4 ms·

NVidia is broken, not Wayland. They refuse to implement the same APIs as everyone other driver does. Wayland is 10 years old, and extremely stable. If it isn't

NVidia is broken, not Wayland. They refuse to implement the same APIs as everyone other driver does. Wayland is 10 years old, and extremely stable. If it isn't working properly it's either your driver vendor or your desktop environment that is to blame.

adkadskhj 6y ago
Sure, i'm willing to accept that - but is your solution for me to buy a new graphics card? How much of the market share is Nvidia? A stupid quick search's top result says 80%. So 80% of PCs can't run Wayland? To be clear, i know nothing of compositors/etc, I've had nothing but problems with Xorg, and i want to use Wayland. _and yet_ - it seems like there is not a single PC in my house, or any of my family, that can run Wayland. I'm happy to accept your statement of where the blame lies. But if you're telling me Nvidia can't run Wayland currently.. does it matter to the end user? When "Most PCs" can't run Wayland his statement of "precious use-case" seems off base.
- robert_foss 6y ago
  You can run Wayland on NVidia drivers, but then your desktop environment has to support EGLStreams, which isn't a requirement for any other drivers and as such isn't implemented in all DEs.
- Conan_Kudo 6y ago
  > How much of the market share is Nvidia? A stupid quick search's top result says 80%. So 80% of PCs can't run Wayland? No. 80% of PCs cannot run Sway. Both Mutter (GNOME) and KWin (KDE Plasma) implement support for EGLStreams for the Nvidia driver. However, EGLStreams itself is inherently quirky and kind of broken, per Nvidia themselves. They're working on moving to DMA-BUF to fix this, and at least on the KDE side, are committing to replacing the implementation in KWin to use that once the driver is updated to use it.
- tlamponi 6y ago
  So developers should bend to abusive business partners with a big track record off being assholes just because they are currently (!) the biggest player? > it seems like there is not a single PC in my house, or any of my family, that can run Wayland. Huh, here at work and also privately all can run Wayland just fine; just always had issues with NVIDIA, so we would see it exactly the opposite way. We vote with our wallets and strictly prefer AMD or Intel GPUs, as they both play much better with Linux and open source in general (could always get better, though). Note also that on Linux the market share from AMD increased from ~25% to ~40% over the course of the last two years[0], and those do not seem to be short-lived effects, and the ratio may well tip over in favour to AMD soon in the Linux world. So yes, if you want to run Linux with a modern Graphic stack you will need to buy a GPU from a different vendor than NVIDIA. At least if hell freezes not over, and they put off their backwards bent attitude against open source drivers. If you do not want that then fine, use your NVIDIA card, but don't expect people to put in any extra work just because NVIDIA always want to be a special snowflake; seemingly putting in extra effort to produce as much extra work as just possible to support it. [0]: https://boilingsteam.com/amd-vs-nvidia-are-linux-gamers-switching-yet/ https://boilingsteam.com/amd-vs-nvidia-are-linux-gamers-swit...
  - danShumway 6y ago
    > So developers should bend to abusive business partners with a big track record off being assholes just because they are currently (!) the biggest player? That's not at all what GP is saying. They're saying that X handles their use case, and Wayland doesn't, and that most end users won't care about who's fault that is. A lot of the criticism of Wayland comes from uninformed jerks who want to trash the protocol over stuff that isn't a real problem, but there is also a bit of reflexive lashing out that comes from Wayland advocates. GP is just saying they can't switch to Wayland until the ecosystem around it matures. That's not an attack, you don't have to take it personally. > you will need to buy a GPU from a different vendor than NVIDIA I run a 4K monitor on my desktop with an ~6 year old NVidia graphics card. I run modern software on that machine, I watch movies, I run games, I do 4K art, I even boot into Blender occasionally. I'm not seeing significant slowdown or framerate problems as long as I use NVidia's proprietary drivers in X. But on Nouveau, it's unusable. Who's fault is that? Probably NVidia's! But it doesn't matter, my computer currently works well, I have no plans to upgrade in the immediate future, and this was put together during a period where NVidia was very clearly the sensible choice for anyone who cared about Linux graphics performance. It's reasonable for people to use older hardware, and it's reasonable for them to want that hardware to work well. We're not talking about people running 32 bit OSes or something, not everybody upgrades their graphics card every 2 years, and it's not really feasible for the surrounding Wayland ecosystem to only target the people who do. I don't have a proposal for that, I'm not saying anybody has to do anything. I'm actively rooting for Wayland, I do think it is the future. But I'm also describing why I don't run Wayland on my Arch setup and why I don't recommend it to people who ask me about getting into the more technical side of Linux. If someone wants to take even that as some kind of anti-Wayland screed instead of as a completely neutral, factual representation of the current state of the world and the Wayland ecosystem, then that's their problem, not mine. There's this thing I'm seeing where anyone bringing up these issues just gets asked, "well, what's your suggestion? You want to force developers to do X?" I'm not suggesting anything! I'm describing why I don't use Wayland on my desktop. That's it, that's the only thing I'm doing. I don't know how to solve the problem, but the problem exists, even if it's not your fault.
- vetinari 6y ago
  > How much of the market share is Nvidia? A stupid quick search's top result says 80%. So 80% of PCs can't run Wayland? No. Long-term Nvidia share is about ~18%, AMD ~12% and Intel ~70%. But that's for the entire market, and since Windows gamers are skewing toward Nvidia, that makes the rest to make up the percentage. So 80% not being able to run Wayland due to being Nvidia is grossly incorrect.
danShumway 6y ago
> NVidia is broken, not Wayland. They refuse to implement the same APIs as everyone other driver does. I'm extremely sympathetic to this argument, and I actually agree with ddevault's decision not to support NVidia in Sway. I think as an Open Source maintainer you don't have an obligation to burn yourself out solving a problem that is NVidia's fault, and we need real pressure on NVidia to stop being completely awful. However. Linux is at the point where I am able to start recommending it to ordinary people, and even technical people who are used to Windows. One the selling points I use is that a lot of hardware "just works" in Linux. NVidia is not ddevault's problem to solve, but people buy NVidia cards, and regardless of who's fault it is, if someone walks up to me and asks about switching to Linux or using a tiling window manager, I am not going to have a conversation with them about graphics cards. I'm going to point them towards X-compatible software that gets good performance regardless of their graphics card. Doesn't mean it's anyone's fault that I can't recommend Wayland to everyone, but I can't recommend Wayland to everyone. And I am on the Wayland hype train. I don't like X11, I want to run Wayland. In most cases, I would be defending Wayland right now. But if one of the conditions of switching over is "buy a new graphics card", if it's "redo all of your linux-wacom setup"[0], if it's running an entire embedded X session just to get Emacs working[1], if it's that common applications just don't work right now, then that's not ready for prime time. Those aren't problems that the Wayland devs can fix, but until they get fixed, I just can't in good conscience tell people that the Wayland ecosystem is mature and ready for regular usage. The moment I have to talk to someone about throwing out hardware, I'm recommending them to stay on X. I don't care who's to blame, people want software that just works, and I don't feel confident that Wayland just works. I'm not going to recommend every i3 NVidia user throw away their graphics card, that's not a real solution. I sympathize with the devs who are being hounded to solve problems that aren't their responsibility[2], but I also sympathize with the users who are just as much not to blame for any of this. It is also not their problem to solve when they can instead just use an existing stack that works today. They have zero obligation to play Where's Waldo with the maintainers of a dozen projects just to build a working system. ---- [0]: Do equivalently powerful tools to linux-wacom even exist for Wayland right now? I can't find out. There's basically zero documentation that exists on this that I can find, compared to an extensive Arch guide about rebinding keys under X11, multiple helpful utilities like xsetwacom that are pretty well documented, and dozens of blog posts and forums that are troubleshooting even obscure issues. That's not a narrow use case, my computer is an art station. I need to know before I switch that my Cintiq will work perfectly, and DuckDuckGo doesn't know the answer to that question. [1]: Emacs is finally working to get rid of its X dependencies, but it's still not part of the main release, I'd still need to switch to compiling Emacs myself, which... no. [2]: And I'm also sympathetic to arguments that this just takes time, and as people start to switch more utilities will be written and driver support will get better. But it's taking a really long time. And I don't know where NVidia fits on that spectrum, because I'm not confident that they're going to magically stop being awful any time soon. Maybe someone else will write a compatibility layer around the driver or something? Eventually? Waiting for NVidia to go out of business and their hardware to vanish isn't feasible.
pmlnr 6y ago
... ... Really? "Us, open source devs demans nvidia to alter their ways". And you wonder why people are disappointed in wayland?
- turminal 6y ago
  Perhaps they should be disappointed in nvidia? Or at least, think twice before buying from them? I don't think anyone here demands anything from nvidia. It's not wayland devs that feel entitled to better treatment by nvidia. It's nvidia users feeling entitled to support in wayland compositors.
- tlamponi 6y ago
  The commonly heard demand is to start working on a common ground, like AMD and Intel seems to be able just fine. What's your proposal? Requiring paid and free-time spending software developer to bent backward and maintain some complex parallel implementation for EGL-Streams just because NVIDIA always want to be a special snowflake? Even seemingly putting in extra effort to be a PITA for all involved and produce as much extra work as just possible to support it. With that in mind really nobody can wonder why NVIDIA market share is continuously getting smaller in Linux systems https://boilingsteam.com/amd-vs-nvidia-are-linux-gamers-switching-yet/ https://boilingsteam.com/amd-vs-nvidia-are-linux-gamers-swit...
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    EGLStreams is not only an Nvidia thing though. For instance Google provides an implementation of it (as it's you know, an actual Khronos standard unlike GBM if I'm not mistaken) on ANGLE on windows. While GBM is purely a Linux thing.
- vetinari 6y ago
  Imagine this: Microsoft demands that Nvidia uses WDDM for their drivers. Otherwise DirectX would not work with Nvidia. Do you thing Nvidia would ignore them, like they ignore Linux?
  - 6y ago

adkadskhj 6y ago

Sure, i'm willing to accept that - but is your solution for me to buy a new graphics card? How much of the market share is Nvidia? A stupid quick search's top result says 80%. So 80% of PCs can't run Wayland? To be clear, i know nothing of compositors/etc, I've had nothing but problems with Xorg, and i want to use Wayland. _and yet_ - it seems like there is not a single PC in my house, or any of my family, that can run Wayland. I'm happy to accept your statement of where the blame lies. But if you're telling me Nvidia can't run Wayland currently.. does it matter to the end user? When "Most PCs" can't run Wayland his statement of "precious use-case" seems off base.

robert_foss 6y ago
You can run Wayland on NVidia drivers, but then your desktop environment has to support EGLStreams, which isn't a requirement for any other drivers and as such isn't implemented in all DEs.
Conan_Kudo 6y ago
> How much of the market share is Nvidia? A stupid quick search's top result says 80%. So 80% of PCs can't run Wayland? No. 80% of PCs cannot run Sway. Both Mutter (GNOME) and KWin (KDE Plasma) implement support for EGLStreams for the Nvidia driver. However, EGLStreams itself is inherently quirky and kind of broken, per Nvidia themselves. They're working on moving to DMA-BUF to fix this, and at least on the KDE side, are committing to replacing the implementation in KWin to use that once the driver is updated to use it.
tlamponi 6y ago
So developers should bend to abusive business partners with a big track record off being assholes just because they are currently (!) the biggest player? > it seems like there is not a single PC in my house, or any of my family, that can run Wayland. Huh, here at work and also privately all can run Wayland just fine; just always had issues with NVIDIA, so we would see it exactly the opposite way. We vote with our wallets and strictly prefer AMD or Intel GPUs, as they both play much better with Linux and open source in general (could always get better, though). Note also that on Linux the market share from AMD increased from ~25% to ~40% over the course of the last two years[0], and those do not seem to be short-lived effects, and the ratio may well tip over in favour to AMD soon in the Linux world. So yes, if you want to run Linux with a modern Graphic stack you will need to buy a GPU from a different vendor than NVIDIA. At least if hell freezes not over, and they put off their backwards bent attitude against open source drivers. If you do not want that then fine, use your NVIDIA card, but don't expect people to put in any extra work just because NVIDIA always want to be a special snowflake; seemingly putting in extra effort to produce as much extra work as just possible to support it. [0]: https://boilingsteam.com/amd-vs-nvidia-are-linux-gamers-switching-yet/ https://boilingsteam.com/amd-vs-nvidia-are-linux-gamers-swit...
- danShumway 6y ago
  > So developers should bend to abusive business partners with a big track record off being assholes just because they are currently (!) the biggest player? That's not at all what GP is saying. They're saying that X handles their use case, and Wayland doesn't, and that most end users won't care about who's fault that is. A lot of the criticism of Wayland comes from uninformed jerks who want to trash the protocol over stuff that isn't a real problem, but there is also a bit of reflexive lashing out that comes from Wayland advocates. GP is just saying they can't switch to Wayland until the ecosystem around it matures. That's not an attack, you don't have to take it personally. > you will need to buy a GPU from a different vendor than NVIDIA I run a 4K monitor on my desktop with an ~6 year old NVidia graphics card. I run modern software on that machine, I watch movies, I run games, I do 4K art, I even boot into Blender occasionally. I'm not seeing significant slowdown or framerate problems as long as I use NVidia's proprietary drivers in X. But on Nouveau, it's unusable. Who's fault is that? Probably NVidia's! But it doesn't matter, my computer currently works well, I have no plans to upgrade in the immediate future, and this was put together during a period where NVidia was very clearly the sensible choice for anyone who cared about Linux graphics performance. It's reasonable for people to use older hardware, and it's reasonable for them to want that hardware to work well. We're not talking about people running 32 bit OSes or something, not everybody upgrades their graphics card every 2 years, and it's not really feasible for the surrounding Wayland ecosystem to only target the people who do. I don't have a proposal for that, I'm not saying anybody has to do anything. I'm actively rooting for Wayland, I do think it is the future. But I'm also describing why I don't run Wayland on my Arch setup and why I don't recommend it to people who ask me about getting into the more technical side of Linux. If someone wants to take even that as some kind of anti-Wayland screed instead of as a completely neutral, factual representation of the current state of the world and the Wayland ecosystem, then that's their problem, not mine. There's this thing I'm seeing where anyone bringing up these issues just gets asked, "well, what's your suggestion? You want to force developers to do X?" I'm not suggesting anything! I'm describing why I don't use Wayland on my desktop. That's it, that's the only thing I'm doing. I don't know how to solve the problem, but the problem exists, even if it's not your fault.
vetinari 6y ago
> How much of the market share is Nvidia? A stupid quick search's top result says 80%. So 80% of PCs can't run Wayland? No. Long-term Nvidia share is about ~18%, AMD ~12% and Intel ~70%. But that's for the entire market, and since Windows gamers are skewing toward Nvidia, that makes the rest to make up the percentage. So 80% not being able to run Wayland due to being Nvidia is grossly incorrect.

danShumway 6y ago

> NVidia is broken, not Wayland. They refuse to implement the same APIs as everyone other driver does. I'm extremely sympathetic to this argument, and I actually agree with ddevault's decision not to support NVidia in Sway. I think as an Open Source maintainer you don't have an obligation to burn yourself out solving a problem that is NVidia's fault, and we need real pressure on NVidia to stop being completely awful. However. Linux is at the point where I am able to start recommending it to ordinary people, and even technical people who are used to Windows. One the selling points I use is that a lot of hardware "just works" in Linux. NVidia is not ddevault's problem to solve, but people buy NVidia cards, and regardless of who's fault it is, if someone walks up to me and asks about switching to Linux or using a tiling window manager, I am not going to have a conversation with them about graphics cards. I'm going to point them towards X-compatible software that gets good performance regardless of their graphics card. Doesn't mean it's anyone's fault that I can't recommend Wayland to everyone, but I can't recommend Wayland to everyone. And I am on the Wayland hype train. I don't like X11, I want to run Wayland. In most cases, I would be defending Wayland right now. But if one of the conditions of switching over is "buy a new graphics card", if it's "redo all of your linux-wacom setup"[0], if it's running an entire embedded X session just to get Emacs working[1], if it's that common applications just don't work right now, then that's not ready for prime time. Those aren't problems that the Wayland devs can fix, but until they get fixed, I just can't in good conscience tell people that the Wayland ecosystem is mature and ready for regular usage. The moment I have to talk to someone about throwing out hardware, I'm recommending them to stay on X. I don't care who's to blame, people want software that just works, and I don't feel confident that Wayland just works. I'm not going to recommend every i3 NVidia user throw away their graphics card, that's not a real solution. I sympathize with the devs who are being hounded to solve problems that aren't their responsibility[2], but I also sympathize with the users who are just as much not to blame for any of this. It is also not their problem to solve when they can instead just use an existing stack that works today. They have zero obligation to play Where's Waldo with the maintainers of a dozen projects just to build a working system. ---- [0]: Do equivalently powerful tools to linux-wacom even exist for Wayland right now? I can't find out. There's basically zero documentation that exists on this that I can find, compared to an extensive Arch guide about rebinding keys under X11, multiple helpful utilities like xsetwacom that are pretty well documented, and dozens of blog posts and forums that are troubleshooting even obscure issues. That's not a narrow use case, my computer is an art station. I need to know before I switch that my Cintiq will work perfectly, and DuckDuckGo doesn't know the answer to that question. [1]: Emacs is finally working to get rid of its X dependencies, but it's still not part of the main release, I'd still need to switch to compiling Emacs myself, which... no. [2]: And I'm also sympathetic to arguments that this just takes time, and as people start to switch more utilities will be written and driver support will get better. But it's taking a really long time. And I don't know where NVidia fits on that spectrum, because I'm not confident that they're going to magically stop being awful any time soon. Maybe someone else will write a compatibility layer around the driver or something? Eventually? Waiting for NVidia to go out of business and their hardware to vanish isn't feasible.

pmlnr 6y ago

... ... Really? "Us, open source devs demans nvidia to alter their ways". And you wonder why people are disappointed in wayland?

turminal 6y ago
Perhaps they should be disappointed in nvidia? Or at least, think twice before buying from them? I don't think anyone here demands anything from nvidia. It's not wayland devs that feel entitled to better treatment by nvidia. It's nvidia users feeling entitled to support in wayland compositors.
tlamponi 6y ago
The commonly heard demand is to start working on a common ground, like AMD and Intel seems to be able just fine. What's your proposal? Requiring paid and free-time spending software developer to bent backward and maintain some complex parallel implementation for EGL-Streams just because NVIDIA always want to be a special snowflake? Even seemingly putting in extra effort to be a PITA for all involved and produce as much extra work as just possible to support it. With that in mind really nobody can wonder why NVIDIA market share is continuously getting smaller in Linux systems https://boilingsteam.com/amd-vs-nvidia-are-linux-gamers-switching-yet/ https://boilingsteam.com/amd-vs-nvidia-are-linux-gamers-swit...
- jcelerier 6y ago
  EGLStreams is not only an Nvidia thing though. For instance Google provides an implementation of it (as it's you know, an actual Khronos standard unlike GBM if I'm not mistaken) on ANGLE on windows. While GBM is purely a Linux thing.
vetinari 6y ago
Imagine this: Microsoft demands that Nvidia uses WDDM for their drivers. Otherwise DirectX would not work with Nvidia. Do you thing Nvidia would ignore them, like they ignore Linux?
- 6y ago