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Why Linux Loses Out On Hardware Acceleration In Firefox
devtty writes with some bad news for Linux users, from OSNews: "The release notes for Firefox 4.0 beta 9 noted that it comes with hardware acceleration for Windows 7 and Vista via a combination of Direct2D, DirectX 9 and DirectX 10. Windows XP users will also enjoy hardware acceleration for many operations 'using our new Layers infrastructure along with DX9.' Furthermore, Mac OS X has excellent OpenGL support, they claim, so they've got that covered as well. No mention of Linux, and there's a reason for that. 'We tried enabling OpenGL on Linux, and discovered that most Linux drivers are so disastrously buggy (think "crash the X server at the drop of a hat, and paint incorrectly the rest of the time" buggy) that we had to disable it for now,' explains Zbarsky, 'Heck, we're even disabling WebGL for most Linux drivers, last I checked...'" An update to the story softens this news slightly, saying that "hardware acceleration (OpenGL only) on Linux has been implemented, but due to bugs and issues, only one driver so far has been whitelisted (the proprietary NVIDIA driver)."
After that, I'm wondering if it's better to use D3D and Wine instead of native GL!
Then I guess it will surprise you to know that Wine implements D3D on top of native OpenGL. If Firefox worked better on Wine, it would only mean that the Firefox developers can't write decent OpenGL code, but Wine developers can.
OpenSource guys know how to implement graphics drivers, but they're horribly understaffed.
There are probably 50 times more closed source driver developers than OpenSource developers. The fact that they are able to do even what they do is amazing in its own right.
Graphic cards manufacturers do take Linux seriously. At least Intel and AMD/ATI do, they contribute with open source drivers, engineers and even specs.
And after years of supporting opensource drivers, they still suck. The problem is that a good quality graphic driver is really hard. It takes years and several engineers to write one, so often the drivers are late or incomplete. As if that wasn't bad enought, Linux has needed to rewrite big chunks of the graphic stack: KMS, and now Gallium3D, which force a kernel/mesa driver rewrite. And then there are other problems, like the fact that X sucks and graphic drivers have not been able to make Xrender really fast (some times toolkits seem to be faster using software than using Xrender; also Xrender doesn't reports which parts of its interface are hardware accelerated and which ones are using a software fallback which makes hard to trust it)
I take it you only read the first half of the summary. They have an OpenGL version that works fine on Mac, and fine on Linux with the nVidia drivers. The problem is not that OpenGL is a difficult API to use, it's that the Linux drivers suck.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This conclusion matches the observation of the kwin developers who are brave enough to use GLSL for desktop effects
http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2010/09/driver-dilemma-in-kde-workspaces-4-5/
Without citations to back it up, the response of some open source devs was, IIRC: The KWin guys don't understand open source. They are meant to get in touch with the driver developers and help getting the bugs resolved, preferable send patches. The clutter developers i.e. sent patches to solve driver problems.
IIRC, the mentioned contribution from clutter devs to the graphics drivers were made by Red Hat employees, which heavily backs the gnome development. Red Hat has lots of money and eve more important expertise in house to tackle such problems. The KWin guys don't have these resources.
Open source gives the means to find, analyze and fix bugs, but its not mandatory. Saying so would mean that one has to know the code bases of every open source library used by his or her application. Thats ridiculous.
The firefox devs sure don't plan to get into linux graphics driver development and thats fine.
The real problem is that the driver teams don't have enough resources (money and developers) to get the job done. I'd be happy to vote with my feet and only buy graphics hardware with good open source drivers to encourage to hardware vendors to hire linux kernel developers. But right now I have to stick with nvidia since their drivers, though not open source and certainly have their own bugs, are the only sufficient choice for OpenGL (and OpenCL) on linux.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not. FreeBSD and Solaris have almost identical nVidia drivers to Linux - they have slightly different kernel shims, but they use the same blob. Most DRI drivers are also the same on Linux and FreeBSD, because they mostly run in userspace and are more dependent on X.org than the kernel (this is changing a bit with KMS).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If you need to hardware accelerate web browsers these days, I think that more indicates a problem with modern website design.
There are independent OpenSource graphics developers who do an amazing job (thanks for r300, Corbin Simpson!). But there are too few of them, mostly because the whole area of graphics driver development is fairly specialized and complicated.
PS: I'm a long-time lurker in Mesa IRC and mailing lists, and I'm planning to join Mesa development once I've more free time.
Isn't it funny then that the vendor who, according to you, doesn't take Linux seriously, is the only one with working drivers?
Mada mada dane.
Ah, but at least the OS X drivers are likely fairly consistent with the bugs due to the limited amount of different mac hardware out there.
I think a more accurate statement is that OS X OpenGL bugs typically don't crash the UI, unlike Linux OpenGL bugs. OS X OpenGL bugs mostly involve features not working. Like antialiasing, for example. Apple does a lot of work at the Quartz level to get decent antialiased graphics primitives.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
And there are a few of us who get paid for coding open source software.
But you are right, we do not exist, we should never be brought up in any conversation...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
nVidia supplies top-flight OpenGL drivers with their cards. They are in every way as stable and as fast as their DirectX drivers, and support the latest standards. ATi's OpenGL drivers are nearly as good. I haven't tested them recently but last time I did they weren't quite as fast as DirectX, but nearly so, and their feature support is current (4.1 with the current drivers). Their main issue is with older games since they can't limit extensions reporting which can cause problems for games that can't handle all the extensions modern cards have.
The support is true over many generations too. The very latest cards, the 580 and 6970, support OpenGL (version 4.1 in this case), and support had been there for a long time. Go back and get an original GeForce 256, you find that it supports OpenGL (1.4 in its case) and every card in between. Not an extra download either, it is part of the standard drivers they provide on their website (and their OEMs ship with their cards).
That isn't non-existent, that is heavily supported. More or less if you have a dedicated graphics accelerator on Windows, you have OpenGL support. The only major graphics provider I don't know about in Intel. I know their graphics chips have OpenGL support, though it lags a bit, but I've no idea how good it is.
Regardless, I'd say Windows drivers being "practically non existent" is very incorrect. If you want 3D acceleration for your system, you purchase an nVidia or ATi card. They are the only guys in the business anymore. They both supply current OpenGL drivers with their current products. Means OpenGL drivers are readily available, and in fact installed on most systems that have discreet 3D.
Just fine? KDE 4.5 and 4.6 (upcoming) crash on log in with nvidias drivers ver 260.xx.xx (on openSUSE 11.3 32bit?). Many other applications and applets also crash, particularly on 4.6 where krunner, amarok and search and launch activity are amongst the affected ones. This is one of the currently most reported bugs at the moment with a current dup count of 58! As if all this wasn't enough in 4.6 the window manager also almost immediately freezes until desktop effects are automatically disabled.
So basically when you try KDE 4.6 on openSUSE 11.3 with updated nvidia drivers what happens is. You can't login due to desktop crash. If you fix that by removing the offending applets from the config files. On login Krunner crashes and keeps re-spawning and crashing. If you manage to kill it then desktop freezes and if all goes well effects are disabled. And if you get past then you can use it... without krunner, effects, and some of its best applications.
Rather nVidia's drivers are a result of two things:
1) Getting tired of the Linux situation. Much of the problems with the bullshit in X and the underlying layers nVidia just avoids by bypassing it all with their drivers. They do things their own way and it works. They weren't interesting in fucking around with all the politics and BS and waiting around for a reasonable standard to get developed, and just made something that works. They shouldn't have to, and didn't on Windows which provides a solid graphics infrastructure (which also allows for extension so you can implement other APIs like OpenGL) but htey did on Linux.
2) Their drivers use code they've licensed that they can't distribute. Various things are patented or licensed in some way and they can't just hand it out. So to do an OSS version would mean to rewrite the drives without it, and generally using programmers that had never worked with it to avoid issues of contamination. That is difficult and expensive. Before you claims that can't be the case note that AMD hasn't just opened up their binary drivers. The reason is the same.
Basically nVidia did what was best for their business, and best for their customers that want to get work done. They made Linux graphics drivers that work well. They aren't OSS friendly, but they can accelerate OpenGL well and they have been doing so for years. They weren't interested in ideological purity or the like, they were interested in having good support, and their strategy delivered and is STILL the only one that does, after all this time.
Maybe in a few years you'll be right, there'll be an open solution that works as good or better. Maybe at that point nVidia will use it. However right now I have trouble faulting them. Their shit works where the other's don't. That is really all that matters.
Heh. NVidia obviously does take Linux serious, because they continue to put out good, working drivers with each subsequent release, and are obviously the only cards to get for Linux users that needs working, stable 3D, such as those doing 3D CAD.
I've been using NVidia cards for more than 10 years and I've never had a single X server crash related to NVidia's drivers. The two times I tried AMD/ATI cards, I threw my hands up after numerous X server crashes.
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That has nothing to do with the license. FreeBSD and Solaris both manage to maintain stable kernel ABIs, so upgrading the kernel typically doesn't require kernel modules to be recompiled. Linux breaks them for fun because Linux devs like making work for other people.
Audio is equally amusing when you use Linux. On FreeBSD or Solaris, multiple apps can open /dev/dsp, can write audio, and can have independent volume controls, and it all just works. On Linux, you need to have a userspace daemon running to make this basic functionality work, and you need all of your code to agree on exactly which userspace daemon it should be...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That would be stupid and fatal long term. We would never again see Linux lead the way anywhere if we hitched ourselves to Microsoft's trailer hitch. All this new push to ARM would have never been possible had not Linux lead the way there and created a potential market large enough to get Microsoft to follow. Your idea would have forever tied us to x86.
NVidia has a top tier 3D driver now because high dollar workstation users these days use Linux instead of legacy UNIX. That means there is money in keeping their drivers good enough to keep those super high margin cards moving out of their factory and not AMD/ATI's. But AMD wants in, not only there but on desktops and lacking the development resources are instead opening the specs. So be patient and soon we will have two hight quality options. Intel is already supplying fair driver support but they just don't compete well on the hardware.
Had we somehow adopted the Microsoft driver model (heavy emphasis on the somehow) none of this progress would have happened.
Democrat delenda est