5 ms·

I'm very hopeful about the prospect for improvement of linux graphics drivers. It seems to have a been a chicken and egg sort of problem in past; I really hope

by elipsey 13y ago

I'm very hopeful about the prospect for improvement of linux graphics drivers. It seems to have a been a chicken and egg sort of problem in past; I really hope contributions from valve will create some momentum, especially for the FOSS drivers. It seemed hopeless to me only a couple of years ago, but then it wasn't so long ago that you couldn't suspend your laptop without "blowing your balls off" as Con Kolivas remarked... I'm really concerned, though, about commercial vendors aligning with the one distro/graphics stack (apparently Ubuntu in this case?), such that I have to choose between putting up with Unity's "Shopping lens" and a ghetto of bad or unimplemented 3d support for distros that don't adopt the same graphics stack as Ubuntu as the distros move away from X...

javanix 13y ago
Drivers are usually kernel-tied more than anything else. I wouldn't expect too much improvement from the FOSS drivers like Nouveau (I suspect the performance required of modern games is still out of their reach), but the binary X drivers from should see some big improvements - any distributions that currently can leverage those would benefit.
- elipsey 13y ago
  In particular, I'm hopeful that the radeon and intel FOSS drivers will improve (although I guess that nvidia said they will help with nouveau now: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/nvidia-seeks-peace-with-linux-pledges-help-on-open-source-driver/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/nvidia...). I gather Valve has given significant feedback to all three vendors (http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049369/amd-nvidia-ramp-up-linux-driver-support-after-valves-steamos-announcement.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049369/amd-nvidia-ramp-up-li... and: http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/08/31/1551230/valve-finds-open-source-drivers-to-be-great http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/08/31/1551230/valve-finds...), and that steam games have, perhaps, stressed the sort of hitherto rarely used code paths that would only show themselves to be broken or unreasonably slow when some compositing DM feature wouldn't work, for example when KDE 4 was famously broken on fglrx for a couple of years, and no one cared enough to fix the driver bug because who plays games on linux, right? Of course that's the closed driver but the same kinds of problems have happened for all the drivers for want of heavy use, and of course they won't be heavily used if they are way broken. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Wayland/Mir support must be added to any driver that will support them, and I believe it's not yet clear that that will be done. Intel has already refused a pull request for XMir support (http://slashdot.org/story/13/09/08/0431242/intel-rejects-supporting-ubuntus-xmir http://slashdot.org/story/13/09/08/0431242/intel-rejects-sup...), and I think the proprietary drivers have no support for either of the new WM's, nor will will they publicly admit to having any plans to implement it. KMS was added to the kernel five years ago this month, and the proprietary drivers still don't support it, although the intel driver does. Imagine a similar outcome for the new compositors, where the vendors don't implement support for a long time, or, worse, where there are factions comprised of certain combinations of driver/distro/WM... that would be bad.
  - mercurial 13y ago
    AFAIK Intel is pushing Wayland. As for Mir, I'm not aware of any group outside of Canonical with the slightest amount of interest.
    - elipsey 13y ago
      Yes, so the question is: if Valve is creating an Ubuntu derivative will they stay with X11 when Ubuntu switches to Mir? As it is now, Steam is easy to install on Ubuntu, and possible, but maybe a bit of a pain for other distros, depending on which one. It would be sad if Steam eventually only worked well on SteamOS, because of fragmentation in the graphics stack. If I wanted to choose my OS solely on the basis of what works well for gaming, I would be running Windows. Then again maybe Intel and Valve will sort of bring some adult supervision to the distros by putting some pressure on everyone to pick one graphics stack and live with it. I'm not sure whether I think this is a good thing or not.
Sarkie 13y ago
According to Engadget it isn't based on Ubuntu or anything? http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/valve-steam-machine-hands-on/ http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/valve-steam-machine-hands... But I assume it'll be Debian, but we'll see. I'd love a Gaming OS which I can do a few things in a terminal, e.g. media server.
- elipsey 13y ago
  Yep, that's basically my experience with my home desktop: a media server, and I can play a few games on it with the Nvidia proprietary driver. I'm a "casual gamer" if at all, so booting windows is too much trouble. And when I want to do some real work at home, the OS doesn't get in my way. This is probably a hard sell for serious gamers though, what with the lack of AAA game titles. I figure I should be working anyway...

by elipsey 13y ago

javanix 13y ago

Drivers are usually kernel-tied more than anything else. I wouldn't expect too much improvement from the FOSS drivers like Nouveau (I suspect the performance required of modern games is still out of their reach), but the binary X drivers from should see some big improvements - any distributions that currently can leverage those would benefit.

elipsey 13y ago
In particular, I'm hopeful that the radeon and intel FOSS drivers will improve (although I guess that nvidia said they will help with nouveau now: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/nvidia-seeks-peace-with-linux-pledges-help-on-open-source-driver/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/nvidia...). I gather Valve has given significant feedback to all three vendors (http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049369/amd-nvidia-ramp-up-linux-driver-support-after-valves-steamos-announcement.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049369/amd-nvidia-ramp-up-li... and: http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/08/31/1551230/valve-finds-open-source-drivers-to-be-great http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/08/31/1551230/valve-finds...), and that steam games have, perhaps, stressed the sort of hitherto rarely used code paths that would only show themselves to be broken or unreasonably slow when some compositing DM feature wouldn't work, for example when KDE 4 was famously broken on fglrx for a couple of years, and no one cared enough to fix the driver bug because who plays games on linux, right? Of course that's the closed driver but the same kinds of problems have happened for all the drivers for want of heavy use, and of course they won't be heavily used if they are way broken. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Wayland/Mir support must be added to any driver that will support them, and I believe it's not yet clear that that will be done. Intel has already refused a pull request for XMir support (http://slashdot.org/story/13/09/08/0431242/intel-rejects-supporting-ubuntus-xmir http://slashdot.org/story/13/09/08/0431242/intel-rejects-sup...), and I think the proprietary drivers have no support for either of the new WM's, nor will will they publicly admit to having any plans to implement it. KMS was added to the kernel five years ago this month, and the proprietary drivers still don't support it, although the intel driver does. Imagine a similar outcome for the new compositors, where the vendors don't implement support for a long time, or, worse, where there are factions comprised of certain combinations of driver/distro/WM... that would be bad.
- mercurial 13y ago
  AFAIK Intel is pushing Wayland. As for Mir, I'm not aware of any group outside of Canonical with the slightest amount of interest.
  - elipsey 13y ago
    Yes, so the question is: if Valve is creating an Ubuntu derivative will they stay with X11 when Ubuntu switches to Mir? As it is now, Steam is easy to install on Ubuntu, and possible, but maybe a bit of a pain for other distros, depending on which one. It would be sad if Steam eventually only worked well on SteamOS, because of fragmentation in the graphics stack. If I wanted to choose my OS solely on the basis of what works well for gaming, I would be running Windows. Then again maybe Intel and Valve will sort of bring some adult supervision to the distros by putting some pressure on everyone to pick one graphics stack and live with it. I'm not sure whether I think this is a good thing or not.

Sarkie 13y ago

According to Engadget it isn't based on Ubuntu or anything? http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/valve-steam-machine-hands-on/ http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/valve-steam-machine-hands... But I assume it'll be Debian, but we'll see. I'd love a Gaming OS which I can do a few things in a terminal, e.g. media server.

elipsey 13y ago
Yep, that's basically my experience with my home desktop: a media server, and I can play a few games on it with the Nvidia proprietary driver. I'm a "casual gamer" if at all, so booting windows is too much trouble. And when I want to do some real work at home, the OS doesn't get in my way. This is probably a hard sell for serious gamers though, what with the lack of AAA game titles. I figure I should be working anyway...