5 ms·

That would be quite interesting, since it uses the exact same graphics rendering code Linux uses, both in the kernel via DRM, and in userspace via Mesa and Gall

• pjmlp 7y ago
  Which is also not known for being the best graphics and game development platform out there. Anyone that actually cares about top graphics or game development tooling is either on Apple or Microsoft platforms.
  • peatmoss 7y ago
    I suspect there are plenty of people in this thread who’d love to see top tier games and development AND run on an open platform. In that sense, OpenBSD and Linux are both closer to supporting high-end games development than Windows and Mac are to being fully open platforms.
  • derefr 7y ago
    Your initial analogy is wrong, then, since—if modern Linux is also bad for those things—then OpenBSD being bad for those things wouldn't thereby make it an example of the OS "retaining classic Unix sensibilities" that modern Linux does not.
    • pjmlp 7y ago
      So other than SGI and NeXT, which although UNIX based had their focus on other kind of development stacks, which UNIX sensibilities are so great examples of graphical applications and game development tooling?
      • derefr 7y ago
        I think you misread my statement? I wasn't disagreeing with you. Rather, I was pointing out—in way of explaining why everyone was jumping to argue with you or downvote you—that the most obvious reading of your comments are an incoherent argument, and you should probably clarify what you mean. In your first comment, when you said "Like being quite bad for graphics programming and game development", you were implicitly forming the larger sentence: "[Retaining] classic Unix sensibilities ... like being quite bad for graphics programming and game development." And—since the topic of the thread was "OSes that are better because they avoid going down the road of RedHat-like 'modern' Unix sensibilities"—you were implicitly forming a larger assertion: "[OpenBSD, because it retains] classic Unix sensibilities [unlike RedHat] ... [is] quite bad for graphics programming and game development[, unlike RedHat, which is okay at those.]" And so that's what people tried to argue with you about, which I hope makes people's rebuttals to your first comment make more sense to you. But then, in your second comment, you went ahead and said that modern Linux is equally bad at doing these things. So clearly the expanded form of your assertion isn't what you meant. So... what were you actually trying to argue?
        • pjmlp 7y ago
          I guess I might have. I was arguing that only NeXT and SGI had a graphics workstation culture, where having UNIX underneath was more of a detail than anything else. No one cared that much of writing POSIX daemon and CLI tooling, the whole point was making the best use of the GUI frameworks, IDEs and their GPUs. Even when SGI offered IrisGL as the basis for OpenGL, they kept the best parts for them.
      • pcwalton 7y ago
        RenderDoc works great on Linux. I prefer it to the Metal debugger for the simple reason that it actually works without regularly crashing and popping up a "please file a radar" box.
        • pjmlp 7y ago
          Yeah, pity it only offers half of the features.
          • pcwalton 7y ago
            RenderDoc offers more useful features than the Metal debugger too. For example, RenderDoc is scriptable.
  • pcwalton 7y ago
    Linux graphics support is quite good as long as your driver is open source and in-tree. I was just talking the other day with the graphics team about how we haven't really had any problems on Linux/Intel because everything just works. Mac, on the other hand... oh boy. It's pretty much a disaster. There is no end of bugs in Apple's graphics stack, and no, Metal doesn't solve them all. The first time I ran the Metal port of my library, my MacBook Pro instantly kernel panicked. I have never had that happen on Linux.
    • pjmlp 7y ago
      As long as, that is the key expression. Besides, the driver is only a tiny portion of the whole tooling for any graphics, professional game engine minded developer.
      • pcwalton 7y ago
        Even the NVIDIA drivers on Linux are superior to macOS' drivers. The problem with the NVIDIA drivers is that they don't play well with the rest of the ecosystem, but they do work. The only area where Linux is behind in graphics is on mobile, where the GPU vendors are perpetually unable to write working drivers. I'm a professional graphics developer and I prefer the tooling on Linux to that of macOS.
        • pjmlp 7y ago
          Back to graphics drivers. Most professional graphics developer I know rather user better tooling than only bare bones graphics drivers and RenderDoc. I guess that is the same point of view that gave us OpenGL and Vulkan without any kind of tooling beyond drawing framebuffers with hardware support. I does appeal to some, but not the majority, otherwise Linux adoption would have moved beyond 1% by now.
          • pcwalton 7y ago
            Like most software developers, graphics developers develop where the users are. That's why they predominantly use Windows. Some use macOS, primarily to develop iOS apps, which is, again, where the most valuable users are, particularly in North America. Linux desktop market share, or lack thereof, has nothing to do with graphics tooling.
  • atq2119 7y ago
    Your choice of platforms is highly questionable. Either you're talking about high-end gaming, in which case Apple isn't in the game at all - the only players are Microsoft and Sony, though Google is making a bid now as well with Stadia. Or you're talking about low-end gaming, in which case Google probably matters most because of Android.
    • pjmlp 7y ago
      Which mobile platform got Fortnight first?