what users MUST do and how. And until recently they had idea you should shut up and use xorg. Recently they started to get idea not everybody is happy with such approach, but I'm not sure where they are at this point with stuff like exposing EGL as vendor-independent interface to video driver, etc.

[Gusar]

Yeah, at the beginning there was no choice but to use libvpx. But now there is choice, so the browsers could switch. Chrome contains ffmpeg anyway, and Firefox can interface with it. Though I think Firefox's ffmpeg code is only for Linux and OSX.

Quoting myself because I have learned something very interesting about this - Firefox will in fact use ffmpeg for VP8/VP9 decoding. The commit log here says "We now use FFmpeg on linux to decode h264." (note, this means Gstreamer isn't needed anymore) and this one says "When ffmpeg is enabled, it will use the FFmpeg's VPX decoder."

Neat!