Binary Driver Blobs Aren't Yet Ready For Wayland

[enrico.tagliavini]

My experiences were different; that was also why I was happy the developers shared my view. I followed the development of the 'first' new ATI driver with my 4850. There I always experienced Video tearing and subpar compiz performance with the fglrx. The open-source driver fixed all that instantly. I then switched to a 6850. Again on fglrx I am currently experiencing tearing and have problems with Gnome 3 and dual monitor support. I am still on fglrx because HDMI audio doesn't work on the open source driver. This will be fixed in Kernel 3.5. Then I will switch again.

I suppose it's just different experience. I'd really just like Wayland to be as optimal as possible without bending to the closed source drivers.

That's the point, the expirience! For me fglrx worked and so it does for half of the AMD customers. Phoronix surveys show this. Half AMD users use fglrx. This means fglrx is usefull as it was for my expirience. So burning it just hurt Linux users. A better radeon driver is the right solution, if AMD want to lean something from intel they are welcome to do so, but anyway until a complete open source alternative is available, burning fglrx is not a good reason just becouse it is not good for everyone.

[asdx]

Nouveau's exiestence has been entirely dependent on the existence of Nvidia's blob in the first place. After all, nouveau is largely just reverse-engineered - and while i personally do not use Nouveau (because it is garbage compared to the blob).

Your comment, the blob and you are the only garbages.

Fuck you.

[sepisoad]

I've been using nvidia blob on my ubuntu 12.04 until last month, the desktop experience was horrible, with nvidia blob you always feel some hiccups in rendering, nothing feels smooth wehther it's on desktop or in a game. Ever since I switched to Nouveau driver, everything started to look better and smoother, in fact Compiz plays much much better with Nouveau and also some games run smoother (not necessarily with higher FPS). This is the major reason that I like Nouveau driver better.

It's unlikely to see Nvidia open source thier driver but if they could provide nouveaue developers with some documentation, then you would see how fast Nouveau becomes the best choice for everyone.

I know that using Nouveau driver stops me from playing some modern games and the OpenGL support is at version 3.0 but now that I enjoyed it I can't simply switch back to Nvidia blob.

[asdx]

I've been using nvidia blob on my ubuntu 12.04 until last month, the desktop experience was horrible, with nvidia blob you always fill this hiccup on rendering, nothing feels smooth wehther it's on desktop or in a game. Ever since I switched to Nouveau driver, everything started to look better and smoother, in fact Compiz plays much much better with Nouveau and also some games run smoother (not necessarily with higher FPS). This is the major reason that I like Nouveau driver better.

It's unlikely to see Nvidia open source thier driver but if they could provide nouveaue developers with some documentation, then you would see how fast Nouveau becomes the best choice for everyone.

I know that using Nouveau driver stops me from playing some modern games and the OpenGL support is at version 3.0 but now that I enjoyed it I can't simply switch back to Nvidia blob.

Agreed, the nouveau driver is much better.

The nvidia blob is a piece of garbage crap that has to die.

I'm also hoping that nouveau will get better with 3D acceleration and that Mesa will catch up to the lastest OpenGL 4.x, we need documentation and specs for nouveau here.

[johnc]

I've been using nvidia blob on my ubuntu 12.04 until last month, the desktop experience was horrible, with nvidia blob you always fill this hiccup on rendering, nothing feels smooth wehther it's on desktop or in a game. Ever since I switched to Nouveau driver, everything started to look better and smoother, in fact Compiz plays much much better with Nouveau and also some games run smoother (not necessarily with higher FPS). This is the major reason that I like Nouveau driver better.

This is, unfortunately, very true. But the problem isn't in the driver, it's the software. Devs took the asdx route and didn't engage the binary drivers at all. The end result is an awful experience with users running away from the OS with their hands in the air.

It's evident that devs just plain didn't test this stuff at all before releasing it (in an LTS of all things).

Seriously... no non-tech geek is going to tolerate this BS.

It's unlikely to see Nvidia open source thier driver but if they could provide nouveaue developers with some documentation, then you would see how fast Nouveau becomes the best choice for everyone.

By the looks of Radeon, I would say probably not.

[johnc]

And I already see how Wayland is going to go:

"We didn't bother to even consider the existence of binary drivers."

And sure enough, absolutely nothing will work outside of FOSS-land. People will be forced to engage in all kinds of Wayland-on-X hackery to get basic functionality and the masses will avoid Linux like the plague... And where does that put companies like Valve? Questioning their priorities and commitments, probably.

[asdx]

And I already see how Wayland is going to go:

"We didn't bother to even consider the existence of binary drivers."

And sure enough, absolutely nothing will work outside of FOSS-land. People will be forced to engage in all kinds of Wayland-on-X hackery to get basic functionality and the masses will avoid Linux like the plague... And where does that put companies like Valve? Questioning their priorities and commitments, probably.

Well, go blame nvidia. They are more than welcome to quit being douches and release the specs for nouveau to catch up in the 3D-acceleration space.

They have the resources and man-power for that, why aren't they doing it? I don't know, but don't bitch the open source devs for doing what they do, bo blame nvidia, and blame yourself for supporting them.

Binary blobs are the cause of 100% of the problems here.

Also, what's wrong with radeon? It's much better than fglrx, it supports KMS, it has decent 3D acceleration, etc.

[phred14]

From the article:
"Please don't make it easy for "the blob to work with Wayland/Weston", and don't change anything in our stacks for that to happen. Please don't sacrifice anything in our side.
Let Nvidia adapt to Wayland/Weston and not the other way around. And if they won't, I think people will be more than happy to be on Nouveau."

A long, long time ago I was looking at a Wirth-type programming language called "Oberon2". I wanted to try it out, but anything "real" that I might have wanted to do with it involved using legacy data, usually binary legacy data. That hadn't stopped me even in the past with Pascal or Modula2, because either the languages or the common extensions had the necessary mapping capability. I've both read and written various types of legacy binary data in both languages.

I didn't see the necessary capabilities in Oberon2, and at the time it hadn't been around long enough to acquire extensions. So on-list I asked about how to handle this situation. Their answer, "Get your applications re-coded in Oberon2, so that the data will be native and you won't have a legacy binary data problem any more." It's obvious that I had the power, on my own, to convert a F10 company to a pet programming language I wanted to investigate, as well as move all of their legacy data. It's equally obvious that Oberon2 has overtaken the programming profession completely, crowding out every other language. What a suggestion, what a plan!

Wayland is in a bit of a better situation here, since it is much more mainstream than Oberon2. But as good as Wayland may be I would be careful about adopting "my way or the highway" approaches toward industry-dominant parties.

If it were me, I would seriously consider the shim. I would not compromise OSS driver performance for the shim, nor the cleanliness of the server codebase. In fact, if difficulties forced the shim to be a little slower, that might well be a good thing, because I would also publish a plan for removing it, "in the name of native performance."

Incidentally, I use Linux for my day job. It's what the company has installed on our workstations - we're talking thousands of installations across the company. There are fabois moments, and then there's time to go to work. I welcome the idea of the simplicity and improvements Wayland can bring me - once it's capable of doing what I need it to do. (That includes networked graphics on a regular basis, but I know that the Wayland developers understand that, unlike the Wayland fanbois.) At home I'll probably use sooner than that.

[ninez]

Your comment, the blob and you are the only garbages.

Fuck you.

...and your what 12 years old? :\

I love how you just quoted part of the first bit without actually addressing what i was pointing out - which was entirely true...

i also like how divisive and ignorant you are, it's hilarious

you're such a little puke, asdx - your zealotry, fanaticism, stupidity and immaturity really shine with comments like this. They wonderfully showcase how misguided, unintellectual you are and also how much of a troll you are.

[ninez]

That's not my goal.

My goal is that we get rid of the nvidia blob and all blobs.

Blobs hinder development, why is that so hard to understand?

1st. why do you even have that goal, when in reality all you are doing is bitching in forums? Unless you are actively working on the OSS GFX stack or are doing something else constructive that is an actual contribution, then all you are doing is bitching and making noise to the wrong people... and lets be honest asdx - most of what you do in these forums is troll and are generally very unpleasent.

I'm also not convinced that the comment you are responding to had any stance against OSS drivers. I assume that he was being pragmatic like most of us who are using the blobs (but test both), blobs are annoying - but in reality, until the OSS drivers can provide the same performance + feature set - they are a very hard sell and that doesn't even address the fact that some users REQUIRE the blobs, since the OSS drivers can't deliver in many cases.

Blobs stop developers from being free to make decisions and move development forward. This is bad when we have a system such as X11 that carries a lot of garbage, it's bad for you, developers and everyone.

We need specifications and we need to focus in making the free drivers better. This is my only goal. We need to demand specifications from hardware vendors.

Imagine if we had a free and open system but 90% of our drivers were blobs, can you imagine how bad this would be?

Please don't support blobs, please demand hardware specs from your vendors. Support the vendors that support us, and not those who are against us.

I agree blobs can hinder developmental choices, but i don't see how you then can draw some parallel to xorg's cruft, which has little to do with that specifically. I feel that Xorg is tied to the technology and features-sets it provides, it also has a lot of legacy-type code, it is an entirely different beast than Wayland. The blobs will also not stop Wayland from being adopted, either. The vendors (like AMD/Nvidia) will most likely adapt their drivers when there is reason to, this isn't unlike other platform vendors, which will usually release new drivers as new versions of MacOSX and Windows start to be in use.

as for specs, it would be great if all companies would do that. but i wouldn't hold my breathe having the expectation that all companies will do it. Some will, some won't. - Nvidia being one unlikely to do so (and may even have good reason not to do so, not that i am claiming that is the case). I personally liked the one developer's idea of using nouveau in the kernel / talk to GPU and have nvidia move the rest (of their components) outside, while adapting it all to work with nouveau. It would solve all of the kernel GPL issues and seems like a decent compromise - it would probably even help nouveau's development, as well.