The Most Interesting New Features Of Linux 6.0

[marlock]

h264 is almost obsolete = "technologically superseeded", but not "in disuse"

it's still heavily used in some segments despite better alternatives existing in part due to inertia and in part due to a ton of currently in use devices not having hardware accelerated en/decoding support for anything newer (and newer codecs like h265/hevc are much more cpu-heavy which can make them prohibitive in low-powered devices without such dedicated hardware en/decoding)

otoh its most substantial drop in usage will probably come at similar timing from patents expiring, possibly making it a largely moot victory

also the feature was dropped effective immediately and will (has already?) come as an update for current versions of the distro, not just newer major versions in a few years like is usual when adding new features... in a sense it's a fix for a legal issue

[caligula]

Fedora Linux Disabling Mesa's H.264 / H.265 / VC1 VA-API Support Over Legal Concerns


I love irony like that.

H264 is almost obsolete. The patents will expire in few years.

[marlock]

again going by what was discussed on that other article, this is not an issue for Nvidia GPU, where the license fees seem to be handled by Nvidia itself and included in the GPU price, with the codec enabled on their proprietary driver

one of the ironies is that you as a user would only really need a single license, but end up paying for it (or someone ends up paying for it in your stead) several times... or worse you did get a license with the nvidia dGPU but still are blocked from using it with noveau or an AMD iGPU on the same PC... patents are a horrible mess

[gsedej]

Thanks for the information. By the way, I'm surprised that these license fees are not included in video card's price.

Because the one who puts brand in final product pays. This is distro. Or video player if uses own non-os codecs.

[gosh000]

you'll notice a link to recent issues with h265 being enabled by default on Fedora when it shouldn't for legal reasons and now disabled on that distro... from that article and the discussions on the comments therein, i understood that the code implementation itself incurs no patent penalty, but shipping it to users without paying the respective licencing fees is problematic and could open RedHat to lawsuits (while also hurting the distributability of the distro if it shipped with individual licences, etc)

Thanks for the information. By the way, I'm surprised that these license fees are not included in video card's price.

[marlock]

I was triggered a bit by h265. What does kernel have in common with video codec? And particulary patented codec...

GPUs usually have dedicated silicon for video encoding/decoding, which need to be supported by the kernel to some degree to enable video acceleration

modern enough GPUs support h265/hevc among other proprietary formats in their hardware+firmware

you'll notice a link to recent issues with h265 being enabled by default on Fedora when it shouldn't for legal reasons and now disabled on that distro... from that article and the discussions on the comments therein, i understood that the code implementation itself incurs no patent penalty, but shipping it to users without paying the respective licencing fees is problematic and could open RedHat to lawsuits (while also hurting the distributability of the distro if it shipped with individual licences, etc)

the kernel bits seem to not be the heart of the issue, and steps are being taken to modularize the userspace mesa components to make sure Fedora can keep away from a lawsuit while making it easy for individual users to grab the needed component and deploy it without needing to recompile and replace mesa itself

[kapouer]

Also worth knowing: linux 6.0 brings several patches that allow much better support of rockchip-based chromebooks, incidentally.
This comes at the right time since chromeos dropped support for those models earlier this year.

[Mitch]

I think that recent urgent fix for AMD CPUs not doing that really old CPU workaround is worth mentioning in this list. Isn't that 6.0? It has some performance and hopefully perf/watt benefits.

[gsedej]

I was triggered a bit by h265. What does kernel have in common with video codec? And particulary patented codec...

[skeevy420]

- The H.265/HEVC media user-space API is now declared stable.

Fedora Linux Disabling Mesa's H.264 / H.265 / VC1 VA-API Support Over Legal Concerns


I love irony like that.