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> Because the proprietary Linux driver doesn't support Wayland. Sure, so don't get NVIDIA hardware for Linux. People don't seem to compile long lists about how

> Because the proprietary Linux driver doesn't support Wayland. Sure, so don't get NVIDIA hardware for Linux. People don't seem to compile long lists about how the Mac doesn't really have an NVIDIA option, it's considered that your hardware is restricted in that way on the Mac and so you're going into it knowing that. Well, Linux is the same way, just exclude NVIDIA from your list unless you're on a desktop, fine running X and fine with their proprietary driver. This is not something we can reasonably fix without NVIDIA's direct involvement, so I see no point of including it. It's like complaining the Raspberry Pi can't run your favorite x86 programs.

atemerev 6y ago
It is possible to run NVIDIA cards on Mac Pro (or with eGPU hardware). There is no alternative to NVIDIA for many software engineers working with HPC and/or simulations / deep learning tasks; many applications and libraries require CUDA, and there is no alternative for CUDA (OpenCL and ROCm are much lower-level). I personally use Linux with NVIDIA cards, it works reasonably well, and some desktop environments now even work with Wayland (as of 2020).
- swiley 6y ago
  Regardless this is an NVIDIA problem and not a Linux one.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > It is possible to run NVIDIA cards on Mac Pro (or with eGPU hardware). only very select cards. I used to have a GTX 690 and could absolutely never get a hackintosh to get hardware acceleration through it.
- vetinari 6y ago
  > some desktop environments now even work with Wayland (as of 2020). Wayland compositors themselves work. What is a problem is sharing GPU resources between different applications using different APIs. I.e., you have your compositor using OpenGL and your application using Vulkan. The application renders itself into a buffer and sends it to the compositor, to render the desktop. If the compositor and application cannot share buffers, the application has to read it from GPU, put into system RAM and share with compositor via SHM. The compositor then writes it back to VRAM. (Obviously, when application renders itself via software-only, this is not an issue.) When the compositor and application can share buffer, the application just send the buffer handle to compositor, done. This sharing on Linux is done via dma-buf. AMD and Intel drivers use dma-buf, so it is not a problem. Nvidia proprietary driver doesn't, it uses it's own EGLStreams, so it is incompatible with compositors. It is similar, as if Nvidia drivers for Windows started ignoring WDDM and started doing their own thing, complete with their own display server. It would also become incompatible with the rest of system. For some reason, Nvidia thinks it is fine to do that in Linux something, that they would not dare to do in Windows.
alerighi 6y ago
You can avoid computers with NVIDIA hardware, but imagine the average person that wants to switch to Linux from Windows, he already has a Windows computer that has an NVIDIA GPU, then tires Linux on it and nothing works, and goes back to Windows. But the problem is not only NVIDIA, the problem is Xorg in general, is too old to support new hardware like HiDPI screens, and Wayland is not yet stable enough for me.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  > he already has a Windows computer that has an NVIDIA GPU, then tires Linux on it and nothing works He doesn't try installing macOS on his Windows PC, so perhaps we need to educate people to buy Linux hardware if they want to try Linux. Also "nothing works" is hardly true. The proprietary driver works for your most common use case for such an user i.e. desktop, running X11 and mostly gaming, watching Netflix etc. You run into problems on laptops with switchable graphics or if you are into the latest and greatest and want Wayland, but in that case one should seek Linux-specific hardware. Regarding Wayland, I have various machines running amdgpu or Intel's i915 no problem, so tailoring your choice of hardware to what's well supported would help here.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    "Linux hardware" is meaningless? I don't think there's any such thing as "Windows hardware". The drivers are supposed to abstract that away. If Linux doesn't work on hardware, its the usual reason that Linux receives little love in the market so drivers lag Windows drivers in coverage and features.
    - AsyncAwait 6y ago
      > I don't think there's any such thing as "Windows hardware". The majority of laptops you can pick up at BestBuy are "Windows hardware" - they're indeed specifically manufactured to run Windows and hardly anything else. If you want to test this, try installing Windows on your ISP's router or on a TALOS II workstation and see how well Windows "abstracts that away". > the usual reason that Linux receives little love in the market so drivers lag Windows drivers Which is directly related to most PCs coming with Windows preinstalled, so most people being either unaware of Linux or seeing little reason to switch to Linux since Windows already runs their Chrome anyway. What you're confusing is the fact that the majority of PCs are made with Windows in mind, if the majority of PCs came with Linux or BeOS or OS/2, Windows would be in a similar position, maybe even worse since companies would not get the benefit of open code, therefore even less reason to contribute to a minority OS. If Linux was the standard, many people would be so familiar with it and happy enough to see little reason to switch to Windows, that is if they ever happen to have learned an alternative exists in the first place.
gsich 6y ago
>Sure, so don't get NVIDIA hardware for Linux. This is one of the excuses people make, it's condensending. Most of the time you already have the hardware before you want to try Linux. Users don't care whos at fault here (Kernel/distro/x11/nvidia) the end result is that it doesn't work as opposed to Windows.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  I have said this many times, but it's worth repeating; people don't seem to have a problem with not being able to run macOS well on their Windows PC. It's condescending to the Linux community to always have to deal with users who don't even put in the minimal amount of effort to get Linux compatible hardware and only install it on crap machines Windows doesn't work well for them on anymore. I find that extremely disrespectful of the community and my time and do not wish to support such users. A large part of us do this in our free time out of passion, asking the user to put in the minimum amount of effort necessary really isn't much. Proprietary companies who don't care one bit about their customers get the benefit of the doubt and people buy only supported hardware, but Linux is always supposed to care about some second rate hardware of users who don't care about anything, but "free as in beer". This may not be the most popular thing to say, but I honestly don't care about such users anymore.
  - gsich 6y ago
    >I have said this many times, but it's worth repeating; people don't seem to have a problem with not being able to run macOS well on their Windows PC. Well, Apple does not provide an official release for those PCs, so the analogy is not apt. >This may not be the most popular thing to say, but I honestly don't care about such users anymore. And as a result Linux still only has 0.x% market share. "Fuck you Nvidia" and public shame might help more.
    - AsyncAwait 6y ago
      "Linux" does not provide an "official" release for your crappy PC either. If it's x86, it happens to be compatible, but guess what? macOS's x86 as well, hence the whole Hackintosh community. The difference being, Hackintoshers seem to know they need specifically supported hardware if they want to have a good experience. > Linux still only has 0.x% market share Linux will have that marketshare regardless, because 99% of Walmart PCs Karin buys simply come with Windows. If the reverse was true, guess what marketshare Windows would have? > "Fuck you Nvidia" It's not like NVIDIA wasn't endlessly approached nicely first, offered assistance by the community etc. So at this point, fuck NVIDIA indeed. I've been running Linux for close to two decades full time and it has worked sufficiently well for me for all that time, but anyone for who that's not the case, I am willing to help to an extent, provided there was some good faith effort on their part as well, since I am donating my free time. If not, be my guest with your bug free Windows 10[1] and the well liked macOS Catalina[2]. 1 - https://www.tomsguide.com/uk/news/what-the-hell-windows-10-update-is-deleting-files https://www.tomsguide.com/uk/news/what-the-hell-windows-10-u... 2 - https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac-software/problems-macos-catalina-10154-3785841 https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac-software/problems-macos-...

atemerev 6y ago

It is possible to run NVIDIA cards on Mac Pro (or with eGPU hardware). There is no alternative to NVIDIA for many software engineers working with HPC and/or simulations / deep learning tasks; many applications and libraries require CUDA, and there is no alternative for CUDA (OpenCL and ROCm are much lower-level). I personally use Linux with NVIDIA cards, it works reasonably well, and some desktop environments now even work with Wayland (as of 2020).

swiley 6y ago
Regardless this is an NVIDIA problem and not a Linux one.
jcelerier 6y ago
> It is possible to run NVIDIA cards on Mac Pro (or with eGPU hardware). only very select cards. I used to have a GTX 690 and could absolutely never get a hackintosh to get hardware acceleration through it.
vetinari 6y ago
> some desktop environments now even work with Wayland (as of 2020). Wayland compositors themselves work. What is a problem is sharing GPU resources between different applications using different APIs. I.e., you have your compositor using OpenGL and your application using Vulkan. The application renders itself into a buffer and sends it to the compositor, to render the desktop. If the compositor and application cannot share buffers, the application has to read it from GPU, put into system RAM and share with compositor via SHM. The compositor then writes it back to VRAM. (Obviously, when application renders itself via software-only, this is not an issue.) When the compositor and application can share buffer, the application just send the buffer handle to compositor, done. This sharing on Linux is done via dma-buf. AMD and Intel drivers use dma-buf, so it is not a problem. Nvidia proprietary driver doesn't, it uses it's own EGLStreams, so it is incompatible with compositors. It is similar, as if Nvidia drivers for Windows started ignoring WDDM and started doing their own thing, complete with their own display server. It would also become incompatible with the rest of system. For some reason, Nvidia thinks it is fine to do that in Linux something, that they would not dare to do in Windows.

alerighi 6y ago

You can avoid computers with NVIDIA hardware, but imagine the average person that wants to switch to Linux from Windows, he already has a Windows computer that has an NVIDIA GPU, then tires Linux on it and nothing works, and goes back to Windows. But the problem is not only NVIDIA, the problem is Xorg in general, is too old to support new hardware like HiDPI screens, and Wayland is not yet stable enough for me.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
> he already has a Windows computer that has an NVIDIA GPU, then tires Linux on it and nothing works He doesn't try installing macOS on his Windows PC, so perhaps we need to educate people to buy Linux hardware if they want to try Linux. Also "nothing works" is hardly true. The proprietary driver works for your most common use case for such an user i.e. desktop, running X11 and mostly gaming, watching Netflix etc. You run into problems on laptops with switchable graphics or if you are into the latest and greatest and want Wayland, but in that case one should seek Linux-specific hardware. Regarding Wayland, I have various machines running amdgpu or Intel's i915 no problem, so tailoring your choice of hardware to what's well supported would help here.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  "Linux hardware" is meaningless? I don't think there's any such thing as "Windows hardware". The drivers are supposed to abstract that away. If Linux doesn't work on hardware, its the usual reason that Linux receives little love in the market so drivers lag Windows drivers in coverage and features.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    > I don't think there's any such thing as "Windows hardware". The majority of laptops you can pick up at BestBuy are "Windows hardware" - they're indeed specifically manufactured to run Windows and hardly anything else. If you want to test this, try installing Windows on your ISP's router or on a TALOS II workstation and see how well Windows "abstracts that away". > the usual reason that Linux receives little love in the market so drivers lag Windows drivers Which is directly related to most PCs coming with Windows preinstalled, so most people being either unaware of Linux or seeing little reason to switch to Linux since Windows already runs their Chrome anyway. What you're confusing is the fact that the majority of PCs are made with Windows in mind, if the majority of PCs came with Linux or BeOS or OS/2, Windows would be in a similar position, maybe even worse since companies would not get the benefit of open code, therefore even less reason to contribute to a minority OS. If Linux was the standard, many people would be so familiar with it and happy enough to see little reason to switch to Windows, that is if they ever happen to have learned an alternative exists in the first place.

gsich 6y ago

>Sure, so don't get NVIDIA hardware for Linux. This is one of the excuses people make, it's condensending. Most of the time you already have the hardware before you want to try Linux. Users don't care whos at fault here (Kernel/distro/x11/nvidia) the end result is that it doesn't work as opposed to Windows.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
I have said this many times, but it's worth repeating; people don't seem to have a problem with not being able to run macOS well on their Windows PC. It's condescending to the Linux community to always have to deal with users who don't even put in the minimal amount of effort to get Linux compatible hardware and only install it on crap machines Windows doesn't work well for them on anymore. I find that extremely disrespectful of the community and my time and do not wish to support such users. A large part of us do this in our free time out of passion, asking the user to put in the minimum amount of effort necessary really isn't much. Proprietary companies who don't care one bit about their customers get the benefit of the doubt and people buy only supported hardware, but Linux is always supposed to care about some second rate hardware of users who don't care about anything, but "free as in beer". This may not be the most popular thing to say, but I honestly don't care about such users anymore.
- gsich 6y ago
  >I have said this many times, but it's worth repeating; people don't seem to have a problem with not being able to run macOS well on their Windows PC. Well, Apple does not provide an official release for those PCs, so the analogy is not apt. >This may not be the most popular thing to say, but I honestly don't care about such users anymore. And as a result Linux still only has 0.x% market share. "Fuck you Nvidia" and public shame might help more.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    "Linux" does not provide an "official" release for your crappy PC either. If it's x86, it happens to be compatible, but guess what? macOS's x86 as well, hence the whole Hackintosh community. The difference being, Hackintoshers seem to know they need specifically supported hardware if they want to have a good experience. > Linux still only has 0.x% market share Linux will have that marketshare regardless, because 99% of Walmart PCs Karin buys simply come with Windows. If the reverse was true, guess what marketshare Windows would have? > "Fuck you Nvidia" It's not like NVIDIA wasn't endlessly approached nicely first, offered assistance by the community etc. So at this point, fuck NVIDIA indeed. I've been running Linux for close to two decades full time and it has worked sufficiently well for me for all that time, but anyone for who that's not the case, I am willing to help to an extent, provided there was some good faith effort on their part as well, since I am donating my free time. If not, be my guest with your bug free Windows 10[1] and the well liked macOS Catalina[2]. 1 - https://www.tomsguide.com/uk/news/what-the-hell-windows-10-update-is-deleting-files https://www.tomsguide.com/uk/news/what-the-hell-windows-10-u... 2 - https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac-software/problems-macos-catalina-10154-3785841 https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac-software/problems-macos-...