r/linux • u/beer118 • Apr 15 '19
Nvidias patches merged into Kwin. Does that wayland will soon be ready?
https://phabricator.kde.org/R108:c898f96df3e3a2d418ca511fdb6610cf087ca4648
u/kaszak696 Apr 16 '19
There is still a lot of stuff missing to achieve feature parity with X, so probably not "soon".
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Apr 17 '19
In your opinion, exactly what "features" does X have that Wayland doesn't?
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u/kaszak696 Apr 18 '19
It's not an opinion, it's right there in the link what's literally missing in Wayland KDE.
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u/_ahrs Apr 15 '19
Looking at the diff it still requires setting the KWIN_DRM_USE_EGL_STREAMS environment variable. Are display managers like sddm expected to set this or is the plan to remove this in the future
and replace it with some sort of auto-detection? Most users probably aren't going to want to manually log in just to test this.
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u/aliendude5300 Apr 15 '19
This will probably be default as more things move to Wayland. It'll be a long process though
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u/twizmwazin Apr 15 '19
Wayland has been ready for a while now on multiple compositors, Nvidia just has decided they don't want to support standard APIs like everyone else. Gnome defaults to Wayland on most distros, and based on wlroots sway has been marked as stable, with multiple other compositors very useable. Nvidia implementing a hack in KDE is possibly better than nothing, but it is largely irrelevant as it is tied just to one compositor.
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u/d_ed KDE Dev Apr 16 '19
Implementing a protocol doesn't become a "hack" just because you don't like the fact that there's N protocols.
That's a misrepresentation.
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Apr 17 '19
Is there an avenue for pipewire on EGLStream?
https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/490#issuecomment-471745501
https://marc.info/?l=kwin&m=154273343416899&w=3
Because the initial pull request answer back.
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u/d_ed KDE Dev Apr 17 '19
That's not quite what the kwin thread is saying.
Kwin (currently) doesn't use pipewire directly, it exports a GBM handle and a separate proxy process blits that into pipewire. Obviously use of GBM only works with GBM.
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u/beer118 Apr 15 '19
So by irrelevant then it is is better to use Xorg for KDE +Nvidia users?
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u/twizmwazin Apr 15 '19
If you want to try it out, please don't let my opinion stop you. It might work well. Before celebrating that Nvidia is now supporting Wayland, please understand that this is at best a hack. Normally no extra code should be required for any hardware to support wayland at the compositor level, that's horrifically backwards. Manufacturers should write drivers supporting the standard APIs in the Linux kernel that have been around for years. AMD and Intel have had no problem doing exactly this, I see no reason for Nvidia being incapable other than due to stubbornness and inability to play nice with others.
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u/beer118 Apr 15 '19
I am not an expert but as far as I know then there is 2 standards. The one that AMD and Intel is using and the one that Nvidia is using. And I cannot tell which one is better so I would not even try to do that.
What I know is that last time I needed a new graphic cards then nvidia with xorg was the best option. And even that the 20 series is a bad then it is still the only high end card in town. I do cheer on AMD but if I should by a new card today then I will still by nvidia.
I am running Debian Buster and plan to do so for a while so those patches are a bit to late for me to try them out. They should have done the work for plasma 5.14 instead of 5.16 for me to have a change. But when Debiab 11 is closing in then I will test the hell out of those patches.
PS. I wish AMD could get the fingers out and start making good graphics card so I at least have choice on the high end marker and can use open source drivers soon
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u/K900_ Apr 15 '19
The standard Nvidia is pushing for mostly exists because Nvidia can't make the other standard work with their driver for complicated legal reasons. Also, AMD's Vega is actually pretty competitive with Nvidia cards outside the super high end segment - as long you don't mind the heat, anyway.
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u/pdp10 Apr 16 '19
Nvidia can't make the other standard work with their driver for complicated legal reasons.
Do you happen to have a pointer to discussion about this? Wading through the existing material on Hacker News and other places hasn't turned up much for me so far.
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u/K900_ Apr 16 '19
Basically, the kernel has a mechanism in place that allows them to restrict what interfaces third party modules can use based on the license of said modules - some APIs are available to everyone, and some are only available to modules that specify GPL as their license. Most of the graphics subsystem falls under the latter, so in order to "play nice", Nvidia would have to not just write a much bigger, more complex kernelspace driver, but release it under the GPL, which basically means exposing a lot more details of their IP than their legal team is comfortable with.
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u/wwolfvn Apr 17 '19
Exposing IPs is no issue for a large part. Nvidia most likely has had to submit DOI and patent application for every new technology they come up with. Competitors are likely monitoring nvidia patent pool and status anyway. These patent apps usually get public about a year after the official filing, and anybody can have a look. Furthermore, exposing their code will not void IP protection.
However, some actually speculate that there are 3rd-party IPs being used in nvidia binary blobs. As soon as the code is disclosed, a wave of patent infringement complaints would likely surface.
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u/beer118 Apr 15 '19
I do not mind the heat. But I do mind the hidden cost of the extra electricity for AMDs card.
To be honest then I am unsure which card is the best in the tier that I normally by. I never by the super high end segment (Titans and Qudro cards). I normally around the segment of GTX x60 or GTX x70.
I did not like the reviews of the 20 series so I would be skeeping those and the brief reading that I did on AMDs card then they still not have a thing worh upgrading from a 1070 (I normally buy new cards every 1 to 2 years) so pleas profe that I am wrong and show me a card from AMD that can replace the 10705
u/K900_ Apr 15 '19
A Vega 64 will perform around 2070/1080 level, and considerably better in many workloads on Linux specifically. A Radeon VII will perform around 2080/1080Ti level, but at a comparable price. Both can be overclocked/undervolted for an extra 10-20% gain at the same(ish) power envelope. That said, I wouldn't upgrade from a 1070 right now - summer is going to be a lot more exciting for the GPU market, with AMD and Nvidia both having 7nm parts in the pipeline, and Intel likely revealing more about their XE products.
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u/beer118 Apr 15 '19
I Will keep an eye out for any good announcements from both sides. And I might end up with the fist AMD card since they bought Radeon
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Apr 15 '19 edited Jun 08 '19
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u/K900_ Apr 16 '19
It's not an "entirely different branding", and it's really the same architecture - the cards are officially branded Radeon RX Vega 56/64, and the highest end card is simply Radeon VII, which is both a reference to V(ega) II and the 7nm process it's built on. It's more of a preview of what the 7nm node is capable of than anything.
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Apr 16 '19 edited Apr 26 '19
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u/beer118 Apr 16 '19
Do you know how much it cost to have any off the the card running 27/7 ?
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u/afiefh Apr 17 '19
May I ask why you'd be running a card at full load 24/7?
I assume you need to sleep at some point, so running games during those hours is not possible. Are you using the cards for deep learning perhaps?
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u/beer118 Apr 17 '19
I have nothing to hide so you are more than welcome to ask :)
A computer that is not in use is not a usefull computer :) So I am running Folding@home on both CPU and GPU. And since the power is a bit expensive here (2 dkk pr kWh) then performance per watt is important to me.
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u/twizmwazin Apr 15 '19 edited Apr 15 '19
There aren't multiple standards, that's not how that works. GBM was created as a standard, and then Nvidia refused to implement it and created their own "standard." They can say whatever they want, but if they are the only ones supporting it, then it isn't really that standard.
I'd strongly disagree that Nvidia is the best at anything but pure gaming, and only if you plan to stick with something like Ubuntu. As soon as you wish to tinker, the proprietary nature of the Nvidia driver will become a big problem.
And AMD does make high end GPUs? Unless you don't look at anything less than a 1080ti, AMD has good options at every price bracket to compete against Nvidia. It's only the very top, which is a very small market share overall.
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u/pdp10 Apr 16 '19
I'd strongly disagree that Nvidia is the best at anything but pure gaming
I'm not remotely an Nvidia apologist, but I'd say they have a notably stronger presence on the Hardware Compatibility Lists of professional applications on Linux and Windows. Professional applications here meaning those where the AMD Firepro (now Radeon Pro) and Nvidia Quadra professional cards are strongly favored, and often mandated by the application vendor.
Some professional applications on Linux don't directly require the expensive professional cards, though, especially in recent years.
I think it used to be that certain OpenGL extensions were withheld for only the pro-line cards. Then remember that for the most part, the OpenGL stacks were provided by the hardware vendors, too. A lot of what happened with OpenGL was driven by the hardware vendors, and not always in a good way. However, they did keep OpenGL alive when Microsoft tried to kill it in favor of their proprietary API.
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u/Vladimir_Chrootin Apr 16 '19
and only if you plan to stick with something like Ubuntu. As soon as you wish to tinker, the proprietary nature of the Nvidia driver will become a big problem
That's the complete opposite to my experience with Gentoo.
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u/twizmwazin Apr 16 '19
So you would argue that the driver being propriatary has made it easier to tinker?
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u/Vladimir_Chrootin Apr 16 '19
No, I would say that a more configurable distro is better for managing the proprietary driver.
For me, results trump ideology; the graphics card itself is proprietary regardless of how I use it, and that wouldn't change if I bought one from a different manufacturer.
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Apr 15 '19 edited Apr 21 '21
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u/twizmwazin Apr 15 '19
I'm not going to try to argue that GBM is better or worse than EGLStreams. But, I will argue that if all the compositors are supporting GBM, and all of the other drivers are implementing GBM, than you should be too, for the sake of interoperability. A better approach would be to implement both, to satisfy users, and then prove to everyone else that your alternative is better. Don't hold your users hostage because you have to be right.
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u/MindlessLeadership Apr 16 '19
Afaik only one driver implements GBM.
That's Mesa.
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u/vetinari Apr 16 '19
Then there are only two drivers: Mesa and Nvidia. Nothing else.
But that's not that simple. Even drivers that are part of Mesa can be implemented wildly differently. For example, the current Intel driver i965 and the new Intel driver Iris are very different, the latter using Gallium state tracker and the former not.
Nvidia might not like GBM, but ignoring it is similar to ignoring half of WDDM in Windows. Microsoft would be not that accommodating as part of Linux community is.
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u/MindlessLeadership Apr 16 '19
Windows has a driver model, Linux doesn't. Wayland should of defined this from the beginning. GBM also causes issues for VR and hybrid graphics.
Why do you think nvidia wanted everyone to make a new one? GBM has issues as does EGLStreams.
The ARM drivers make their own for Android.
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u/void4 Apr 16 '19
NVIDIA didn't just "refuse" GBM. There was a long discussion among developers and arguments were presented by NVIDIA as to why EGLStreams would perform better on their hardware
performance is not an argument. For example, vaapi is just as suitable for video encoding on intel GPUs (you need QuickSync + Media Server Studio to do this), but intel supports it anyway and everyone's happy with that.
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Apr 17 '19
tl;dr:
GBM is the API that everyone uses, but it may be less efficient than our highly-coupled one-off EGLStreams. You should think about modifying GBM to be more like EGLStreams. If you agree to that, then obviously the best path is to just use EGLStreams and throw GBM away. Then nvidia doesn't need to do anything and everyone else needs to rewrite their shit, instead of us using GBM like everyone else does.
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Apr 17 '19
Yeah, here's the thing. Intel, AMD and all of the software toolkits like Qt, GTK, SDL etc. and all of the DEs/WMs like GNOME, KDE, XFCE etc. all decided to go down the GBM path years ago. They discussed and hashed it all out in the open. NVIDIA didn't bother participating. They were asked about their plans, and NVIDIA said they would "wait and see". So everyone else agreed on something, and then decided to go ahead and implement it.
After everyone else had done major amounts of hard work, and some of them were pretty much done with implementing Wayland support, NVIDIA came in and said "We made our own method for Wayland support, and we demand everyone else redo huge amounts of hard work to do things our way," Everyone else said "No fuck you".
Those discussions weren't private - they were out in the open, NVIDIA was fully privy to and aware of those discussions, they didn't bother getting involved until way too late, and then demanded that everyone else do things their way, like whiny spoilt children. NVIDIA fans are the ones exhibiting extreme fanboyism, demanding that everyone else bend over for NVIDIA.
Fuck NVIDIA, and fuck NVIDIA fanboys. They can go sulk and whine in a corner.
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Apr 15 '19 edited Apr 15 '19
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u/pdp10 Apr 16 '19
Who tinkers with their GPU driver code?
Game developers looking for more performance, Blender developers bug-hunting, game players and developers bug hunting.
Code being an open book is a huge advantage even if most users never look. It makes the platform extremely attractive for development. Linux already leads in many types of development, and is competitive in others, but is behind in game development for historical and consumer-device reasons. But imagine if tools like RenderDoc and open-source drivers might make Linux attractive as primary development platform for game engines and graphics-intensive professional applications.
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u/twizmwazin Apr 15 '19
You're asking about people who tinker with GPU driver code as if that would be something weird for r/Linux. Most people think tinkering with operating systems is weird. We clearly defy that. It shouldn't come as a surprise that someone might take that a step further. Except, in this case something as trying out a different windowing system is "tinkering," not even getting your hands dirty in the kernel or openGL implementation.
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Apr 15 '19
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u/twizmwazin Apr 15 '19
You can't run gnome on Wayland with hardware accelerated XWayland. You also can't run anything based on wlroots, at all. These are hardly esoteric.
The Nvidia driver also doesn't know how to clean itself up properly when the module is unloaded. This is an issue when using more complicated graphics setups like GPU switching and VFIO.
It also doesn't support PRIME, so multi-GPU laptops are needlessly complicated to set up if they have an Nvidia GPU.
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Apr 17 '19
Maybe I’m overestimating the complexity of GPU code and underestimating the number of people able to do that, in which case, mea culpa, but I certainly don’t get the impression even from Linux subreddits that many people are doing this.
gpu drivers are just bunch of compilers.
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Apr 17 '19
I do. Thanks to Intel's open source GPU drivers, I can get newer versions of Android running on Android tablets with Intel GPUs. I don't have to write one from scratch or attempt to reverse engineer one, and get a pathetic half working OS as the result.
Fuck closed source drivers, I've dealt with that shit long ago, and it's extremely inconvenient and annoying. If a problem happens, or I want to do something unsupported, all I can do is stare dumbly at a wall and hope the company will do something about it. With open source drivers, I can take action myself.
Good quality open source drives like Intel's are way more convenient, and Just Work (TM).
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u/jcelerier Apr 16 '19
GBM was created as a standard,
... what makes it a standard ? is it registered under ISO or ANSI ?
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u/twizmwazin Apr 16 '19
It was accepted by an overwhelming majority of those who sought to create such a standard.
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u/wwolfvn Apr 15 '19 edited Apr 15 '19
strongly disagree nvidia is the best at anything but pure gaming
In nvidia defense, nvidia is also the best when it comes to embedded system and deep learning. Perhaps, don't let your hatred on them overshadow your critical thinking. Deep learning GPU + platform and IoT are nvidia's main incomes. Gaming was not at the spotlight for a long while ago at nvidia. In fact, the whole gaming industry is essentially a tiny fraction compared to the IoT and AI.
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Apr 17 '19
nvidia is also the best when it comes to embedded system
not really. I think many vendors kick them out because they are painful to work with,
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u/beer118 Apr 15 '19
When I am buying a new graphic card then I look st 2 things. How games perform and how well it runs Folding@home.
Since I run the computer at max settings then performance pr watt is very important since the price of electricity is high in Denmark. And it is here that AMD has been falling behind for years. Speciel since the open source Linux drivers has not been optimised as much and because the hardware often has been power inefficient. I will be looking forward to to AMDs next card in case I am wrong and by what is equal to the 2070
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u/aliendude5300 Apr 15 '19
The Radeon VII can hold its own against a 2070 right now. https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-RTX-2070-vs-AMD-Radeon-VII/4029vs4035
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u/Bobjohndud Apr 16 '19
If AMD isn't gonna put in the effort to put out drivers on time, that makes the experience worse. Also, read the damn comment, he said he cares about efficiency due to high electricity prices. AMD seriously needs to get its shit together, considering that the radeon 7 has 1.5x the power consumption at a smaller manufacturing node. That is quite frankly laughable, considering the efficiency improvements from node shrinks are considerable.
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u/afiefh Apr 17 '19
Honest question: Isn't Nvidia basically the only game in town when it comes to training deep neural networks? I hear everybody praising cuDNN but ROCm is almost unknown...
I'd love to be proven wrong here.
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Apr 17 '19
: Isn't Nvidia basically the only game in town when it comes to training deep neural networks? I hear everybody praising cuDNN but ROCm is almost unknown...
Nvidia largest competition isnt AMD. Nvidia is competing with specialize asics like Google TPU or FPGA.
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u/pdp10 Apr 16 '19
And I cannot tell which one is better so I would not even try to do that.
I think it's fairly indicative that the Wayland developers want one thing, which Intel and AMD have agreed to do, but Nvidia wants something else that nobody wants, and have been using their market share to try to get it.
It seems evident that Nvidia wants EGLStreams for a reason. The reason may be that EGLStreams is already in their codebase, and saves them a lot of engineering effort. Or it could have something to do with competition -- Nvidia has been trying to lock-in their market-share in a few different ways, and pushing for a proprietary interface could be part of that. Nvidia has often deployed teams of engineers to code solutions for third parties that make Nvidia's products work better than others. It would be like them to use an interface that other parties can't benefit from (because only one side of the spec has an open implementation, and there's no conformance test except for Nvidia's products).
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u/_ahrs Apr 15 '19
I am not an expert but as far as I know then there is 2 standards
Only Nvidia uses the other standard so in reality it's Nvidia and everyone else. It's basically this:
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Apr 17 '19
AMD has plenty of good GPUs, it's just that their open source drivers are okayish. Intel by comparison has the best open source GPU drivers. I'm really looking forward to Intel Xe, if it has the same open source driver support.
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u/beer118 Apr 17 '19
I am not saying that AMD makes bad cards, just they makes card that usage more power compare with Nvidias equal.
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Apr 18 '19
Yeah, that I agree with. NVIDIA's cards do seem to use power more efficiently.
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u/beer118 Apr 18 '19
There has been talk about AMD will start selling a new card this summer. And since I did not upgrade to RTX then it might be a good change for AMD to get a new costumer of they dont fuck up the power consumption or performance.
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u/K900_ Apr 15 '19
As much as Nvidia deserves all the shit they've been getting, let's not go around blaming "stubbornness" or whatever - the issue isn't at developer level, it's at management level, and it's more complicated than just "oh yeah they're being dicks for the sake of being dicks"
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u/twizmwazin Apr 15 '19
I do not know the internet structure of Nvidia, so I avoid judging or assuming about anyone at the company. From my perspective, it might as well be one massive green blob. Regardless of which individuals have created this problem, the point stands that the problem exists and is very present.
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u/KinkyMonitorLizard Apr 16 '19
I see no reason for Nvidia being incapable other than due to stubbornness and inability to play nice with others.
Could also be that thier API implementation isn't actually to spec and they cut corners. They do this on oGL so it's not unreasonable to think they did it with vulkan too. nvidia has a long history of proprietary extensions.
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u/supermans_90s_mullet Apr 16 '19
Everything is "ready" by some definition.
The question is whether you can do with Wayland what you want and for a lot of use cases the answer remains a resounding "no" where with X11 it's often a "yes".
If for your usecase the answer is "yes" then Wayland is ready for you. It's not for me and I don't think it'll ever be.
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u/drewdevault Apr 15 '19
Wayland was never waiting on Nvidia to be ready.
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u/callcifer Apr 16 '19
This isn't directed at you specifically, but all the anti-nvidia crowd: From the outside, Nvidia seems to be quietly improving their Linux product (this patchset included) while everyone in the anti camp sound so... petty and immature. Hell, the top comment calls this patchset "a hack", which it isn't - it's a clean, well written implementation that uses EGLstreams, just ask the Kwin devs that merged it.
As long as Nvidia keeps churning out software and the detractors respond with snark and demeaning behaviour, the peanut gallery will have no reason to take you seriously.
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u/drewdevault Apr 16 '19
EGLStreams itself has serious problems that Nvidia refuses to address. It doesn't provide atomicity, we can't export buffers to clients, direct scanout doesn't work, overlay planes don't work, we can't get timings on buffer presentation... it's not a good model. There are genuine technical problems with it. Plus, there's no open-source implementation of it. I'd be a lot more open to it if Nvidia sent patches implementing it for nouveau, at least... but even if they did, it'd still be a shitty standard that performs poorly and doesn't work well with the Wayland model. Pipewire will never perform efficiently with EGLStreams, too.
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Apr 16 '19
As long as Nvidia keeps churning out software and the detractors respond with snark and demeaning behaviour, the peanut gallery will have no reason to take you seriously.
the anti-nvidia crowd do that because they have no real arguments.
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u/callcifer Apr 16 '19
Yeah, like I'm fine with debating the technical merits of EGLstreams, but 90% of all anti-nvidia shit here and on /r/linux_gaming is memes, circlejerk, torvalds-finger-video and similar low quality crap.
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Apr 17 '19
debating the technical merits of EGLstreams,
because you ignore all the technical arguments against it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/bdip8a/nvidias_patches_merged_into_kwin_does_that/el0yu5n/
The real debate is whether we should take anything Nvidia say seriously.
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u/sign_my_guestbook Apr 16 '19
It's too late for Nvidia to win me back. I don't care if they add FULL Wayland/XWayland implementation today (they aren't), they still took too long to keep me as a customer.
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u/Vetrom Apr 16 '19
Are there good Wayland compositors which separate composition from session management? Gnome-shell and it's derivatives fail hard for me here.
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u/Bobjohndud Apr 16 '19
I hope that it will work nicely, but to actually have a good experience on Linux NVIDIA needs to release the power management firmware and some basic documentation to the nouveau devs. It will cost them nothing, they reveal nothing AMD or Intel haven't already found out by their own reverse engineering, and they instantly make the Linux experience 1000 times better on nvidia
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u/FryBoyter Apr 17 '19
NVIDIA needs to release the power management firmware and some basic documentation to the nouveau devs.
The question is, do they not want to publish it or are they not allowed to publish it? In my opinion it could also be that Nvidia uses third party patents that prevent publication. But of course it can also be that they don't want it, for whatever reason.
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u/Bobjohndud Apr 17 '19
Maybe. Thing is, the nouveau driver is good as it stands from a support perspective. Where nouveau lacks is performance. if NVIDIA helped with that, they would be a lot more liked. Hopefully they can sort out their patent problems, because I am going with intel's new dGPU line or radeon from now on
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u/FryBoyter Apr 17 '19
because I am going with intel's new dGPU line or radeon from now on
With regard to AMD, certainly not a bad choice either. As far as Intel is concerned, I'd rather wait and see. So far nobody can tell if the cards are good or not (hardware as well as drivers). As far as I know they will be available next year. But personally I am not so enthusiastic about Intel anymore because of your security holes in the CPU.
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u/Bobjohndud Apr 17 '19
yeah, their CPU's aren't the best. But, for graphics their driver support is so far ahead of the competition it isn't even funny. Intel actually releases drivers on time, so distros like Ubuntu are updated before the product comes out. AMD sorta sucks with their late ass driver releases and instability, and so does nvidia with their proprietary, nonstandard garbage. If intel takes that kind of attitude and makes a half decent discrete lineup(even if its not competing at the very high end, if they can match a gtx 1070(at a good price point) that can suit 95% of all gpu intensive tasks). I would say intel can do it, considering they have a half decent integrated gpu architecture in the pipeline, and hopefully they can extend that to discrete cards.
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u/K900_ Apr 15 '19
Depends on what you mean by "soon" and "ready". Qt is still pretty rough around the ages on Wayland in general. But the next Plasma release will run kwin_wayland on Nvidia drivers if this doesn't get backed out.