Some Linux/Open-Source Letdowns Last For Years

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Some Linux/Open-Source Letdowns Last For Years

New Year's Eve two years ago I wrote about the open-source / Linux letdowns of 2018. It was well received at the time and sparked some interesting discussions so as we celebrate the start of 2021 I figured it would be interesting to look back and see which of those letdowns were since resolved and what ones are remaining...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Letdowns-EOY2020

[Sonadow]

Meanwhile, the items still not addressed -- or fully addressed -- include:
Open-Source NVIDIA / Nouveau

Nouveau works well enough to run a graphical desktop under Wayland, as long as it's not Plasma. And that's what really matters.

[Shiba]

X.Org Still Ever Present On Linux Desktops

[yoshi314]

Nouveau works well enough to run a graphical desktop under Wayland, as long as it's not Plasma. And that's what really matters.

i have some legacy nvidia cards that are perfectly good for non-gaming desktop usage (including watching videos in 1080p), but are absolute garbage with nouveau. especially nvidia ION gpu.

so i am a bit skeptical about that "well enough"

[loganj]

Xfce 4.14 Not Released Yet - Xfce 4.14 ended up being released in 2019.

[Sonadow]

X.Org Still Ever Present On Linux Desktops

I'm waiting for Deepin to finally move their desktop environment to Wayland. Unfortunately, they have said that it's not a priority with X still present, and many of China's domestic Linux distributions like UOS and Kylin are still on X.

I just hope they are not thinking of staying on X forever.

[Sonadow]

i have some legacy nvidia cards that are perfectly good for non-gaming desktop usage (including watching videos in 1080p), but are absolute garbage with nouveau. especially nvidia ION gpu.

so i am a bit skeptical about that "well enough"

My GT610 says otherwise.

It doesn't work on Weston, but functions on Gnome Wayland, and randomly locks up under Plasma Wayland.

[skeevy420]

For me it's the lack of 1st class OpenZFS support from any distribution aside from Ubuntu. Nothing against Ubuntu; I'd rather have a Pacman-based distribution. I've used their ZFS setup and it's pretty nice and I was able to upgrade it into a mirrored setup very easily. It'd be cool if the use of Zsys spread from more than just Ubuntu.

If you can get over the out-of-tree status it really is a nice FS. More features and abilities than you can shake a stick at and very few things come close in the consumer-grade, open source world. Plus it works on Linux, FreeBSD, & MacOS natively and, for power users, on Windows with WSL2 if you build your own kernel with ZFS built-in...which is true for any file system and WSL2. No reason you can't use BTRFS or F2FS on Windows like that. Just a tip if you game and dual boot: WSL2 is a nice way to transfer stuff from Windows Disk to Linux Disk. But outside of Microsoft File Systems, OpenZFS is one of the best cross-platform options.

IMHO, OpenZFS is much better when compared to most other out-of-tree drivers that won't be included in kernel. At least it's open source unlike Nvidia's Blob or even AMDGPU-Pro. It's problem is it's too free for Linux. No kidding. Too free for Linux. Can't make that up, people.

Since I'm a KDE Plasma user most of the letdowns really don't effect me all that much aside from AMD and their (non-existent) control panel. I don't see why they can't just pick one of the open source tools and hire that dev. We need a GUI; you made a GUI; problem solved.

[skeevy420]

Xfce 4.14 Not Released Yet - Xfce 4.14 ended up being released in 2019.

It's under the list of resolved issues.

[Shiba]

i have some legacy nvidia cards that are perfectly good for non-gaming desktop usage (including watching videos in 1080p), but are absolute garbage with nouveau. especially nvidia ION gpu.

so i am a bit skeptical about that "well enough"

Perfectly agree. The very long list of problems with my 310M ranges from unreasonable performance ratio to VDPAU giving kernel panic. Nouveau is not an option, never has been.