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> What do I do, throw out a perfectly good powerful graphics card and spend another $500 to satisfy the needs of some newfangled software which doesn't solve an

> What do I do, throw out a perfectly good powerful graphics card and spend another $500 to satisfy the needs of some newfangled software which doesn't solve any of my problems? If you want to replace a card which was expensive six years ago, you can spend a hell of a lot less than five hundred dollars to do so. Even a brand-new RX 570, which will outperform a GTX 770 (the highest performance GPU for $500USD or less in 2013), should only cost you about $130USD today. If you're okay with pre-owned cards, you can get better than that for the same money. > This doesn't help anyone. It helps people who are in the market for a new GPU, who want it to work well with Linux, especially the cutting-edge stuff. Even in 2013 though, I think I was able to run Wayland on a discrete AMD GPU (Terascale 2 or 3?) with at least OpenGL 3.3 available; and it worked OK. I don't think AMD got that working more recently than 2013. I can understand not wanting AMD's cards on the top end as ca. 2013 (since they were not competitive, IIRC), but now they do have competitive offerings, and their support for desktop Linux is incomparably better, which is why I suggest people go with them. I don't get why I'm getting flak here.

simion314 7y ago
Not OP, but you are missing this points: 1 the expensive(this is relative) card works fine, do I throw it or donate it without any good reason(switching to wayland could wait IMO until this card is too obsolete) 2 Buying a new GPU is a big investment for some people,those money could be used to replace an old low quality display or other stuff.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  > Not OP, but you are missing this points: No, I'm not missing these points. It's just that nobody except NVIDIA can do anything about that, so I'm suggesting things you could do. If you can't get an AMD or Intel or Qualcomm (unofficial) or Broadcom (or soon ARM) GPU, and you won't (or can't, again because of NVIDIA being antisocial) run Nouveau instead of the NVIDIA proprietary drivers, and you're not willing to port wlroots to EGLStreams, then you simply will not be running wlroots-based compositors on your machine. That's just how it is. If you bought a 2019 MBP hoping to run Linux with full support for all the hardware, you would be making a mistake; just because I say that it's a mistake, doesn't mean I think you can afford to replace all your computers again once you've made that mistake. I don't get these replies. I go to specific effort to couch everything I say, I say "next time around", I say "if possible"; and everyone reads it as though I'm somehow out of touch with the fact that not everyone can spend hundreds of dollars on GPUs every year. I know, I'm just saying that steering clear of NVIDIA in the future is an option that will give you a good experience with standard Wayland compositors.
  - simion314 7y ago
    OK, there are a group of people where at the time we bought NVIDIA it was not a mistake, it was the better card for Linux Desktop, at that time AMD open source GPU was bad and the Catalyst proprietary one was terrible in performance, Steam games were only supporting NVIDIA. Sure when I will need to buy a new card I will again have to check what is the best one for Linux and then I will probably get an AMD card again( I had AMD before NVIDIA on desktop and Laptop and back then it was a big disappointment, including the fact the AMD Catalyst drop support for my 1 year old cheap Laptop)
    - microcolonel 7y ago
      > AMD Catalyst drop support for my 1 year old cheap Laptop My advice is: Unless you're running a qualified application on a workstation GPU, do not use Catalyst (or whatever they're calling it this year). It is almost always more finnicky. Mesa has the best performance, and the most meaningful features for OpenGL, Vulkan, and D3D9 for any any GCN 1 or later (and probably r600 or later, but I don't have personal experience with that) GPU. AMD staffs people to maintain Mesa, including for GPUs they do not support their proprietary driver on; and if you're running a fresh/rolling-release distro, you'll tend to have a great out-of-the-box experience with Mesa.
      - simion314 7y ago
        Thanks for the response, my story about Catalyst was very old. I was trying to explain to some new Linux people that AMD was terrible a few year back. So I bought a new laptop and in 1 year Catalyst dropped support for the GPU in that laptop forcing me to only run distributions with old enough Xorg because the open source drivers were bad at that time. I know that now AMD open source is better and my new computer will probably run an AMD CPU and an AMD GPU but until my current PC gets outdated I will have to continue use my NVIDIA 970 which is still a decent card for cashual gaming

simion314 7y ago

Not OP, but you are missing this points: 1 the expensive(this is relative) card works fine, do I throw it or donate it without any good reason(switching to wayland could wait IMO until this card is too obsolete) 2 Buying a new GPU is a big investment for some people,those money could be used to replace an old low quality display or other stuff.

microcolonel 7y ago
> Not OP, but you are missing this points: No, I'm not missing these points. It's just that nobody except NVIDIA can do anything about that, so I'm suggesting things you could do. If you can't get an AMD or Intel or Qualcomm (unofficial) or Broadcom (or soon ARM) GPU, and you won't (or can't, again because of NVIDIA being antisocial) run Nouveau instead of the NVIDIA proprietary drivers, and you're not willing to port wlroots to EGLStreams, then you simply will not be running wlroots-based compositors on your machine. That's just how it is. If you bought a 2019 MBP hoping to run Linux with full support for all the hardware, you would be making a mistake; just because I say that it's a mistake, doesn't mean I think you can afford to replace all your computers again once you've made that mistake. I don't get these replies. I go to specific effort to couch everything I say, I say "next time around", I say "if possible"; and everyone reads it as though I'm somehow out of touch with the fact that not everyone can spend hundreds of dollars on GPUs every year. I know, I'm just saying that steering clear of NVIDIA in the future is an option that will give you a good experience with standard Wayland compositors.
- simion314 7y ago
  OK, there are a group of people where at the time we bought NVIDIA it was not a mistake, it was the better card for Linux Desktop, at that time AMD open source GPU was bad and the Catalyst proprietary one was terrible in performance, Steam games were only supporting NVIDIA. Sure when I will need to buy a new card I will again have to check what is the best one for Linux and then I will probably get an AMD card again( I had AMD before NVIDIA on desktop and Laptop and back then it was a big disappointment, including the fact the AMD Catalyst drop support for my 1 year old cheap Laptop)
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    > AMD Catalyst drop support for my 1 year old cheap Laptop My advice is: Unless you're running a qualified application on a workstation GPU, do not use Catalyst (or whatever they're calling it this year). It is almost always more finnicky. Mesa has the best performance, and the most meaningful features for OpenGL, Vulkan, and D3D9 for any any GCN 1 or later (and probably r600 or later, but I don't have personal experience with that) GPU. AMD staffs people to maintain Mesa, including for GPUs they do not support their proprietary driver on; and if you're running a fresh/rolling-release distro, you'll tend to have a great out-of-the-box experience with Mesa.
    - simion314 7y ago
      Thanks for the response, my story about Catalyst was very old. I was trying to explain to some new Linux people that AMD was terrible a few year back. So I bought a new laptop and in 1 year Catalyst dropped support for the GPU in that laptop forcing me to only run distributions with old enough Xorg because the open source drivers were bad at that time. I know that now AMD open source is better and my new computer will probably run an AMD CPU and an AMD GPU but until my current PC gets outdated I will have to continue use my NVIDIA 970 which is still a decent card for cashual gaming