4 ms·

NVidia has a horrible history of Linux support. GBM works just fine, they've simply chosen not to support it.

calcifer 7y ago
Nvidia has excellent support, I think you are conflating Linux with open source. For decades, Nvidia had (and arguably still has) excellent support for the former, without really caring for the latter.
- ori_b 7y ago
  How long did it take to get multiple monitors working with xrandr, again?
  - calcifer 7y ago
    Funnily enough, this is exactly what I was talking about. Nvidia supported multiple monitors on Linux for decades using TwinView, they simply didn't add support for the open source xrandr for 4-5 years, but even that has been supported for ~7 years now.
    - ori_b 7y ago
      > Nvidia supported multiple monitors on Linux for decades using TwinView And Xorg supported them for decades before using Xinerama. Instead of collaborating with upstream, they just dumped something incompatible and broken, and said "Deal with it".
  - p_l 7y ago
    Multi monitor display worked perfectly for long time, long before "it works on intel, let's call it new standard" crew decided that flat shared framebuffer is the only way to go (apparently because of compositors and nothing else), something that also broke support for multi-gpu and especially heterogenous multi-gpu.
    - vbernat 7y ago
      Zaphod mode is still available. nVidia pushed its TwinView solution while everybody else was using either the Zaphod mode or Xinerama. I don't think TwinView on Linux allowed any dynamic configuration. So, when the rest of the world switched to the RandR extension, every graphic card was able to dynamically add/remove monitors while nVidia users were stuck with a subpar solution.
- boudin 7y ago
  Expect supporting wayland properly, which all other major vendors have been doing for quite a while. I wouldn't call this excellent at all...
  - calcifer 7y ago
    > Expect supporting wayland properly Doing what everyone else does != doing it properly > I wouldn't call this excellent at all So far Wayland support is most further in Gnome and even there a lot of features are still missing/broken despite Wayland being well over a decade old at this point. A lot of very basic features (remote desktop, screen sharing, exclusive fullscreen, keyboard/mouse shortcuts) are still in their infancy. Not to mention both Gnome and KDE have implemented their Wayland compositor inside the shell process so now a compositor crash means you lose all your open apps which hasn't been a problem in Linux for decades.
    - ekc 7y ago
      The protocol is over a decade old; the implementations of it are not.
    - boudin 7y ago
      I would like to see the approach your pronning of "not doing like others" applied to some other protocols like TCP. Networking would be really fun and Internet a great success. The very concept of a protocol is that everybody does the same, the underlying implementation is different. Wayland and its current limitations have nothing to do with, and does not excuse neither, nvidia's non-compliant implementation.
    - snazz 7y ago
      > A lot of very basic features (remote desktop, screen sharing, exclusive fullscreen, keyboard/mouse shortcuts) are still in their infancy. - remote desktop: good point. Considering that screen recordings work fine, I don't see a technical reason that a Wayland remote desktop setup couldn't work. - exclusive fullscreen: what do you mean by this? Using Firefox, F11 and Super-F both work in Sway and F11 works with GNOME. - keyboard/mouse shortcuts: maybe? The fact that a random process can no longer read all of your keystrokes seems like a plus, to me. Otherwise, just add a shortcut to your window manager or DE and run a command of your choice. - losing all apps on compositor restart: Only an issue with GNOME and KDE. Pressing Super-Shift-C on Sway reloads the compositor and not your apps.
- arghwhat 7y ago
  Are you referring to the small decade it took them to support KMS so that their driver behaved even remotely like a modern one? Or perhaps their marvelous installation methods of running a random script as root that rewrites configuration files, and its configuration interface that likewise also rewrites configuration files in attempts to get multi-monitor setups working that until recently hardly ever worked? Maybe you are referring to their magnificent support, forcing you to stay on outdated kernels as upgrading would break compatibility and render you without a functioning graphics adapter short of a VGA-resolution framebuffer console? It could also be their fantastic backwards compatibility, requiring you to keep track of driver series compatible with certain adapters, where every other GPU in existence just works OOB. I used NVIDIA up until a 2 years back. While you could arguably get things to work, claiming they had excellent support is laughable at best.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    Most distros have a nvidia driver package that aligns with the kernel version shipped. This also means updating one updates the other automatically. Furthermore lag time for supporting newest kernel normally lags what 30 days? In brief what you are describing is self inflicted wounds.
    - arghwhat 7y ago
      Indeed, any problems spawning from using NVIDIA can be considered self-inflicted, which is why I left that dumpsterfire.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    I think he refers to the fact that Nvidia's drivers provided excellent OpenGL support for multiple years compared to the absolute dumpsterfire that fglrx was. Before Valve decided to pay attention to Linux and thus prod AMD to improve their drivers, if you wanted anything approaching serious 3D performance on Linux, you had to use Nvidia. Anything else would be a waste of money.
    - arghwhat 7y ago
amelius 7y ago
NVidia has a different problem too. Every time I want to install one of their cards for computing purposes only (not graphics), the installation procedure starts messing with my display system. Drives me crazy.

Nvidia has excellent support, I think you are conflating Linux with open source. For decades, Nvidia had (and arguably still has) excellent support for the former, without really caring for the latter.

ori_b 7y ago
How long did it take to get multiple monitors working with xrandr, again?
- calcifer 7y ago
  Funnily enough, this is exactly what I was talking about. Nvidia supported multiple monitors on Linux for decades using TwinView, they simply didn't add support for the open source xrandr for 4-5 years, but even that has been supported for ~7 years now.
  - ori_b 7y ago
    > Nvidia supported multiple monitors on Linux for decades using TwinView And Xorg supported them for decades before using Xinerama. Instead of collaborating with upstream, they just dumped something incompatible and broken, and said "Deal with it".
- p_l 7y ago
  Multi monitor display worked perfectly for long time, long before "it works on intel, let's call it new standard" crew decided that flat shared framebuffer is the only way to go (apparently because of compositors and nothing else), something that also broke support for multi-gpu and especially heterogenous multi-gpu.
  - vbernat 7y ago
    Zaphod mode is still available. nVidia pushed its TwinView solution while everybody else was using either the Zaphod mode or Xinerama. I don't think TwinView on Linux allowed any dynamic configuration. So, when the rest of the world switched to the RandR extension, every graphic card was able to dynamically add/remove monitors while nVidia users were stuck with a subpar solution.
boudin 7y ago
Expect supporting wayland properly, which all other major vendors have been doing for quite a while. I wouldn't call this excellent at all...
- calcifer 7y ago
  > Expect supporting wayland properly Doing what everyone else does != doing it properly > I wouldn't call this excellent at all So far Wayland support is most further in Gnome and even there a lot of features are still missing/broken despite Wayland being well over a decade old at this point. A lot of very basic features (remote desktop, screen sharing, exclusive fullscreen, keyboard/mouse shortcuts) are still in their infancy. Not to mention both Gnome and KDE have implemented their Wayland compositor inside the shell process so now a compositor crash means you lose all your open apps which hasn't been a problem in Linux for decades.
  - ekc 7y ago
    The protocol is over a decade old; the implementations of it are not.
  - boudin 7y ago
    I would like to see the approach your pronning of "not doing like others" applied to some other protocols like TCP. Networking would be really fun and Internet a great success. The very concept of a protocol is that everybody does the same, the underlying implementation is different. Wayland and its current limitations have nothing to do with, and does not excuse neither, nvidia's non-compliant implementation.
  - snazz 7y ago
    > A lot of very basic features (remote desktop, screen sharing, exclusive fullscreen, keyboard/mouse shortcuts) are still in their infancy. - remote desktop: good point. Considering that screen recordings work fine, I don't see a technical reason that a Wayland remote desktop setup couldn't work. - exclusive fullscreen: what do you mean by this? Using Firefox, F11 and Super-F both work in Sway and F11 works with GNOME. - keyboard/mouse shortcuts: maybe? The fact that a random process can no longer read all of your keystrokes seems like a plus, to me. Otherwise, just add a shortcut to your window manager or DE and run a command of your choice. - losing all apps on compositor restart: Only an issue with GNOME and KDE. Pressing Super-Shift-C on Sway reloads the compositor and not your apps.
arghwhat 7y ago
Are you referring to the small decade it took them to support KMS so that their driver behaved even remotely like a modern one? Or perhaps their marvelous installation methods of running a random script as root that rewrites configuration files, and its configuration interface that likewise also rewrites configuration files in attempts to get multi-monitor setups working that until recently hardly ever worked? Maybe you are referring to their magnificent support, forcing you to stay on outdated kernels as upgrading would break compatibility and render you without a functioning graphics adapter short of a VGA-resolution framebuffer console? It could also be their fantastic backwards compatibility, requiring you to keep track of driver series compatible with certain adapters, where every other GPU in existence just works OOB. I used NVIDIA up until a 2 years back. While you could arguably get things to work, claiming they had excellent support is laughable at best.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  Most distros have a nvidia driver package that aligns with the kernel version shipped. This also means updating one updates the other automatically. Furthermore lag time for supporting newest kernel normally lags what 30 days? In brief what you are describing is self inflicted wounds.
  - arghwhat 7y ago
    Indeed, any problems spawning from using NVIDIA can be considered self-inflicted, which is why I left that dumpsterfire.
- Crinus 7y ago
  I think he refers to the fact that Nvidia's drivers provided excellent OpenGL support for multiple years compared to the absolute dumpsterfire that fglrx was. Before Valve decided to pay attention to Linux and thus prod AMD to improve their drivers, if you wanted anything approaching serious 3D performance on Linux, you had to use Nvidia. Anything else would be a waste of money.
  - arghwhat 7y ago

amelius 7y ago

NVidia has a different problem too. Every time I want to install one of their cards for computing purposes only (not graphics), the installation procedure starts messing with my display system. Drives me crazy.