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GPU acceleration. The free drivers like Nouveau are way behind what they should be. The reason is that there is no commercial interest for companies to create

GPU acceleration. The free drivers like Nouveau are way behind what they should be. The reason is that there is no commercial interest for companies to create good GPU drivers on desktop linux. Nvidia is not contributing to wayland and so on. In Android, there is. So the situation is this, iOS already has fantastic GPU support, Windows 8 and Android have too. Desktop Linux is behind the curve. You can't make so many things in the desktop because you can't assert GPU accel. So Mark wants to change that with with what already exist.

jlgreco 13y ago
How does Mir have better Nvidia support than Wayland?
- forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
  Android devices already provide with drivers capable of real time zoom effects or any other capability of the device, measured in OpenGL extensions support. They are not that well documented, but they work ok, because if not, the manufacturer does not sell the device. Mir inherits Android graphic system on purpose. In wayland you need Open drivers, like Nouveau which are very slow as the power management is not complete, or they are not sure enough to activate it(it could toast thousands of cards): http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix/ http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix/ The life of those developers is hard, all day fixing bugs, and new bugs appear like it is never going to finish(you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel).
  - bkor 13y ago
    Wayland had Android driver support before Mir. Mir actually uses the same thing as wayland (libhybris or something).
  - w0utert 13y ago
    I don't get it, why does Wayland require Nouveau? The closed-source NVidia drivers are feature-compatible with their closed-source Windows drivers, so why would Wayland (or MIR, for that matter) be limited by them? What more do Wayland or MIR need besides shaders and OpenCL? Or is all of this just because the Wayland and MIR developers only want to use open-source drivers?
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Wayland requires KMS. The closed source drivers do not support that.
      - c0un7d0wn 13y ago
        Wayland doesn't require kms. It requires EGL
      - w0utert 13y ago
        @c0un7d0wn below (somehow I can't reply directly?) I didn't know that, makes sense. That said, Mesa appears to provide EGL on top of GLX, which probably isn't as efficient as a driver that directly provides an EGL interface, but likely 'good enough' for basic desktop rendering. So I still don't really understand why I would need Nouveau to use Wayland or Mir. For me, using Nouveau would be a definite showstopper for whatever new display server becomes the default in Linux distro's. Not to talk down the efforts of the Nouveau developers, but I only have bad experiences with the driver, ranging from crashes, screen corruption, unbootable installations, terrible performance and loss of indispensible features such as proper multi-monitor support and hardware video decoding. One of the first steps in installing a new Linux system on Nvidia hardware is usually to remove, purge and blacklist Nouveau, and install the closed driver, because that just works (tm). I'd even use software rendering over llvmpipe before I'd consider Nouveau. If the future of the Linux desktop on Nvidia hardware requires a reverse-engineered GPU driver that lacks all the features provided by the closed-source driver, we can postpone the 'year of the Linux desktop' for at least another decade.
      - synchronise 13y ago
        Weston requires KMS, Wayland does not. This is why Wayland isn't being actively pushed on non-Linux systems, since the reference compositor won't work with UMS drivers.

jlgreco 13y ago

How does Mir have better Nvidia support than Wayland?

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
Android devices already provide with drivers capable of real time zoom effects or any other capability of the device, measured in OpenGL extensions support. They are not that well documented, but they work ok, because if not, the manufacturer does not sell the device. Mir inherits Android graphic system on purpose. In wayland you need Open drivers, like Nouveau which are very slow as the power management is not complete, or they are not sure enough to activate it(it could toast thousands of cards): http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix/ http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix/ The life of those developers is hard, all day fixing bugs, and new bugs appear like it is never going to finish(you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel).
- bkor 13y ago
  Wayland had Android driver support before Mir. Mir actually uses the same thing as wayland (libhybris or something).
- w0utert 13y ago
  I don't get it, why does Wayland require Nouveau? The closed-source NVidia drivers are feature-compatible with their closed-source Windows drivers, so why would Wayland (or MIR, for that matter) be limited by them? What more do Wayland or MIR need besides shaders and OpenCL? Or is all of this just because the Wayland and MIR developers only want to use open-source drivers?
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Wayland requires KMS. The closed source drivers do not support that.
    - c0un7d0wn 13y ago
      Wayland doesn't require kms. It requires EGL
    - w0utert 13y ago
      @c0un7d0wn below (somehow I can't reply directly?) I didn't know that, makes sense. That said, Mesa appears to provide EGL on top of GLX, which probably isn't as efficient as a driver that directly provides an EGL interface, but likely 'good enough' for basic desktop rendering. So I still don't really understand why I would need Nouveau to use Wayland or Mir. For me, using Nouveau would be a definite showstopper for whatever new display server becomes the default in Linux distro's. Not to talk down the efforts of the Nouveau developers, but I only have bad experiences with the driver, ranging from crashes, screen corruption, unbootable installations, terrible performance and loss of indispensible features such as proper multi-monitor support and hardware video decoding. One of the first steps in installing a new Linux system on Nvidia hardware is usually to remove, purge and blacklist Nouveau, and install the closed driver, because that just works (tm). I'd even use software rendering over llvmpipe before I'd consider Nouveau. If the future of the Linux desktop on Nvidia hardware requires a reverse-engineered GPU driver that lacks all the features provided by the closed-source driver, we can postpone the 'year of the Linux desktop' for at least another decade.
    - synchronise 13y ago
      Weston requires KMS, Wayland does not. This is why Wayland isn't being actively pushed on non-Linux systems, since the reference compositor won't work with UMS drivers.