4 ms·

That isn’t waylands fault, it’s the closed source third parties

reidrac 7y ago
That was the same argument gnome 3 used when it wasn't working in my Nvidia GPU: the driver is buggy, not our fault. This is very hard to explain to your users, because there's nothing they can do. So yes, it really doesn't matter too much why if the software doesn't work. I don't mind X until Wayland is ready for all.
- Tharkun 7y ago
  That's been the argument for every Linux problem for at least as long as I've been using Linux. WiFi drivers used to suck. To the point that you had to be careful which WiFi card (yes, card) you bought, because only a couple of models worked on Linux at all. This situation took an extremely long time to get better. The same thing happened (and is still happening) with graphics cards. But at least most of them sort of work, instead of outright failing. As long as enough consumers don't actively demand decent Linux (or BSD, whatever) support, it will never come. I'd suggest voting with your wallets, but with the laptop market being the steaming pile of shit that it is, that's virtually impossible. The year of the Linux desktop...just like fusion power, is always just around the corner.
  - komali2 7y ago
    Sometimes manufacturers lie to us, though. Like the Thinkpad x1 Carbon was supposed to be "linux-ready," and then it ships with sleep functionality broken for a couple months until they managed to get a BIOS fix through. I tried to vote with my wallet, but this is what Linux is like /shrug
- shmerl 7y ago
  It's actually easy to explain - ditch Nvidia, they aren't supporting Linux properly. Pretty clear message, and users either get it and ditch it, and if not, nothing you could do to help them. It's totally Nvidia's fault.
  - reidrac 7y ago
    My Nvidia GPU was fine until gnome 3 happened. See, is not my fault. It had good drivers and decent support. Now I use only Intel because... well, it works. But I don't bother with 3D gaming, of course. My point is that you can blame the manufacturers because their support is broken, but you can't blame the users because they will use something else (I know I did: XFCE works great). EDIT: Gnome shell was initially released in 2011. This may or may not have changed, for better or worse. I moved on.
    - shmerl 7y ago
      Nvidia is far from fine. To understand their attitude, read this comment from one of the leading Nouveau developers: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-drivers/open-source-nvidia-linux-nouveau/998310-nouveau-persevered-in-2017-for-open-source-nvidia-but-2018-could-be-much-better?p=998316#post998316 https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-d... I agree, you can't blame users for it, but you can totally tell them to try to switch. DE and Wayland compositor developers can't spend resources cleaning up the mess that Nvidia created by refusing to upstream their driver and preventing Nouveau from working properly as well.
sbov 7y ago
Users don't care whose fault it is. Once you start laying blame you've already lost.
- darkpuma 7y ago
  Users not knowing or caring about these details is precisely why users should be kept away from the management of these projects. The details do matter, even if the user lacks the context or domain specific knowledge to make heads from tails of those details.
kevingadd 7y ago
Drivers are often bad and nvidia's especially so but at this point if it's been years and you can't get a desktop window manager compositing on top of a GPU stack the problem seems increasingly likely to be you and not them. Blitting quads is not THAT hard. We've got vendors like Mozilla out there rasterizing entire webpages on NVIDIA (and AMD now, I think?) GPUs but Wayland can't reliably composite window bitmaps for some reason?
jchw 7y ago
For whom does that actually matter, though?
- darkpuma 7y ago
  Wayland developers, who are not GPU reverse-engineers.
  - jchw 7y ago
    Sure, but they already know this. You or anyone else on Hacker News is not clarifying this for them. Meanwhile, telling users who to blame does nothing for them. They don’t care. To them, the best entity to blame is the distribution, that’s pretty much their job. But while blame doesn’t fix problems, neither does doing nothing. What I’m suggesting is, the move to Wayland needs to be pushed harder if anything is going to be fixed. Nvidia can’t hold it back, that’s not sustainable. But again, users can’t do that. Distributions can do that. Distributions can tell people, sorry, we can’t support Nvidia, contact Nvidia, they already promised to work towards this, and what they produced is incomplete. If they continue to support X11, there's no urgency to fixing the issues with Wayland. This isn’t really about blame though, it’s about responsibility. Somebody has to fix the problem. Open source projects like Nouveau can help, but Nvidia has blocked progress by requiring signed blobs and continually not providing access to important information (like technical bits for reclocking.) I think that is pretty much reason enough to suggest Nvidia should be shouldering the pressure and responsibility to deliver a good Linux experience, and we should absolutely hold them to it, until or if they stop blocking open source efforts on purpose. Establishing blame would tell you who’s fault it is that something is broken. Answer is nearly useless imo. Only thing that matters is how do we fix it and possibly what can be done to prevent it from happening again. Saying Nvidia should fix it is different from worrying about who is to blame; if you frame it that way, they could fire back about how kernel licensing restrictions make their life harder, and nobody cares about that issue either.
    - darkpuma 7y ago
      > "Meanwhile, telling users who to blame does nothing for them. They don’t care. To them, the best entity to blame is the distribution, that’s pretty much their job." I think there is value in telling users to vent their frustration in a productive direction; namely at Nvidia who has the power to change the situation, rather than at Wayland developers who are likely just as frustrated. I think we both generally agree on that.

That was the same argument gnome 3 used when it wasn't working in my Nvidia GPU: the driver is buggy, not our fault. This is very hard to explain to your users, because there's nothing they can do. So yes, it really doesn't matter too much why if the software doesn't work. I don't mind X until Wayland is ready for all.

Tharkun 7y ago
That's been the argument for every Linux problem for at least as long as I've been using Linux. WiFi drivers used to suck. To the point that you had to be careful which WiFi card (yes, card) you bought, because only a couple of models worked on Linux at all. This situation took an extremely long time to get better. The same thing happened (and is still happening) with graphics cards. But at least most of them sort of work, instead of outright failing. As long as enough consumers don't actively demand decent Linux (or BSD, whatever) support, it will never come. I'd suggest voting with your wallets, but with the laptop market being the steaming pile of shit that it is, that's virtually impossible. The year of the Linux desktop...just like fusion power, is always just around the corner.
- komali2 7y ago
  Sometimes manufacturers lie to us, though. Like the Thinkpad x1 Carbon was supposed to be "linux-ready," and then it ships with sleep functionality broken for a couple months until they managed to get a BIOS fix through. I tried to vote with my wallet, but this is what Linux is like /shrug
shmerl 7y ago
It's actually easy to explain - ditch Nvidia, they aren't supporting Linux properly. Pretty clear message, and users either get it and ditch it, and if not, nothing you could do to help them. It's totally Nvidia's fault.
- reidrac 7y ago
  My Nvidia GPU was fine until gnome 3 happened. See, is not my fault. It had good drivers and decent support. Now I use only Intel because... well, it works. But I don't bother with 3D gaming, of course. My point is that you can blame the manufacturers because their support is broken, but you can't blame the users because they will use something else (I know I did: XFCE works great). EDIT: Gnome shell was initially released in 2011. This may or may not have changed, for better or worse. I moved on.
  - shmerl 7y ago
    Nvidia is far from fine. To understand their attitude, read this comment from one of the leading Nouveau developers: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-drivers/open-source-nvidia-linux-nouveau/998310-nouveau-persevered-in-2017-for-open-source-nvidia-but-2018-could-be-much-better?p=998316#post998316 https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-d... I agree, you can't blame users for it, but you can totally tell them to try to switch. DE and Wayland compositor developers can't spend resources cleaning up the mess that Nvidia created by refusing to upstream their driver and preventing Nouveau from working properly as well.

sbov 7y ago

Users don't care whose fault it is. Once you start laying blame you've already lost.

darkpuma 7y ago
Users not knowing or caring about these details is precisely why users should be kept away from the management of these projects. The details do matter, even if the user lacks the context or domain specific knowledge to make heads from tails of those details.

kevingadd 7y ago

Drivers are often bad and nvidia's especially so but at this point if it's been years and you can't get a desktop window manager compositing on top of a GPU stack the problem seems increasingly likely to be you and not them. Blitting quads is not THAT hard. We've got vendors like Mozilla out there rasterizing entire webpages on NVIDIA (and AMD now, I think?) GPUs but Wayland can't reliably composite window bitmaps for some reason?

jchw 7y ago

For whom does that actually matter, though?

darkpuma 7y ago
Wayland developers, who are not GPU reverse-engineers.
- jchw 7y ago
  Sure, but they already know this. You or anyone else on Hacker News is not clarifying this for them. Meanwhile, telling users who to blame does nothing for them. They don’t care. To them, the best entity to blame is the distribution, that’s pretty much their job. But while blame doesn’t fix problems, neither does doing nothing. What I’m suggesting is, the move to Wayland needs to be pushed harder if anything is going to be fixed. Nvidia can’t hold it back, that’s not sustainable. But again, users can’t do that. Distributions can do that. Distributions can tell people, sorry, we can’t support Nvidia, contact Nvidia, they already promised to work towards this, and what they produced is incomplete. If they continue to support X11, there's no urgency to fixing the issues with Wayland. This isn’t really about blame though, it’s about responsibility. Somebody has to fix the problem. Open source projects like Nouveau can help, but Nvidia has blocked progress by requiring signed blobs and continually not providing access to important information (like technical bits for reclocking.) I think that is pretty much reason enough to suggest Nvidia should be shouldering the pressure and responsibility to deliver a good Linux experience, and we should absolutely hold them to it, until or if they stop blocking open source efforts on purpose. Establishing blame would tell you who’s fault it is that something is broken. Answer is nearly useless imo. Only thing that matters is how do we fix it and possibly what can be done to prevent it from happening again. Saying Nvidia should fix it is different from worrying about who is to blame; if you frame it that way, they could fire back about how kernel licensing restrictions make their life harder, and nobody cares about that issue either.
  - darkpuma 7y ago
    > "Meanwhile, telling users who to blame does nothing for them. They don’t care. To them, the best entity to blame is the distribution, that’s pretty much their job." I think there is value in telling users to vent their frustration in a productive direction; namely at Nvidia who has the power to change the situation, rather than at Wayland developers who are likely just as frustrated. I think we both generally agree on that.