X.Org Server Gains Support For Auto-Binding Secondary GPUs To The Screen

[phoronix]

Phoronix: X.Org Server Gains Support For Auto-Binding Secondary GPUs To The Screen

Adding to the changes to find with the eventual X.Org Server 1.21 release is a change from Red Hat that has been carried by Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora for years...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Xorg-Auto-Bind-Secondary-GPUs

[ezst036]

I hope this will be sophisticated enough to allow DisplayLink devices to operate dual-use - either as a video extension of the primary desktop, or if the user chooses to re-assign the device as a secondary seat.

The same for secondary video cards, which are quite useful for adding additional seats.

[AndyChow]

I hope this will be sophisticated enough to allow DisplayLink devices to operate dual-use - either as a video extension of the primary desktop, or if the user chooses to re-assign the device as a secondary seat.

The same for secondary video cards, which are quite useful for adding additional seats.

What do you mean by secondary seat? Do you mean as a second user, with their own keyboard and mouse?

[ElectricPrism]

What do you mean by secondary seat? Do you mean as a second user, with their own keyboard and mouse?

Yes Multi-seat.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg_multiseat

[9Strike]

It's nice to see more work done for hybrid gpu users - already two big steps since the last xorg release - but sadly RedHat doesn't care about xorg any more. Afaik there is no solution for hybrid gpu users on wayland.

[brent]

It's sad to see X being neglected so much.

After all these years, Wayland is *still* not there. It's better, but still not even close. With latest GNOME on Fedora 30, I still see major glitches: mouse still isn't smooth (even if gnome-shell isn't busy), XWayland integration is shoddy (graphical glitches when resizing windows, clipboard issues), etc. Plus there's the general lack of configurability. For instance, I attached an external monitor and the GPU driver incorrectly chose limited RGB color range, resulting in washed-out colors. It's easy to change this with xrandr. On Wayland though? It's not possible to change it at all. Games and other fullscreen apps also can't unredirect properly, so you won't be able to disable Vsync or use variable refresh.

And on two occasions I experienced strange freezes with the only option being killing my session and restarting gdm. Unacceptable, and much better with X.

[guildem]

It's nice to see more work done for hybrid gpu users - already two big steps since the last xorg release - but sadly RedHat doesn't care about xorg any more. Afaik there is no solution for hybrid gpu users on wayland.

I don't know for gnome, but I'm on sway for almost one year with multiple gpus and it works perfectly, even better than xorg and xrandr tweaked. No configuration at all, one gpu do the calculation, and all is displayed on the all the outputs of all the gpus.

[starshipeleven]

I hope this will be sophisticated enough to allow DisplayLink devices

Leaving out for a moment that all modern DL devices need a blob driver, I thought that these things were not actual "GPU"s in the same sense that the older USB-VGA ones (or SIS ones) were and rely on the system's own GPU to exist and do the rendering.

Can this work even if the devices aren't actual GPUs but just doing display output?

[nerdopolis]

It should be possible. You assign GPUs to seats with udev, and then Xorg should query all GPUs using udev. DisplayLink 3 devices need some shim or whatever. DisplayLink 2 though is in the kernel... ...and doesn't really work with Weston though

[aufkrawall]

It's easy to change this with xrandr. On Wayland though? It's not possible to change it at all.

It might work with a custom EDID for that device, but that's of course not user friendly at all.
And while custom EDID works nicely with discrete AMD GPUs and external displays, it doesn't work at all on my Intel IGP notebook (read: only on Windows).