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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, o

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.
    - magicalist 8y ago
      Huh? It appears they did test it, and for that matter (according to the linked post) so did the Nouveau devs who also found it failed the easily accessible test suite.
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        We agree Nouveau is completely blacklisted right? That's the main problem here. And the test suite failed on a minor issue where the cause was uncertain, which gets in the way of checking for the bigger definitely-the-driver problem.
        magicalist 8y ago
        If you can hang the GPU with regular webgl content, that's not a minor issue.
        vfq 8y ago
        That's the reason I have webgl disabled even though I'm on Windows with a supported driver. It opens a gaping security/DoS hole without any benefit (do you ever see webgl used in any website?)
- shhehebehdh 8y ago
  They have the resources to test that configuration. They just don’t have the resources to fix the driver bugs the tests found.
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.

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.
  - magicalist 8y ago
    Huh? It appears they did test it, and for that matter (according to the linked post) so did the Nouveau devs who also found it failed the easily accessible test suite.
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      We agree Nouveau is completely blacklisted right? That's the main problem here. And the test suite failed on a minor issue where the cause was uncertain, which gets in the way of checking for the bigger definitely-the-driver problem.
      - magicalist 8y ago
        If you can hang the GPU with regular webgl content, that's not a minor issue.
        vfq 8y ago
        That's the reason I have webgl disabled even though I'm on Windows with a supported driver. It opens a gaping security/DoS hole without any benefit (do you ever see webgl used in any website?)
shhehebehdh 8y ago
They have the resources to test that configuration. They just don’t have the resources to fix the driver bugs the tests found.

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.