4 ms·

The hardware may be there, but not necessarily the drivers.

zamadatix 2y ago
The drivers are fine for GPU accelerated rendering of the app surfaces, even on the Pi. Hell, the drivers are even there >98% of the time for accelerated decode of the video format itself to boot. Qube's unique choice in software only rendering for user applications is one born out of the isolation goals for security, not what the software/drivers/hardware could do.
- fsflover 2y ago
  > even on the Pi Only proprietary ones, so not for everyone...
  - zamadatix 2y ago
    Pi 1-3 https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/vc4.html https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/vc4.html Pi 4-5 https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/v3d.html https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/v3d.html
    - fsflover 2y ago
      > Broadcom never released a public specification for the V3D 3.x or 4.x series. So the support must be worse if you prefer free drivers?
      - zamadatix 2y ago
        No, as there isn't a non-free driver alternative to compare V3D to. For VC4 (Pi 1-3) there was a proprietary alternative driver... but it was a bit garbage. It feels you may be conflating the "proprietary firmware blob on the GPU which is used to boot the Pi" story with the GPU driver itself.
        fsflover 2y ago
        Yes, you are right, "proprietary firmware blob on the GPU which is used to boot the Pi" is what I recall as a big Pi problem. So my original wording is correct that you need proprietary blobs to run Raspberry Pi, isn't it?
        zamadatix 2y ago
        "Yes" in that the above statement about needing proprietary blobs to boot the Pis is certainly accurate & true (ongoing science experiments notwithstanding). "No" in that we somehow went from talking about "how apps can safely assume to rely on accelerated rasterization instead of software rasterization" to "how the Raspberry Pi family needs proprietary boot firmware to do anything with app output at all" and I've missed the connection between the two points.
        fsflover 2y ago
        > support must be worse if you prefer free drivers
fulafel 2y ago
Yes. Besides Qubes users, a big population of software rendering users is people who have old and/or buggy drivers that are blacklisted by Firefox.

The drivers are fine for GPU accelerated rendering of the app surfaces, even on the Pi. Hell, the drivers are even there >98% of the time for accelerated decode of the video format itself to boot. Qube's unique choice in software only rendering for user applications is one born out of the isolation goals for security, not what the software/drivers/hardware could do.

fsflover 2y ago
> even on the Pi Only proprietary ones, so not for everyone...
- zamadatix 2y ago
  Pi 1-3 https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/vc4.html https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/vc4.html Pi 4-5 https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/v3d.html https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/v3d.html
  - fsflover 2y ago
    > Broadcom never released a public specification for the V3D 3.x or 4.x series. So the support must be worse if you prefer free drivers?
    - zamadatix 2y ago
      No, as there isn't a non-free driver alternative to compare V3D to. For VC4 (Pi 1-3) there was a proprietary alternative driver... but it was a bit garbage. It feels you may be conflating the "proprietary firmware blob on the GPU which is used to boot the Pi" story with the GPU driver itself.
      - fsflover 2y ago
        Yes, you are right, "proprietary firmware blob on the GPU which is used to boot the Pi" is what I recall as a big Pi problem. So my original wording is correct that you need proprietary blobs to run Raspberry Pi, isn't it?
        zamadatix 2y ago
        "Yes" in that the above statement about needing proprietary blobs to boot the Pis is certainly accurate & true (ongoing science experiments notwithstanding). "No" in that we somehow went from talking about "how apps can safely assume to rely on accelerated rasterization instead of software rasterization" to "how the Raspberry Pi family needs proprietary boot firmware to do anything with app output at all" and I've missed the connection between the two points.
        fsflover 2y ago
        > support must be worse if you prefer free drivers

fulafel 2y ago

Yes. Besides Qubes users, a big population of software rendering users is people who have old and/or buggy drivers that are blacklisted by Firefox.