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Google Won't Enable Chrome Video Acceleration Because of Linux GPU Bugs
An anonymous reader writes "Citing 'code we consider to be permanently "experimental" or "beta,"' Google Chrome engineers have no plans on enabling video acceleration in the Chrome/Chromium web browser. Code has been written but is permanently disabled by default because 'supporting GPU features on Linux is a nightmare' due to the reported sub-par quality of Linux GPU drivers and many different Linux distributions. Even coming up with a Linux GPU video acceleration white-list has been shot down over fear of the Linux video acceleration code causing stability issues and problems for Chrome developers. What have been your recent experiences with Linux GPU drivers?"
You mean like Google Maps??
ChromeOS, GPU acceleration always! Same hardware and drivers but not horribly tied to the Google Cloud? Nope.
Using intel i3 graphics with default driver that comes with RHEL6/CentOS6. I startup chromium with --ignore-gpu-blacklist. It has been more than a year now and so far so good.
Not Android Linux, or Windows or OS X?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I remember these types of problems in the early days of Linux, only then it was audio drivers. Getting audio to work was a disaster. Video typically worked ok but that was before nVidia and AMD were the major players. Now the tides have turned and audio works like a dream and video is what sucks ass.
I swear I've had more issues with video this last year than I did in the last 15 combined.
Is this really something that's best fixed by expecting Nvidia/ATI/Intel to release higher quality drivers for every distro? Or is this a distro problem, where LInux will simply never have ability to handle acceleration very well because it's a constantly-moving target?
It's an honest question. I'm curious to see what people involved with either Linux or GPU drivers thinks.
I must admit, I don't do gaming on my Linux rig, but ... aren't there major 3D games being published for Linux via Humble Bundles, Steam, GoG, and no doubt others as well? Is this a support nightmare for those companies? And if not, how is it that they can work with GPUs in Linux, but the living gods of code over at Google can't hack it? I'm at work and can't be bothered to look up compelling examples, but I'm pretty sure The Witcher 2 runs on Linux, and that's a pretty GPU-intensive title. When something like this doesn't add up, it usually means I'm missing something. Like maybe Witcher 2 requires a specific distro that uses proprietary drivers or something, but Google's talking about Linux in general? Can anyone clue me in?
If you want GPU acceleration that actually works somewhat as expected in LINUX, you need a relatively recent (but not TOO recent) graphics accelerator card and a popular distro such as Ubuntu / Linux Mint so that you have access to precompiled proprietary drivers (and an automated installer) that have actually been tested with that distribution (and still may break things when you install them even after they have passed testing). Mileage will vary on other distros but you will likely need the most recent release of the OS in order to get acceleration working without tons of effort. You will still need to use a proprietary driver if you intend to do anything more advanced than rendering 2d effects, and the desktop environment may impact performance if gl effects are enabled.
If you manage to avoid breaking Xorg after you have installed the proprietary drivers, you will still find that performance is lagging behind equivalent setups in Windows, and rendering issues may appear in certain games that will not be resolved for at least one or more driver releases, typically not included with that particular distribution's release. This will force you to either upgrade to the alpha/beta/testing version of that distro or else try to compile your own proprietary drivers, either scenario including a significant amount of additional risk to your environment and potentially costing hours of effort to resolve.
God help you if you have a laptop with a hybrid intel/nVidia GPU system that is designed to use the intel GPU for common 2D tasks and the nVidia GPU for gaming or other high performance 3d rendering tasks in an effort to offer the best of both worlds (good battery life and high performance) which is an absolutely nightmare to get working correctly in LINUX.
God help you if you are dealing with EFI or UEFI.
These are some of the reasons why I bought a used Mac and stopped using LINUX as my primary OS.
Simply enable it for NVIDIA users by default. It works the same across every distribution, and in fact, every OS. Google are just as cowardly as Adobe were.
For those who want faster flash and faster Chrome, try this:
* Go to chrome://flags
* Override software rendering list -> Enable
Welcome to a faster Flash and faster Chrome :)
Oh, if only a large company like, say, Google would adopt the drivers and support their development...
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
still I cannot explain why on Windows in a virtual machine (Linux as host) the sound is better than in Linux itself.
I suspect the Linux builds of Skype don't have all the good audio codecs they've added to the Windows build, Skype now being a Microsoft product. The audio quality is total ass.
they'd remove the blacklist completely --- and all the driver vendors would quickly fix the bugs (if there even are any).
As it is, no-one fixes the drivers because there aren't that many test cases showing the hypothetical bugs. And a good way to get those test cases would be with a frequently used app like Chromium.
By keeping the blacklist, it means those bugs they think are there will likely never be found and fixed.
In 2 words: THEY SUCK.
I had to abort a windows to linux port because the intel linux graphics driver is BROKEN (Intel Atom N455). I spent weeks convincing a customer he was better off moving his code base to linux, and when I finally got the OK to build a prototype, the UI was unusable. I really wish the GPU manufacturers would provide enough documentation so the Open source ppl could come in and fix it.
I've been using Linux as my primary OS for 10 years. My desktop PC does dual boot into windows for a few games but spends 95% of the time in Linux. I've done a bit of gaming and other graphics intensive applications under Linux without any problems. As a part time gaming machine, there is a mid range NVIDIA card hiding inside and I've always used the proprietary NVIDIA drivers which are as good as those on windows. There was a time when installing those drivers was a bit of a pain, due to other developers trying to to force their extremist political views on users, but it is a very simple process now.
Some drivers might have problems but there is no reason they couldn't take the same approach as Firefox developers: provide a user controlled, easily accessible, option to enable hardware acceleration... Maybe that last point shows why I don't care what Google does with Chrome on Linux or any other platform... Firefox works for me on Linux, Windows and Android.
It's not the display. It's the codec and resolution of the video. The size you of the screen you are going to display it on has squat to do with what it will take to decode the video.
For 720p or 1080p h264, this can be considerable. Add h265 into the mix and you've just added a whole new world of hurt.
This allows machines that can't even run Windows anymore to deal with any video that you could throw at it.
Even if you do have the CPU for "brute force", using speciality silicon on the GPU is probably more efficient (less battery drain).
My favorite "low rez linux display" is measured in feet rather than inches.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Not having flash in chromium was one of the many straws. This doesn't help.
I used to use a Chrome/Firefox combo to segregate my browsing/cookies. Just switched to multiple firefox profiles and added a "Close Tabs to the Right" plugin (to restore the one thing I missed about chrome). Much happier and I doubt I'll ever go back.
It's obvious that the google gui programmers just use windows or mac gui APIs and don't know how to code. Linux GPU code has been extremely stable. Maybe they can learn how to program from the folks at Steam ? LMAO The new Steam Appliance runs Linux. I use a GTX 560 in a MacPro 2,1 running linux on bare metal with NO ISSUES.
Because they don't want to develop to a shifting target. By relying on open standards, they force hardware manufactures to support those standards with higher fidelity. Otherwise you end up with software you have to continue to patch to specific drivers. The only reason linux suffers from sketchy graphic drivers, is that the spec they code to never matches what the hardware ends up producing. The hardware manufacture can simply hack the drivers to deal with each corner case. Video cards which accurately match their specs are well supported on linux.
linux drivers suck for all 3
Don't tell Valve! You'll ruin there latest business model!
Seriously, I've used GPUs from all three manufacturers and found every Intel and nvidia hardware/driver combination I've tried to work well in Linux, and every AMD combination to be the opposite. I wish it were not so, but it is, in my experience.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Yep you hit it on the money. And if you have a Chromebook you always want to run Linux on it to get any real use out of it.
given that CPU horsepower today is good enough, and tomorrow will be more so. Besudes how much video power do you need for your typical low-rez linux display.
So you are fine with Linux requiring gobs of CPU horsepower and delivering low video performance? Then it is technologically worse option than Windows. Windows lets me squeeze more out of my hardware. Why would I use Linux anymore then?
There was a time when I used Linux precisely because it was the faster option and gave me more power. There are still good reasons to use Linux. But this unoptimized bloated software is really starting to now appear everywhere on Linux world. Not good.
Performance is a top thing I want from my computer.
What's the saying any problem can be solved by adding another layer of indirection. Guess they can't figure out how to monitize contributing coding resources to address the issue.
When comes to open source drivers Intel is way better, however Nvidia has better closed source drivers
Doesn't explain why the OS X version works as well as the Windows one.
I've a fresh install of Mint 16 here on a Thinkpad with an AMD RV710 and the Mesa driver seems to be working fine. Steam games & Netflix work a treat. I haven't installed Chrome, though, it's performance my suck but Chrome is easily avoidable.
I've never felt compelled to bother with such a setup. I have a rather large monitor. Dunno if I have room for another one like it. On the other hand, the whole "virtual workspace" thing seems to already accomplish a lot of what other people use multiple monitors for.
Perhaps someday when I am REALLY bored I will buy a couple of cards high end enough for this to matter and horse race both operating systems.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There is an issue with quite a few distros being released that do not easily show streaming video. These days one expects video to just work out of the box so to speak.
Very hard to get worked up over this non-issue. If you know enough to be running a Linux system that can support GPU video acceleration without error (or you can understand the cause of the error if it occurs), then you know enough to be able to enable this feature manually.
Why is this even an issue to be concerned about.. Who cares what the default is? It is pretty common practice for companies to ship with defaults that target the lowest common denominator and are the most stable. Google's decision here is inline with that and I cannot really see there being anything to complain about.
I am using the latest of the Opera Browsers based on Chromium and it has an option for "hardware-accelerated video decode where available." and Opera is based off of Chromium....
Somehow Intel is able to do this but AMD is incapable of writing decent drivers. Great hardware is useless without software which is why I don't own any AMD gear and with the exception of an old PowerMac 9600 never have. I do use Nvidia and put up with their closed drivers on Linux because they do at least function unlike AMD's.
I understand that drivers == performance == competitive advantage, so the vendors want to keep SOMETHING secret, but hasn't the state of the art advanced quite a bit beyond what the vast majority of people need? Can't the vendors just release a plain-vanilla, rock-solid, super-basic driver that offers 90% of the performance? Or hell, even 50%? I mean, if I somehow managed to run Linux on a 75 MHz Pentium with 1 MB onboard VRAM in 1998, surely I should be able to expect *some* acceptable level of performance in 2014 with 1024 times more VRAM. Why is this so hard? You'd think at least ONE vendor would want to be known as "the ones who support Linux really well" -- especially with how Windows 8 is doing.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Quit confusing the issue with facts.
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon, we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." - John F. Kennedy, 12th of September, 1962
I find it hard to believe that I've been using Nvidia for almost a decade and I see none of these problems either. I keep hearing people ranting about linux sucks and 3D on it is broken while I happily keep rolling on. Either I'm smarter than I think or a lot of them are trolling. Regardless Google can suck my dick. I support those who support me. Chrome isn't that special anyway. Sure it's faster. I've seen that but it's not like it's 30,000% faster. I can give up a millisecond or two not to put up with some arrogant cocksuckers at Google.
If Google is so confident that it is driver bugs causing issues, then I'm sure they can put together test code to test for and expose the bugs. In other words, instead of complaining, give the vendors code that will show them the issues and allow them to resolve them. You don't have to cover every issue - just share the code you intend to use and let the vendors fix their drivers - OR - show you where your own code is responsible.
Place nail here >+
This is all part of a cunning plan to have Android and/or Chromium enter the desktop/laptop market. Start by denigrating your target.
We are the 198 proof..
Chrome OS is sold on machines using ARM procs. to power the system. Which of them are using AMD or Nvidia GPU's and drivers?
wow. what an incredibly impressive rant. I always love when my competence is brought into question by an anonymous coward.
FYI, my linux port DOES work, just not on the specific platform that the client initially chose. I offered to explore this cost reducing move, which was progressing swimmingly until i hit this linux/intel/qml opengl incompatibility.The only downside was I spent some of MY time exploring the options, and we now need to stay running Windows Embedded for a little longer, until we can qualify a arm based board that will work.
The intel HD3000 onwards are not horrible, especially if you are comparing on performance per watt, which is the way the market is headed. The traditional desktop is dying - admittedly a long and protracted death.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Problem solved, come on Google. Valve figured out how to get Steam on Linux and it runs faster than on Windows. They just tell you run Restricted Drivers. It's' that simple.
I'm running the most recent Mint and it prefers to install Nvidia driver version 310.44 as default, claiming it is 'more stable'
the current driver @ Nvidia.com is 331.49.
What Mint considers most stable still causes lock-ups a few times a week usually on boot but can be at odd times.
Why doesn't Mint use the X drivers, well usually they're rubbish.
I've put up with this rubbish over my 19 years of Linux use, s'pose I'm used to it,
have to agree with Google engineers.
Remembering that Linux is only the kernel, it's none of their business,
and X isn't responsible for the binary blobs
and Nvidia doesn't care because there aren't enough Linux users
The dilemma is between proprietary hardware makers and free software writers.
Other side of the coin, why would you use Chrome which is non-free and definitely not trustworthy.
Go well
geez, as if google wouldnt have the engineering power ...
I recently installed updates on my Asus Laptop working with Ubuntu 12.04 and it is dead because of drivers update for Radeon graphic card. During booting everything is ok but after logging in display backlight is down.
Unfortunately DVD drive is dead and for strange reason on Asus laptops you cannot boot from USB which brings my laptop dead at the moment. I am setting up PXE server but thinking if I should go back with Linux.
They'd stop android, or replace it with GNUstep... the only chance for Linux on the desktop is GNUstep. Because gtk, qt, fltk and what not are a pain, seriously (and by gtk, qt I mean GNOME and KDE). Likewise goes for Canonical/Ubuntu.
Windoze not found: (C)heer, (P)arty or (D)ance
ChromeOS is their OS on a hardware thay approved beforehand. Nothing to do with a random Linux machine out there.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Android Linux uses an entirely separate display stack from desktop Linux. You have different hardware, with different drivers and (most importantly) different defects in the drivers.
The difference is that they only blacklist ancient versions of the drivers
And for some GPUs, Firefox blacklists the latest version of the drivers provided by the operating system distributor. On a laptop with an Intel Atom N450 CPU and integrated GPU running Firefox 27.0.1 on Xubuntu 12.04 LTS, with sudo sh -c "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" run this morning, I have very little acceleration and no WebGL. In about:support, under GPU Accelerated Windows and WebGL Support, I see "Blocked for your graphics card because of unresolved driver issues."
Yeah, why doesn't Chrome just use OpenGL and be done with it?
Short answer: Defective drivers crash Chrome.
There's no SRPM for Chrome, so it's binary-only
Chromium is Chrome without the proprietary parts. It's not in Fedora for other reasons, mostly related to having to fork and bundle the libraries that it uses in order to add API hooks for needed functionality, which may or may not meet the "modified beyond a certain extent" exception to Fedora's policy on bundled libraries.
My Debian installation regularly manages to lock up nouveau to the point where it has to be shut down via ssh or a hardware switch. This has happened at least once or twice per week for almost a year, more when running any graphics-intensive program. I'm not sure if this is representative, but WTF.
When simply starting the client kills my X session about every third time.
I've not had too many problems with them, in the general OS.
GPU issues in chrome on the other hand... loads of them, pages not rendering, video not playing, flash going full berzerk...
makes me wonder where the problem actually lies...