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>> Unfortunately we don't have the resources to test every variation of every GPU/driver combination on linux So Google doesn't have the resources to test the

>> Unfortunately we don't have the resources to test every variation of every GPU/driver combination on linux So Google doesn't have the resources to test the default driver on the most widespread linux distribution for one of the two most widespread GPU producers in the market.

zapzupnz 8y ago
I mean, just because it's one of two GPU producers, that doesn't mean the nvidia product line is simple. There are desktop chips, there are notebook chips, there are multiple versions of the same card made by different manufacturers who add their own little touches, there are different chipsets, there are different configurations, there are different X11 setups, there are different desktop environments which may enforce different settings, etc. It's not as simple as "one of the two most widespread GPU producers in the market".
- TylerE 8y ago
  and it's not one of two, it's one of three. Intel has huge market share, also, especially in things like notebooks.
shhehebehdh 8y ago
Obviously it’s not that Google doesn’t have the resources. They have enough resources to fund whole new OSes. Of course they could fund testing. Chrome team, on the other hand, does not have the resources. Which is to say that this is not the thing they believe is most important to work on at the margin, and given the amount of engineers Google will fund for the project.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  If the chrome team doesn't have the resources for testing the most common Linux configurations, it's not a good sign. Linux market share is low but it's a useful signifier.
  - a11595 8y ago
    you're the only one saying the don't. they are saying the most common linux configuration causes issues so blacklist the buggy driver in it they are also saying their that driver may work fine on some less common linux configurations, and the chrome team does not have the resources to test those. you are literally saying they are saying the opposite of what they said, then blaming them for it.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      They were using "not enough resources" to support the idea of blacklisting. If they meant it as you say, that means they're blanketly blacklisting the most common config despite having the resources to test it, which is even worse.
      - a11595 8y ago
        I'm not sure what is unclear to you here. They do support the idea of blacklisting for every possible unpopular config, despite it possibly working. This is not only common sense, it is what every company does. When you write your software, do you test it on every possible distribution users could use, or just the popular ones? The common distribution was blacklisted not because it was not tested, but because it clearly has issues observed and reported by the users.
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        ...no, "every company" does not blacklist unpopular configs.
        a11595 8y ago
        If your software doesn't work in a popular config they don't blacklist it in all the untested less popular configs? You are clear they are blacklisting the GPU driver, not blacklisting a linux install - right? If a driver does not work in popular configs, and needs to be blacklisted in those configs, your solution is to still whitelist it in other configs and have the browser likely not work. yes, "every company" does exactly what google did. you are being purposely dense, trying to catch a "technically correct" chance of not admitting the stupidity of your question. The problem is, you are not even technically correct - just purposely dense.
- geofft 8y ago
  Which, to be clear, seems entirely justifiable because software rendering exists. If Nvidia wants their cards to work well on an all-free-software stack, they can provide a free software driver. If users care about making an unofficial driver work, they can do the work or fund the work. Chrome is just trying to get web pages on the screen and it doesn't seem like it's worth the boil-the-ocean level of effort of taking responsibility for implementing a reverse-engineered graphics driver when they can just get web pages on the screen using software rendering.
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    As far as I understood they could get pages on the screen even with the nouveau driver.
    - chrismeller 8y ago
      That's the part that I don't understand. The bug report says on Linux the same rendering is used for the UI as well as the page content... but only the UI was ever having a problem? Something doesn't add up to me there, and no one that I saw ever addressed that in more detail.
bubblethink 8y ago
> most widespread linux distribution for one of the two most widespread GPU producers in the market That's still less than a percent of the market I think. Maybe shave off another order of magnitude. So the economic argument is not the one to make. However, it sucks nonetheless.
- zanny 8y ago
  Its still probably hundreds of thousands of users. I hate arguments about "but Linux is only a fraction of the market!" because the total OS / browser usage market is in the billions of people. Even small fractions of that pie could found their own countries and be of reasonable size for a nation.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    If the market share were compelling enough, couldn’t some other maintainer step up and do this work? OSS doesn’t necessarily mean support for everything under the sun at all costs; Chromium may be open source but that doesn’t mean they have carte blanche from Google to test every possible combination of distro and GPU.
    - lstodd 8y ago
      Why should those would-be maintaners help Google? There's always Firefox to fix.
      - murderfs 8y ago
        Firefox disables GPU acceleration on Linux entirely, largely for the same reasons.
        makomk 8y ago
        I'm pretty sure Mozilla just don't care about Linux these days. It's been getting steadily worse, and 64.0 is almost unusable for me due to a bug that has nothing to do with graphics which hangs the whole thing for minutes at a time.
ajross 8y ago
Not for a free product, no. It's not our place to decide for Google what they want to do. If we want our open source software to work we should make it work. You can rebuild chromium to change the blacklist, or just use the command line to tell it to ignore the blacklist. It's not like Google doesn't provide options. And in any case the reason nouveau sucks (and yes, folks, nouveau sucks) isn't Google's fault to begin with. You seriously want to complain about Google's lack of support for an open source driver that barely exists because of NVIDIA's lack of support?
- steve19 8y ago
  It's free in the sense you don't pay for it with money, but considering how much Google pays apple to use Google as the default search engine, I would say the Google Browser is a big money maker.
  - ajross 8y ago
    No, Chromium is free in the GNU sense, which is what I meant. You don't whine at open source providers to support features you want, it's bad form. Go fix it yourself, or use hardware that doesn't require this kind of hacky reverse engineering.
    - loeg 8y ago
      It's fairly uncommon for open source software to blacklist components that (attempt to) implement a compatible interface. Usually selecting an appropriate hardware driver is left in the hands of the distribution or administrator.
      - xyzzyz 8y ago
        Yes, and the distributor or administrator is free to rebuild the browser or just set the flag to disable blacklisting. It’s only default behavior that changed.
        8y ago
ender7 8y ago
No, in fact one of the bug comments refutes this sarcasm: > The default driver on the distribution we support is broken. They do test the default driver on the distributions they support. The tests show that the driver is unacceptably unstable. It may work better on other distros/versions, but they don't have time to test those. They're happy for others to help out in testing these unsupported combinations, however: > Again, if someone wants to spend the time to test thoroughly to narrow down the blacklist, we will accept patches.
blihp 8y ago
Unfortunately, 'the most widespread Linux distribution' is rounding error in the overall scheme of things from a desktop standpoint so it's actually pretty good that they support it as well as they do. Adding Nouveau to the mix is rounding error on the rounding error. So from Google's standpoint, sure they don't have the resources to test it relative to the number of impacted users. Looking at it another way: it's not like Apple or Microsoft will (ever) provide better support so they can get away with it. I solved the Chrome/Chromium on Linux problem long ago by switching to Firefox. I'll still fire up Chromium for Google sites and a handful of other sites, but for the most part Firefox has been getting it done for me.
- mda 8y ago
  They don't have the resources to "fix" it, they tested it and decided it was not stable enough. What they did was right. Firefox entirely disables GPU acceleration, so I am not sure what your argument is.
Mikeb85 8y ago
No, they don't want to waste time trying to make a broken driver work. It's an Ubuntu/Nvidia problem, not a Google problem. AMD and Intel open source drivers work just fine.
- frabbit 8y ago
  Exactly. Nvidia have been relentlessly hostile to Free Software for ever. No one who wants an easy life or a stable, upgradeable operating system would buy an Nvidia card.

zapzupnz 8y ago

I mean, just because it's one of two GPU producers, that doesn't mean the nvidia product line is simple. There are desktop chips, there are notebook chips, there are multiple versions of the same card made by different manufacturers who add their own little touches, there are different chipsets, there are different configurations, there are different X11 setups, there are different desktop environments which may enforce different settings, etc. It's not as simple as "one of the two most widespread GPU producers in the market".

TylerE 8y ago
and it's not one of two, it's one of three. Intel has huge market share, also, especially in things like notebooks.

shhehebehdh 8y ago

Obviously it’s not that Google doesn’t have the resources. They have enough resources to fund whole new OSes. Of course they could fund testing. Chrome team, on the other hand, does not have the resources. Which is to say that this is not the thing they believe is most important to work on at the margin, and given the amount of engineers Google will fund for the project.

Dylan16807 8y ago
If the chrome team doesn't have the resources for testing the most common Linux configurations, it's not a good sign. Linux market share is low but it's a useful signifier.
- a11595 8y ago
  you're the only one saying the don't. they are saying the most common linux configuration causes issues so blacklist the buggy driver in it they are also saying their that driver may work fine on some less common linux configurations, and the chrome team does not have the resources to test those. you are literally saying they are saying the opposite of what they said, then blaming them for it.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    They were using "not enough resources" to support the idea of blacklisting. If they meant it as you say, that means they're blanketly blacklisting the most common config despite having the resources to test it, which is even worse.
    - a11595 8y ago
      I'm not sure what is unclear to you here. They do support the idea of blacklisting for every possible unpopular config, despite it possibly working. This is not only common sense, it is what every company does. When you write your software, do you test it on every possible distribution users could use, or just the popular ones? The common distribution was blacklisted not because it was not tested, but because it clearly has issues observed and reported by the users.
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        ...no, "every company" does not blacklist unpopular configs.
        a11595 8y ago
        If your software doesn't work in a popular config they don't blacklist it in all the untested less popular configs? You are clear they are blacklisting the GPU driver, not blacklisting a linux install - right? If a driver does not work in popular configs, and needs to be blacklisted in those configs, your solution is to still whitelist it in other configs and have the browser likely not work. yes, "every company" does exactly what google did. you are being purposely dense, trying to catch a "technically correct" chance of not admitting the stupidity of your question. The problem is, you are not even technically correct - just purposely dense.
geofft 8y ago
Which, to be clear, seems entirely justifiable because software rendering exists. If Nvidia wants their cards to work well on an all-free-software stack, they can provide a free software driver. If users care about making an unofficial driver work, they can do the work or fund the work. Chrome is just trying to get web pages on the screen and it doesn't seem like it's worth the boil-the-ocean level of effort of taking responsibility for implementing a reverse-engineered graphics driver when they can just get web pages on the screen using software rendering.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  As far as I understood they could get pages on the screen even with the nouveau driver.
  - chrismeller 8y ago
    That's the part that I don't understand. The bug report says on Linux the same rendering is used for the UI as well as the page content... but only the UI was ever having a problem? Something doesn't add up to me there, and no one that I saw ever addressed that in more detail.

bubblethink 8y ago

> most widespread linux distribution for one of the two most widespread GPU producers in the market That's still less than a percent of the market I think. Maybe shave off another order of magnitude. So the economic argument is not the one to make. However, it sucks nonetheless.

zanny 8y ago
Its still probably hundreds of thousands of users. I hate arguments about "but Linux is only a fraction of the market!" because the total OS / browser usage market is in the billions of people. Even small fractions of that pie could found their own countries and be of reasonable size for a nation.
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  If the market share were compelling enough, couldn’t some other maintainer step up and do this work? OSS doesn’t necessarily mean support for everything under the sun at all costs; Chromium may be open source but that doesn’t mean they have carte blanche from Google to test every possible combination of distro and GPU.
  - lstodd 8y ago
    Why should those would-be maintaners help Google? There's always Firefox to fix.
    - murderfs 8y ago
      Firefox disables GPU acceleration on Linux entirely, largely for the same reasons.
      - makomk 8y ago
        I'm pretty sure Mozilla just don't care about Linux these days. It's been getting steadily worse, and 64.0 is almost unusable for me due to a bug that has nothing to do with graphics which hangs the whole thing for minutes at a time.

ajross 8y ago

Not for a free product, no. It's not our place to decide for Google what they want to do. If we want our open source software to work we should make it work. You can rebuild chromium to change the blacklist, or just use the command line to tell it to ignore the blacklist. It's not like Google doesn't provide options. And in any case the reason nouveau sucks (and yes, folks, nouveau sucks) isn't Google's fault to begin with. You seriously want to complain about Google's lack of support for an open source driver that barely exists because of NVIDIA's lack of support?

steve19 8y ago
It's free in the sense you don't pay for it with money, but considering how much Google pays apple to use Google as the default search engine, I would say the Google Browser is a big money maker.
- ajross 8y ago
  No, Chromium is free in the GNU sense, which is what I meant. You don't whine at open source providers to support features you want, it's bad form. Go fix it yourself, or use hardware that doesn't require this kind of hacky reverse engineering.
  - loeg 8y ago
    It's fairly uncommon for open source software to blacklist components that (attempt to) implement a compatible interface. Usually selecting an appropriate hardware driver is left in the hands of the distribution or administrator.
    - xyzzyz 8y ago
      Yes, and the distributor or administrator is free to rebuild the browser or just set the flag to disable blacklisting. It’s only default behavior that changed.
      - 8y ago

ender7 8y ago

No, in fact one of the bug comments refutes this sarcasm: > The default driver on the distribution we support is broken. They do test the default driver on the distributions they support. The tests show that the driver is unacceptably unstable. It may work better on other distros/versions, but they don't have time to test those. They're happy for others to help out in testing these unsupported combinations, however: > Again, if someone wants to spend the time to test thoroughly to narrow down the blacklist, we will accept patches.

blihp 8y ago

Unfortunately, 'the most widespread Linux distribution' is rounding error in the overall scheme of things from a desktop standpoint so it's actually pretty good that they support it as well as they do. Adding Nouveau to the mix is rounding error on the rounding error. So from Google's standpoint, sure they don't have the resources to test it relative to the number of impacted users. Looking at it another way: it's not like Apple or Microsoft will (ever) provide better support so they can get away with it. I solved the Chrome/Chromium on Linux problem long ago by switching to Firefox. I'll still fire up Chromium for Google sites and a handful of other sites, but for the most part Firefox has been getting it done for me.

mda 8y ago
They don't have the resources to "fix" it, they tested it and decided it was not stable enough. What they did was right. Firefox entirely disables GPU acceleration, so I am not sure what your argument is.

Mikeb85 8y ago

No, they don't want to waste time trying to make a broken driver work. It's an Ubuntu/Nvidia problem, not a Google problem. AMD and Intel open source drivers work just fine.

frabbit 8y ago
Exactly. Nvidia have been relentlessly hostile to Free Software for ever. No one who wants an easy life or a stable, upgradeable operating system would buy an Nvidia card.