4 ms·

Let's be honest here, the something is 99% drivers. It was printers, then it was wifi, now it's gpus. DNNs and LLMs at least made the compute part of the gpu dr

by baq 2y ago

Let's be honest here, the something is 99% drivers. It was printers, then it was wifi, now it's gpus. DNNs and LLMs at least made the compute part of the gpu driver Linux-native (from the vendors' perspective), one would hope the graphics part of the graphics processor would come next, but alas making big iron do work is done from macos and windows laptops.

advael 2y ago
Weird I haven't had a graphics issue since like the 8000 series of cards for like, the normal driving graphics right off the card use case. Optimus is definitely a little fucky with multiple GPUs and sometimes new CUDA versions break libs if you're keeping it bleeding edge updated, but most ML workflows use environment management to get around the clusterfuck that is the python ML ANN ecosystem anyway. Nvidia does a lot of work to make it hard to work with their cards but since GPGPU started taking off in the 2010s this sounds like a blast from the past, as a lot of the need for getting good performance out of cards on compute servers - which inevitably run linux because it has any kind of reasonable headless userspace and is easier to write reliable software for - has driven better driver support in general In discussions between people who don't use linux, their notions of what the pain points even are seem to lag by sometimes over a decade I find myself equally ill-informed on the pitfalls of windows ecosystems of late, except the ones that make the news for how insane they sound, but in my defense I also don't go around claiming I intermittently try to use it but just can't make the jump As microsoft continues to tighten the screws, I just hope all these reluctant users can get out before it's too late
- baq 2y ago
  The GPU market forces are: - gaming: Windows with a sprinkle of Steam Deck (yay!) - compute: Linux - video decode: Windows (DRM on Linux... yeah) - video encode: mixed (Windows for consumers and smbs, Linux for cloud transcode) Of these, the Steam Deck is the closest to a laptop that we got to. This is actually great, but it didn't result in a noticeable shift in anything, because LLMs took it all.
  - advael 2y ago
    I am not sure what point you're trying to make with this collection of non-sequiturs and false statements -The vast overwhelming majority of games are now effectively cross-platform. Work done mostly by valve benefits the entire ecosystem of linux-based OSes, and the sliver of incompatible games that still exist take vast resources to prevent from being made compatible, and thus can only be pulled off by well-resourced studios, most of whom Microsoft either has a deep relationship with or has bought. -I'm glad we at least agree that computers running linux can be used for doing computation, as is true of any computer I would hope -Most video decoding is effectively done on browsers, which are, with the exception of the garbage ones OS vendors keep trying to lock users into despite this being deeply unpopular, run on every platform. DRM is supported by most browsers with some opt-out consent options, and remaining incompatibility with streaming platforms is largely driven by those platforms being able to detect what operating system you're on and specifically trying to prevent playback on that basis. There is no popular codec I am aware of that isn't supported by FFMPEG, let alone by any free software whatsoever -At this point are you just talking about platform adoption? People can encode stuff on whatever system they want. The only market forces are increasingly futile efforts to enforce platform control on the part of content aggregating corporations -Is the thing about laptops referring to the fact that laptops are, through corporate deals, mostly sold with windows as a default operating system on them? There are now several whole OEMs that don't, but the last time I encountered a laptop for which a routine and standard linux install process ran into any issue whatsoever was like 2012, and it felt like a weird edge case then. Maybe I would have if I used fingerprint scanners or some other creepy spyware nonsense? I'm not even looking up laptops before I buy them. One time I had a boss who just bought the most expensive thing he could find at best buy on short notice. I heard it was kinda hard to get new Apple silicon models up and running for a while? For the most part, computers are just computers. It's weird that so much marketing pretends otherwise. The market for GPUs in laptops by and large does not care what operating system they are running, because people are buying the hardware for any of a number of general purposes for which one might use a general purpose computer. If you've done any statistical analysis to support these claims of "market forces", are you sure you're not claiming every laptop sold with windows installed by default in your models, despite that everyone running linux on a laptop also has to buy the laptop, but will probably only boot up windows if it forces them to by trying to prevent people from booting into a BIOS menu, and then only to do that? This kind of fuckery will also affect statistics for things like counting browser agents, because every time Netflix does some fuckery to try to gate high-quality streams by OS, someone will write a script or a plugin to spoof the agent of another OS to get around it I find it pretty futile to try to understand "market forces" in any sort of factual sense, because the metrics are nebulous, easy to manipulate, and everyone involved has lots of incentives to lie about all of them. But I still don't have any clue what this has to do with whether drivers work, since most people on every operating system just use the same stupid blob of drivers nvidia dutifully provides every platform for every GPU they make, as they have for the last 10 of the roughly 15 years I've had any reason to care about GPU drivers
erremerre 2y ago
In the year 2024 of our lord, Linux do not works fine with the ultra-common Realtek ALC892 chip for sound, having constant audio skips. Found in a myriad of motherboards from the last decade. This is just my issue, I am pretty sure, there are other loads of drivers issues elsewhere.
- Retric 2y ago
  You check for compatibility before buying a part and if there’s going to be an issue you buy something else. MacOS doesn’t work on most machines either, but drivers aren’t an issue for Mac users.
  - bishbosh 2y ago
    This conversation is perpetually marred by this sort of flippant response. No one expects MacOS to work on anything but Apple hardware, but they do expect a random chip on the motherboard they've been using for a several years to work. Proposing they google every chip on their motherboard to see if they can run linux is a failure of linux. I would hope that you consider that dismissive replies like this do little to encourage anyone to adopt linux, and instead make the community seem elitist and off putting.
    - Retric 2y ago
      > random chip on the motherboard they've been using for a several years to work. You can easily check if the motherboard has issues, but this idea you should install on random hardware is a mistake. Linux is not MacOS, but the best time to swap is when you get new hardware. Run into issues and the old Desktop/Laptop still works and there is no need to stress.
      - bishbosh 2y ago
        >this idea you should install on random hardware is a mistake. Why, it works on windows? And it's not 'random hardware' its the hardware they have and use. You should realize this is a failure of linux, not of the user.
ta1243 2y ago
25 years and I haven't had drivers blocking my usage On the other hand I'm sat next to someone really struggling with getting a windows machine to talk to a network at the moment, half an hour of "General failure"s, then eventually they got it working but the system clock was months out So much more complex than linux it's crazy. Windows will never be ready for prime time until you can literally plug in and load a webpage like you can with a linux box.

by baq 2y ago

advael 2y ago

Weird I haven't had a graphics issue since like the 8000 series of cards for like, the normal driving graphics right off the card use case. Optimus is definitely a little fucky with multiple GPUs and sometimes new CUDA versions break libs if you're keeping it bleeding edge updated, but most ML workflows use environment management to get around the clusterfuck that is the python ML ANN ecosystem anyway. Nvidia does a lot of work to make it hard to work with their cards but since GPGPU started taking off in the 2010s this sounds like a blast from the past, as a lot of the need for getting good performance out of cards on compute servers - which inevitably run linux because it has any kind of reasonable headless userspace and is easier to write reliable software for - has driven better driver support in general In discussions between people who don't use linux, their notions of what the pain points even are seem to lag by sometimes over a decade I find myself equally ill-informed on the pitfalls of windows ecosystems of late, except the ones that make the news for how insane they sound, but in my defense I also don't go around claiming I intermittently try to use it but just can't make the jump As microsoft continues to tighten the screws, I just hope all these reluctant users can get out before it's too late

baq 2y ago
The GPU market forces are: - gaming: Windows with a sprinkle of Steam Deck (yay!) - compute: Linux - video decode: Windows (DRM on Linux... yeah) - video encode: mixed (Windows for consumers and smbs, Linux for cloud transcode) Of these, the Steam Deck is the closest to a laptop that we got to. This is actually great, but it didn't result in a noticeable shift in anything, because LLMs took it all.
- advael 2y ago
  I am not sure what point you're trying to make with this collection of non-sequiturs and false statements -The vast overwhelming majority of games are now effectively cross-platform. Work done mostly by valve benefits the entire ecosystem of linux-based OSes, and the sliver of incompatible games that still exist take vast resources to prevent from being made compatible, and thus can only be pulled off by well-resourced studios, most of whom Microsoft either has a deep relationship with or has bought. -I'm glad we at least agree that computers running linux can be used for doing computation, as is true of any computer I would hope -Most video decoding is effectively done on browsers, which are, with the exception of the garbage ones OS vendors keep trying to lock users into despite this being deeply unpopular, run on every platform. DRM is supported by most browsers with some opt-out consent options, and remaining incompatibility with streaming platforms is largely driven by those platforms being able to detect what operating system you're on and specifically trying to prevent playback on that basis. There is no popular codec I am aware of that isn't supported by FFMPEG, let alone by any free software whatsoever -At this point are you just talking about platform adoption? People can encode stuff on whatever system they want. The only market forces are increasingly futile efforts to enforce platform control on the part of content aggregating corporations -Is the thing about laptops referring to the fact that laptops are, through corporate deals, mostly sold with windows as a default operating system on them? There are now several whole OEMs that don't, but the last time I encountered a laptop for which a routine and standard linux install process ran into any issue whatsoever was like 2012, and it felt like a weird edge case then. Maybe I would have if I used fingerprint scanners or some other creepy spyware nonsense? I'm not even looking up laptops before I buy them. One time I had a boss who just bought the most expensive thing he could find at best buy on short notice. I heard it was kinda hard to get new Apple silicon models up and running for a while? For the most part, computers are just computers. It's weird that so much marketing pretends otherwise. The market for GPUs in laptops by and large does not care what operating system they are running, because people are buying the hardware for any of a number of general purposes for which one might use a general purpose computer. If you've done any statistical analysis to support these claims of "market forces", are you sure you're not claiming every laptop sold with windows installed by default in your models, despite that everyone running linux on a laptop also has to buy the laptop, but will probably only boot up windows if it forces them to by trying to prevent people from booting into a BIOS menu, and then only to do that? This kind of fuckery will also affect statistics for things like counting browser agents, because every time Netflix does some fuckery to try to gate high-quality streams by OS, someone will write a script or a plugin to spoof the agent of another OS to get around it I find it pretty futile to try to understand "market forces" in any sort of factual sense, because the metrics are nebulous, easy to manipulate, and everyone involved has lots of incentives to lie about all of them. But I still don't have any clue what this has to do with whether drivers work, since most people on every operating system just use the same stupid blob of drivers nvidia dutifully provides every platform for every GPU they make, as they have for the last 10 of the roughly 15 years I've had any reason to care about GPU drivers

erremerre 2y ago

In the year 2024 of our lord, Linux do not works fine with the ultra-common Realtek ALC892 chip for sound, having constant audio skips. Found in a myriad of motherboards from the last decade. This is just my issue, I am pretty sure, there are other loads of drivers issues elsewhere.

Retric 2y ago
You check for compatibility before buying a part and if there’s going to be an issue you buy something else. MacOS doesn’t work on most machines either, but drivers aren’t an issue for Mac users.
- bishbosh 2y ago
  This conversation is perpetually marred by this sort of flippant response. No one expects MacOS to work on anything but Apple hardware, but they do expect a random chip on the motherboard they've been using for a several years to work. Proposing they google every chip on their motherboard to see if they can run linux is a failure of linux. I would hope that you consider that dismissive replies like this do little to encourage anyone to adopt linux, and instead make the community seem elitist and off putting.
  - Retric 2y ago
    > random chip on the motherboard they've been using for a several years to work. You can easily check if the motherboard has issues, but this idea you should install on random hardware is a mistake. Linux is not MacOS, but the best time to swap is when you get new hardware. Run into issues and the old Desktop/Laptop still works and there is no need to stress.
    - bishbosh 2y ago
      >this idea you should install on random hardware is a mistake. Why, it works on windows? And it's not 'random hardware' its the hardware they have and use. You should realize this is a failure of linux, not of the user.

ta1243 2y ago

25 years and I haven't had drivers blocking my usage On the other hand I'm sat next to someone really struggling with getting a windows machine to talk to a network at the moment, half an hour of "General failure"s, then eventually they got it working but the system clock was months out So much more complex than linux it's crazy. Windows will never be ready for prime time until you can literally plug in and load a webpage like you can with a linux box.