Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NVIDIA's Proprietary Linux Driver Adds Support For Wayland, Mir (phoronix.com)

Posted by timothy on from the breaking-barriers-sorta dept.

An anonymous reader writes: After being desired by NVIDIA Linux users for years, the proprietary GeForce graphics driver natively supports Wayland and Mir as an alternative to an X.Org Server. It's been a long time coming for the proprietary GPU driver stacks to support Wayland/Mir, but with today's 364.12 beta driver there is now the necessary DRM KMS kernel support and EGL extensions for being able to handle these next-generation display solutions. The new NVIDIA Linux driver also provides integrated Vulkan support, PRIME rendering support, and other additions.

83 comments

  1. Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Might be about time to move the gaming rig over to SteamOS.

    1. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by aliquis · · Score: 1

      Might be about time to move the gaming rig over to SteamOS.

      So far the performance has been quite a bit worse on SteamOS than on Windows. I don't see why this update would change that. So far Vulkan has performed worse than DirectX too but I assume that will change with new games/engine versions by competent developers.

    2. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      While a popular point of rhetoric, there exists ZERO evidence SteamOS (Linux) is slower than Windows. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rISRVeJxhnE Very improperly, most people and articles are attributing poor performance to SteamOS when the real issue is sub-par ports of applications. Also note in the video you can observe a couple of glitches (texture loading) in the Window's demo whereas it's silky smooth on Linux ( - which is believed to be superior Linux file caching).

      To be clear, not that I'm ignoring your last sentence, but your first two sentences are misleading; though I don't believe that's intentional. If a game's performance is lackluster, you can completely blame the game developer as it has absolutely nothing to do with SteamOS. SteamOS has all of the foundations to provide FASTER performance than Windows. There exists no evidence to substantiate a claim that SteamOS is slower than Windows and all evidence points to platform performance deltas being that of lazy ports and developers who lack platform knowledge to optimize for Linux as they have done for Windows. Hell, once again we have games running under Wine which are starting to outperform native Windows. Which is pretty profound when you consider they are frequently doing DX to OpenGL translations to boot. Meaning they are faster even with an additional abstraction layer. Bluntly, there is every evidence that SteamOS/Linux (with NVIDIA anyways) is faster than Windows and where applications falter, you can squarely blame the developers.

      Additionally, the Vulkan comment is not true. So far, developers who are learning to use a new API, without redesigning to properly leverage Vulkan, and running on beta drivers, have performed worse than DirectX; which is a highly optimized and well understood framework. Furthermore, there are specific guideline recommendations for when Vulkan should be used and when it's possible to provide ideal performance. The current use cases are not even known if these satisfy the recommendations. As such, the examples people commonly use may not even represent ideal candidates for the newer DX12/Vulkan APIs.

      In summary, while you have accurately parroted the rhetoric and FUD, it is not supported by any available evidence. That said, I believe the spirit of your comment can be accurately rephrased to say: Many games running on SteamOS have lackluster performance because developers have failed to optimized their games for the new platform (OpenGL vs DX9, DX10, DX11). As such, many games will run slower on SteamOS than Windows, through no fault of SteamOS. This is a subtle yet profoundly important distinction. And it's a distinction which is directly contrary to the common FUD.

    3. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't believe you. Linux has no modern games, unless you want shitty Unity 3D shovelware tablet/phone 80s/90s remakes. If you have a gaming rig, you're probably playing modern 3D games that's on par or exceeding what's available on the PS4 and XBone.

    4. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Arma 3 Bechmark results:
      https://i.imgur.com/UfpUI5p.png
      https://i.imgur.com/ypWsvqz.png
      https://i.imgur.com/haTiRLZ.png

      Worth noting, the port was achieved using a DX wrapper which converts DX calls into OpenGL. With an extra abstraction layer, it's still performing on par or better than Windows.

    5. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I refer you to the list of games that run on SteamOS.

      Please direct your attention in particular to Civilization V, which is the only game on that 1600+ item list I currently care about.

    6. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're in good company. Unless there is a pressing game you need which is not available on SteamOS and Wine, head on over.

      "In February 2015, the Steam Hardware Survey showed 0.91 percent of Linux users. That’s over 1.2 million Linux gamers!"

      "Here’s something surprising: Valve’s Steam Hardware Survey doesn’t include its own SteamOS operating system as part of the Linux market share, nor does the Steam Hardware Survey show it as another operating system. The Steam Hardware Survey just doesn’t appear for users in Big Picture Mode, and Steam on SteamOS is always in Big Picture Mode. "

      "By underreporting Linux usage, Valve discourages developers from targeting Linux and SteamOS. That’s a curious decision on Valve’s part."

      http://www.pcworld.com/article/3045249/linux/linux-gaming-is-much-healthier-than-steams-hardware-survey-implies.html

      Which is all interesting because Valve's numbers are frequently held high as why Linux gaming is failing. The reality is, Linux is drawing in gamers, there are a lot of Linux gamers, Linux gamers are spending money (see Humble Bundles), and very clearly there are millions of Linux gamers and the numbers are growing.

      It's pretty easy to understand why Microsoft grabbed Mantel and rushed to market with DX12, having heard what Khronos was doing with Vulkan. Microsoft is praying Vulkan doesn't steal developers away from their locked in, very proprietary, DX platform. Between Valve, OpenGL, and Vulkan, Microsoft actually has a market force which has them very scared. Loss of PC dominance means loss of XBOX prestige and potentially even loss of the desktop in the long term.

    7. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Civ V is ok. I admit I like the hex grid. If they would let me just install Steam on my Linux boot and I could download Civ IV and the 3 expansions, that would be great.

      On the other hand, Civ IV will probably work just fine under Wine.

    8. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by Hylandr · · Score: 1

      Mod UP +1 and Thank you for these informative posts.

      I am going to load up Linux on my desktop tonight and see how it goes. Going use a separate drive just in case though. :)

      --
      ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
    9. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

      Hum... If these benchmarks are true, so now you have my attention. I never thought about using Linux seriously as a desktop because of the poor performance of GUIs and the ugly mess that are the desktop applications for the same, but if the AAA games are getting to have good performance on it then is a step in the right direction.

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    10. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 1

      To be fair, the engine Unity is getting better https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    11. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by aliquis · · Score: 1

      I don't really get the need for the attitude, if there existed zero evidence for it then I wouldn't mention it, however as you said in my case "don't believe that's intentional" maybe the same can be said about the harshness in your comment. But I assume it was, but you kinda covered it up by kinda stating being too harsh may not be valid because my "lies" wasn't intentional so whatever.

      Over to the posts.
      The stuff I've seen HAS BEEN lower performance on SteamOS. As for WHY that's is the case I don't really care. The main reason reason people would be against switching OS would likely be lack of applications, in this case the games they are or want to be playing, the second reason for gamers would likely be for lower performance if they switched. Lower performance may cut it for some ideologists but it won't cut it for the majority which focus about THE GAMES and not the operating system.

      There's what is now old tests of early versions of SteamOS, maybe I really shouldn't use those.
      Here's one on Arstechnica from 13th November 2015, it shows performance for ValveÂs own Source-based games:
      http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...
      SteamOS 2.0 vs Windows 10:
      Portal: 107.1 vs 146.2 FPS
      Team Fortress 2: 89.2 vs 114.3 FPS
      Left for Dead 2: 49.1 vs 50.1 FPS
      DOTA 2 (Source 2 version?): 60.0 vs 70.6 FPS.

      They also cover Metro: Last Light Redux:
      Min settings, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 40.0 vs 50.5 FPS
      Max settings, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 4.2 vs 9.5 FPS
      and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor:
      Lowest, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 61 vs 95.5 FPS
      Low, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 55.3 vs 87.0 FPS
      Medium, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 42.1 vs 63.3 FPS
      High, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 39.2 vs 50.7 FPS
      Very high, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 35.9 vs 46.9 FPS
      Ultra, SteamOS 2 vs Windows 10: 14.6 vs 34.5 FPS

      Phoronix, 6th August 2015, test performance of Ubuntu OpenGL vs Windows 10, http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...:
      OpenArena, slight lead for Ubuntu, at most by 12.4%.
      Xonotic, massive lead for Windows, at most 344.9% faster.

      Arma III about the same in the clip you pointed out I'd say, but maybe I would had preferred the Linux version anyway because it's the slowest parts of the game-play which matter the most.
      Googled for Total War on Steam OS and Windows and found this of TW: Attila which shows better performance on SteamOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      16th November 2015, SteamOS vs Windows 10:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
      Geekbench: Winner Windows 10.
      Unigine Heaven: Winner Windows 10 (46.5 vs 48.8 FPS.)
      Borderlands 2: Winner Windows 10 (34.1 vs 38.6 FPS.)
      Metro: LL: Winner Windows 10 (37.5 vs 42.3 FPS.)
      Alien: Isolation: Winner Windows 10 (46.8 vs 54.2 FPS.)
      Shadow of Mordor: Winner Windows 10 (~42 vs ~47 FPS.)

      8 February 2015, CS:GO:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
      Kinda a wash, either side leads at times.

      As for Vulkan:
      17 February 2016: http://www.anandtech.com/show/...
      Fury X:
      OpenGL: 51.8 FPS
      Vulkan: 56.9 FPS (beta)
      DX11: 97.8 FPS
      980Ti:
      OpenGL: 62.6 FPS
      Vulkan: 65.8 FPS
      DX11: 91 FPS

      Not on topic but somewhat related I think the performance using DX12 in Gears of wars was worse too? Or was it just that AMD cards performed worse with that version? (It is a GameWorks title.)

      As I said with completely new games and engines from people who know what they are doing that may change but as is anyone who owns The Talos Principle who were exited about Vulkan support and who hopped for even bet

    12. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You really need learn to read and comprehend. Nothing you posted invalidated anything I stated. The fact that you posted this confirms you have no idea what you're talking about and either didn't actually read what I wrote or didn't actually understand what I wrote.

      The take away point: Contrary to your FUD, those performance numbers are not an issue with SteamOS/Linux. They are issues with developers who are lazy and ignorant. It's great they provided ports, but claiming the ports perform poorly because they are on SteamOS/Linux is a straight up lie. There exists no evidence to support that claim and many examples to the contrary. As such, all available evidence supports my claims and there literally exists no evidence to support your claim.

      I could keep going and going, but you're simply wasting everyone's time. Re-read my post. Take time to comprehend what was actually said.

    13. Re:Can't wait to see the performance comparisons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seems like you're the one failing to comprehend.
      He just said that games perform worse on SteamOS than they do on Windows. Nowhere at all does he attribute this to the SteamOS itself.

  2. AMD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    sux0rz.

  3. More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by CajunArson · · Score: 1

    Thank you Nvidia. It's about time that there was a broader support base for Wayland, and the launch-day support of Vulkan on Linux has been quite positive too.

    --
    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    1. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Viol8 · · Score: 0

      "It's about time that there was a broader support base for Wayland"

      Why? What exactly does Wayland bring to the table that X doesn't? I can think of a few things vice versa.

    2. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wayland is one of those projects that's not defined by what it does bring to the table, but more about what it doesn't.

      X has a lot of baggage that most use cases no longer need. Really what most systems need today are a thin and efficient way to shlep frame data from program to screen and then get out of the way.

      Processors and graphics systems are /fast/ today. We no longer need lots of special tricks to draw lines and objects. We're no longer scraping for every cpu cycle on a 16 mhz 386 or 68030.

      Network transparency is also a pretty narrow edge case. There hundreds of millions of remote screen devices and deployments today and 99.999% of them use a remote framebuffer scheme. (RDP, VNC, Citrix, etc)

      Anyone who's ever needed to compile x.org can attest to what a boat anchor it is. It's rather annoying to know that most of it will go completely unused.

    3. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by CajunArson · · Score: 1

      What exactly does Wayland bring to the table that X doesn't?

      You know every single vitriolic attack that's ever been made against SystemD.... well you could apply pretty much all of them to the X server with the main difference being that with X server they are actually true most of the time, while with SystemD most of the more salacious ones are flat out wrong and are just copy-n-pasted as trolls.

      Further, if we were to take a Venn diagram of the subset of people who foam at the mouth with hate about SystemD and the subset of people who foam at the mouth with hate at the concept of using a graphics stack that isn't rooted in mid-1980s graphics hardware, there's a disturbingly large overlap.

      --
      AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    4. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by rahvin112 · · Score: 1

      In 99% of cases X is using a remote framebuffer scheme as well, it just does so in a way that most people don't know it's happening.

    5. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      X has a lot of baggage and X.org has a lot of crufty code. X itself could have easily been fixed to addressed the way GPUs are used today. But the developers who work on X.org felt the cruft of their implementation was too ugly to attempt a fix. As such, Wayland was announced. Mir followed by Canonical. Mir hasn't gained much traction because it's Canonical. Wayland languished because they ignored important use cases which have become critical to modern computing; namely remote transparency. Everyone told them this was a show stopped and the Wayland guys argued that the majority of users were dumb and clueless and that they had no idea how they were actually using their computers. As such, Wayland was laughed at by knowledgeable users and the Elders of the Internet. Recently Wayland developers have come forward and acknowledged that remote transparency is in fact an important feature. As such, Wayland has started to ingratiate themselves to the greater, more knowledgeable community at large.

      Worth mentioning is that you'll find extremely arrogant and ignorant users advocate that remote transparency is a minority use case, yet that's complete idiocy which is parroting by idiot users. The reality is, most Linux desktops are fairly advanced users who are almost always corporate administrators and developers. These represent the majority of Linux desktops. As such, remote transparency represents the majority of Linux desktop users. It's in fact, a minority of users who do not require remote transparency. Which is, of course, why Wayland languished; as they were ignoring a fundamental use case by the majority of users. Which is why many called them arrogant idiots - and why Wayland has languished for so long.

      Now with signs that Wayland is maturing and it's received a small nod from the more knowledgeable, NVIDIA has stepped up to the plate to support these platforms.

    6. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      We're no longer scraping for every cpu cycle on a 16 mhz 386 or 68030.

      I married a mutant werewolf 386, you insensitive clod!

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    7. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by CajunArson · · Score: 1

      Worth mentioning is that you'll find extremely arrogant and ignorant users advocate that remote transparency is a minority use case,

      Never seen that once on Slashdot. Ever.
      Seen PLENTY of extremely arrogant and ignorant users with a God complex because they forwarded an xterm once* and decided that all technological progress in graphics must be halted permanently in the name of "network transparency" using one type of rather crufty protocol that performs like absolute shit over any non-LAN connection.

      What's even funnier is how the word "network transparency" is repeated by these same people like a religious chant when they don't even realize that literally any modern graphical application shoved over a network socket in X is *not* network transparent but is pushing frame buffers in a massively less efficient way than all the other remote display protocols that these same people viciously attack as not being "pure" for some rather undefined value of "pure".

      * And didn't realize how stupid forwarding an xterm over the SSH tunnel that's required for use with modern X is.

      --
      AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    8. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're either purposely or ignorantly conflating several things. Your "contribution" actually added nothing. Efficacy says nothing about the need. The fact you actually offer this pretty well confirms the, "extremely arrogant and ignorant users", phrasing.

    9. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      any modern graphical application shoved over a network socket in X is *not* network transparent

      The death of network transparency has been greatly exaggerated. I can ssh to another machine, start a modern (or old) program and it pops up on my local display. You might not like how the network transparency is implemented, but the claim that it doesn't exist is patently false.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    10. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by CajunArson · · Score: 1

      " You might not like how the network transparency is implemented, "

      Yeah, I don't and neither do most people who actually have to do this stuff for something other than toy applications. Speaking of which, why the hell should a separate SSH server & login session be a requirement for secure forwarding of graphical applications? You're own attacks on any progress in technology whatsoever start to ring hollow when you're "perfect" solution includes a built-in kludge that accounts for X's inadequacies.

      The way you make it sound, Vulkan (or hell, any version of OpenGL after 1.0 or so) never should have been developed since 3D graphics already existed and people should just shutup and enjoy GLXGears forever.

      --
      AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    11. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I don't and neither do most people who actually have to do this stuff for something other than toy applications.

      So first you said it doesn't exist, now you say it does but you don't like it. Which is it? Please make up your mind.

      Speaking of which, why the hell should a separate SSH server & login session be a requirement for secure forwarding of graphical applications?

      Because it works well enough that no one's bothered to implenent a different mechanism? I'm guessing people tend to run X over ssh for the same reason that most people run rsync over ssh rather than rsync:// and why some people run RDP and VNC over ssh.

      Basically SSH is good and you can rely on one group to implement authentication and encryption really really well. Then you can use dumb, plaintext sockets naievly but get the same security you'd have as if you had done as good a job as the ssh developers.

      The way you make it sound,

      I took you to task for making up blatant lies (you literally claimed remote windowing didn't work). In your mind that's apparently the same as opposing technological progress.

      Jeez, with friends like you, Wayland advocates don't need enemies!

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    12. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NoMachine and x2go absolutely destroy SSH tunneling and there is no reason why these couldnt be ported to Wayland if they already havent. x2go personally uses SSH anyways so there are no additional open ports.
      X over SSH is a completely non issue in 2016

    13. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by jedidiah · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > Network transparency is also a pretty narrow edge case. There hundreds of millions of remote screen devices and deployments today

      It makes for a better argument if you don't immediately contradict yourself.

      Also, conflating RDP and VNC is just moronic. Microsoft has made RDP a worthy offering. VNC is just a nightmare and the prime example of why you don't want to treat network transparency as an afterthought.

      As bad as X is supposed to be, it's still better than VNC. It's WAY better than VNC. X with a few tweaks is almost on par with RDP (even going across the Internet).

      Network transparency is by no means a narrow edge case as the example of RDP demonstrates. It's now a common feature that the vast majority of corporate users take for granted.

      It's not 1994 anymore. While you X haters were stuck in your bubble the world moved on.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    14. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      > You know every single vitriolic attack that's ever been made against SystemD...

      Except you didn't really answer the question.

      If anything, X is much like init. For many of us it "just works" and gets stuff done. It sits quietly in the background and does it's thing. It does not make itself a problem.

      "It's icky and crufty" isn't really an answer either for X or init.

      It seems like the best thing the Wayland fanboys can say for themselves is that you won't notice the difference. That's if we are exceedingly lucky and Wayland development is unnaturally devoid of problems, bugs, or other unexpected issues.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    15. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      > X is *not* network transparent but is pushing frame buffers in a massively less efficient way than all the other remote display protocols

      You're on crack, or just a clueless idiot that's never actually used this stuff. There seems to be a lot of this going around. People like to copy Apple products without actually having used them.

      Case in point: VNC versus X. This is one great example that contradicts your statement. VNC is god awful. It is slow. It's so slow that it doesn't even work well on a Gigabit LAN. If it is "more efficient" than X then it certainly doesn't show. It's a total PIG.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    16. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This post is so stupid I don't even know where to begin.

    17. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      By all means try. It might be amusing.

      In the meantime, I will be utilizing a remote GUI to get some work done.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    18. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by CajunArson · · Score: 1

      Easiest way to find somebody who has a God complex because he forwarded an xterm once and thinks that everyone else is an idiot: Correctly point out that the modern X server running any real application made this century is no longer network transparent.

      Bonus points for the idiots not understanding the fact that the ability to forward a window (poorly) over an X server does *NOT* make the X server "network transparent" because the word "transparent" has a specific technical meaning that the little bot with the God complex doesn't understand because "details" are beneath him.

      Here's a guy who has spent almost 20 years developing X talking about why Wayland is better, he also says that modern X is not network transparent.. because it isn't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      Watch the whole video and before you spew, remember that this guy has done more real programming for X in one day than you have done in your entire life.

      --
      AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    19. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 1

      Probably for the same reason when you make a tar file, you use a separate program like bzip or bzip2 to compress. Because that's the type of environment *NIX systems were designed around. A tool does one thing, and does it well, and you combine tools in clever ways to achieve the end result you're looking for. I think dragging X through SSH tunnels is awesome myself. Just goes to show how versatile X is.

    20. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've watched the video before, it's not saying what you claim. You have fallaciously appealed to an authority that you don't even understand.

    21. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by saigon_from_europe · · Score: 1

      I was also very skeptical about Wayland advantages, esp. as I considered X to be one of most cool features of Linux/Unix systems. But when you take a look to some details, then you see that it is not so cool. When X was designed, it was designed to draw primitives - lines, fonts. And it was not designed to draw bitmaps. In its current usage, it mostly draws bitmaps, i.e. true rendering is done in applications (using libraries like GTK, KDE, Qt...) while X is just slapping it together. And it does it in a very, very complicate way. Even the network transparency is not done properly. Wayland is way more simple, more suitable to how graphics is used today. It does not have a network layer when not needed; at the same time it brings a layer where you can cut and implement network transparency if you want. X is a dead end.

      With the current state of affairs, X is not too useful. For example, there are very few X implementations. I needed a X server* for Windows. There are only two of them that I was able to find - one proprietary Hummingbird's and all others are based on Cygwin. Another example - rendering of fonts depends on the font library on the client's* machine - that should not be if X was used as originally planned.

      *) Not to mention the counter-intuitive names for "client" and "server"

      --
      No sig today.
    22. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      A server dishes out resources. In this case the resource is screen. It's counterintuitive if you think server= compute server, but there are other examples like print server too. It does make sense.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    23. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (...)

      With the current state of affairs, X is not too useful. For example, there are very few X implementations. I needed a X server* for Windows. There are only two of them that I was able to find - one proprietary Hummingbird's and all others are based on Cygwin.

      Pray tell, how many Wayland implementations are there for Windows?

    24. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by jbolden · · Score: 0

      -- What exactly does Wayland bring to the table that X doesn't?

      Better performance.
      Effective remote over high latency.
      Reduced cost of support / bugs.
      etc...

    25. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Yet some of those older Kindles mentioned in another article use X. My phone uses X. Even a very low end WinCE terminal thing I have at home uses X. Somehow it works even on very crappy hardware incapable of running Wayland while you are pretending it does not.

    26. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Never seen that once on Slashdot. Ever.

      Lucky for you. While you've been asleep we've had to put up with that "X Sux" shit every fucking time Wayland is mentioned.

    27. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Better performance.

      I asked you for benchmarks last time and you had nothing to back up that statement. It may be the aim but Wayland is not performing better yet - especially since most of the drivers are cut and pasted from X.

      Effective remote over high latency.

      WTF? Remote access is explicitly not supported at all!

    28. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A client initiates a connection to a server. What's counter intuitive about that?

      Or are you expecting your screen to pro-actively launch your applications?

    29. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      Almost two decades ago, my friends and me ran four instances of Quake, running it via X forwarding from a Linux box to our IRIX workstations. It was playable.
      Sadly in a window as those IRIXes had insane (for those times) display resolutions, but it worked well.

      Try getting a fluent animation over VNC or similar crap today, on so many orders of magnitude better hardware.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    30. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nice strawman by completely disregarding the point the person is arguing against, and then going off on a technical detail of some other point you made.

      X is *not* network transparent but is pushing frame buffers in a massively less efficient way than all the other remote display protocols

      I've had to remotely use engineering software with bad command line support, requiring frequently remote graphical interfaces, and VNC is painful to use while X forwarding can do a lot even with a slow connection. I've also had to use a lot of more generic, common programs on another system where the admin has not installed various command line capable tools or there are broken versions of them installed, but thanks to having a desktop environment installed, it is easy enough to just use Firefox and Open Office remotely instead of shuffling files back and forth. Regardless of how messy and fragile the code is, it works and is more efficient than alternatives.

      Ignoring what you said and what others actually reply to doesn't mean they have a God complex, and certainly doesn't mean they are the one with issues seeing details....

    31. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by jbolden · · Score: 0

      Wayland is using an architecture that has obviously better performance. It is an architecture shared by systems that do outperform X consistently. Whether it does or doesn't have better performance today of 6 months ago is mostly irrelevant. When it is done, if it works, it will have better performance. A highway under construction might only be safe to drive at 5mph. That doesn't mean that eventually it won't allow for much higher speeds than backroads and such a statement is obvious by just looking at the sight lines and lane widths.

      -- WTF? Remote access is explicitly not supported at all!

      Not only is it supported it is included. There is a RDP style protocol implemented. That has been tested and worked. I think they suspended development on it once the POC was done but the desktop environments: KDE, Gnome in particular have agreed to implement and are working on full implementations.

    32. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I ran Quake in the computer labs, rooms full of X terminals from NCD with CRT monitors and three-button mice. It worked admirably though in a 320x200 window. We were using some huge Solaris machine with eight processors, RAID, gigs of RAM (when my desktop had something like 384MB), that we never new how it looked physically.

      BUT Quake didn't like the "networking" between game clients running on the same machine. Only two players could connect at most!

      Years later in another setting I used LTSP thin clients (P2 233 and such), Ubuntu 8.04 host with a quad core x86, single hard drive. It was very competent, even displaying small size youtube (without sound) although that wasn't very useful.
      The main admin guy who had set up that (along with the ldap, mail server etc.) changed it from X11 to VNC, due to some performance problem sometimes occurring. Think some "X11 virus" web page where for reasons I don't know a simple table with hundreds rows kills it as if it were translated to hundreds of "X resources" whatever they are.
      I was a bit pissed because of some added latency with small programs but it was in fact really fast VNC that performed otherwise the same. Weird! any time I have used VNC on dekstops it was the usual ultra-slow crap fest evey one knows of.

    33. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by saigon_from_europe · · Score: 1

      Yes, it does make sense, but it is counter-intuitive when you hear that for the first time. Exactly the case you mentioned = compute server runs clients and they attach to the server which is actually my work station. They could have chosen some other wording, no matter that technically X server is indeed a server.

      --
      No sig today.
    34. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by thsths · · Score: 1

      It is not just counter-intuitive, it is also wrong. The limited resource is not your screen, but your desktop. That may be a small distinction, but it leads to all kinds of problem in X. For example, running multiple screens is still a bit of a faff. And you can run only one window manager.

      In a clean architecture, the window manager would be the server, and the screens would be clients.

    35. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure many are interested in multiple window managers, but if so then you run multiple X servers or a nested X server.

    36. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Wayland is using an architecture that has obviously better performance

      As the benchmarks would show if there were any and you were correct. Reality is that it is a work in progress so still inferior performance, which is expected and not a problem apart from clueless fanboys lying about it when there is no need to do so.

      WTF is your problem?

    37. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Please inform the readers how expected future developments are "delivering" those things that are not yet available.

    38. Re:More Wayland & Vulkan: GOOD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Or are you expecting your screen to pro-actively launch your applications?

      Some idiot at Apple thought it would be just a spiffy idea to have the OS re-open everything by default that I had open when I last logged off, shut down or restarted.

      I remember the days when the OS just got out of my way and let me work, instead of trying to help me.

      Case in point: auto-replace of misspelled words. Now I can't type from copy without having my eyes off the page and on the screen, or mistakes (spelled correctly!) are introduced. Thanks a smegging bunch-a-rooney, Apple!

  4. Mir? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That space station has been gone since 2001 and NVIDIA is just NOW supporting it? WTF.

    1. Re:Mir? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That space station has been gone since 2001

      Yes, that's what we wanted you to think

  5. w007 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have got to get my hands on this. This is what's been preventing me from being serious about getting Weston working. I've been suspecting that Weston can speak X11 in addition to Wayland based on the use flags that were available the last time I went to emerge it to my Gentoo box.

    If that's the case, farewell X11. You've been there the entire time I've been a Linux user since the bad old days when I had to configure your modelines with nothing but a paperback guide to RedHat that skipped instructions about how to edit text files on this brave, new (to me) open-source operating system that can support multiple users logged in at once. Now, nearly 25 years later, it almost seems like yesterday. You can self-configure these days. I don't even need to tell you to load the nVidia kernel module. You can give my terminal windows actual, see-through transparency while leaving the menu bar or window decoration fully opaque, something that even Windows 8 still can't do right. Yet, behind all that awesomeness, all the cruft is still there. Bitmap and Type1 fonts. Drawing primitives. I hear there's printer support and all kinds of other miscellaneous things I've never heard of. Nobody uses those any more. There's Cairo and Pango and CUPS these days which do those things much better. It's been an era, X11, but all your awesomeness is moving to a new platform, and all the cruft is going away.

    See you, space cowboy.

  6. Just in time for Ubuntu? by jordanjay29 · · Score: 2

    It seems well timed to coincide with the release of 16.10 later this year, which, if all goes well, should use Mir by default for Unity 8. This gives NVIDIA 6 months or so for early adopters to work out the major kinks for them. Smart plan.

    1. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by rahvin112 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Mir is a joke NIH solution to a problem that's already solved with Wayland. And just like all their other NIH solutions to problems they will abandon in a year when it's clear how much it's going to cost them to support it. It's the same story at Canonical over and over again.

    2. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I notice this article conveniently came out at the same time:

      http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/03/this-is-android-ns-freeform-window-mode/

      Is Wayland really going to provide enough of an improvement? It sure seems like, if our goal is getting rid of cruft and making an attractive, well supported desktop interface, our best bet will be replacing Linux' entire graphics stack with Android's.

    3. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by jordanjay29 · · Score: 2

      That may be absolutely correct, but Ubuntu vanilla still accounts for a large number of linux "users" for which NVIDIA would be wise to target in one go like this.

    4. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by jordanjay29 · · Score: 1

      Eh, I have a hard time seeing Android replacing too much on the desktop for several years. It might be a great drop-in substitute for ChromeOS, but I don't see it encroaching on distros like Ubuntu or openSUSE or Arch anytime soon. Plus, I'll bet there are plenty of Linux users who'd prefer not to have such a tightly coupled existence to Google.

    5. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by Junta · · Score: 1

      Of course, 'if all goes well, should use Mir by default' has been a missed goal a few times in the past.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    6. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

      Mir exists, in part, because there actually are some real problems with X11, such as the complete lack of anything resembling security on the input path. These problems were not things that the Wayland developers decided to fix. I'm not a huge fan of Mir, but if you're going to replace X11 then replacing it with Wayland is at best a sideways step.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    7. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Mir exists, in part, because there actually are some real problems with X11, such as the complete lack of anything resembling security on the input path. These problems were not things that the Wayland developers decided to fix.

      Compositing window managers intercept nearly everything so that they can re-map events to arbitrarily shaped windows etc. Which security flaws aren't easily fixed by compositing windowmanagers on X?

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    8. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by andydread · · Score: 1

      Fedora and Arch and just about every other Linux distro are NIH solutions including Android. If you are not using Slackware then you are using NIH solutions. What's your point? SystemD is a NIH solution, Wayland is a NIH solution, Pulse Audio is a NIH solution, Gnome and KDE are NIH solutions. I could go on and on. Your argument that people should not innovate to suit their own needs and use cases is moronic at best. The NIH excuse is tired and beaten to death. trying to use NIH to justify your hate for Canonical is quite adolescent at best. Grow the fuck up. - smh

    9. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is so special about slackware? It started out as a port of SLS before throwing most of it out. That's about as NIH as you can get.

    10. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by neuro88 · · Score: 1

      No, Wayland fixes all of this. In fact, this is in part why Mir uses the exact same input library as wayland: libinput.

    11. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by neuro88 · · Score: 1

      No, Wayland fixes all of this. In fact, this is in part why Mir uses the exact same input library as wayland: libinput.

      Responding to my own post because I realized that citation is need:
      https://lwn.net/Articles/51737...
      https://blog.martin-graesslin....

    12. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, Mir made Wayland development faster and more efficient. They've done a lot more since Canonical anounced Mir, than before. So the only Mir's purpose is to speed up the developmnet of Wayland. And they've succeeded.

    13. Re:Just in time for Ubuntu? by bregmata · · Score: 1

      It is not coincidence. It's planning on the part of Canonical and nVidia.

  7. Vice versa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "It's about time that there was a broader support base for Wayland"

    Why? What exactly does Wayland bring to the table that X doesn't? I can think of a few things vice versa.

    That is not how you use vice versa. You just ruined English and Latin in one go.

    1. Re:Vice versa by mrvan · · Score: 1

      That is not how you use vice versa. You just ruined English and Latin in one go.

      That's not how you contribute to the Internet. You've just ruined a post and my time in one go! :)

  8. Re:lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe you should find an MS Windows club to join. This is a nerd site, not a noob site.

  9. How can I make tech work for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about resuming support for the cards you discontinued past 340?

    Pretty screwed now with 4K and HD60p videos because the CPUs can't keep up. Ten plus years without hardware accelerated video. Bugs and missing features, I just deleted a paragraph. This is not the place, and I haven't found a receptive ear. I just want something that works. Going forward I'm on Nouveau.

    I need you NVIDIA because you still do it best. Don't stop!

    1. Re:How can I make tech work for me by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      ??? You are switching to the libre driver because of VDPAU? That makes no sense.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    2. Re:How can I make tech work for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about resuming support for the cards you discontinued past 340?

      How about just upgrading your graphics card?

      If you're on a card that old you're not looking to play games, and a completely viable Nvidia card for general desktop use is $40-50 tops.

      I'm currently on a Geforce 210 for my Linux box. It's old be works fine. That said - if NVIDIA discontinued support tomorrow I'd understand that the chip is nearly 7 years old and just go buy a new one.

  10. Vulkan is the important bit by zhen.sydow · · Score: 1

    Nowadays the headline should be "NVIDIA's Proprietary Linux Driver Adds Vulkan 1.0" and in the article text you can also mention Wayland and Mir.

    1. Re:Vulkan is the important bit by CajunArson · · Score: 1

      Except that Vulkan support isn't news.
      Nvidia had Vulkan support for Linux on launch day. The news is the official Wayland support.

      --
      AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
  11. This lie again? by dbIII · · Score: 1

    This lie again? The same guy also said only five people understood X input. I was once on a mailing list with about three hundred of those five.
    The lie is based on how the current version of GTK is designed to rely on fast local graphics hardware and does not support being displayed remotely so X gets the job done with a fallback. The fuckup is in GTK not X.

  12. VR wayland desktop!!! by jmooney538 · · Score: 1

    Now we can have nicely accelerated VR linux desktops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://github.com/evil0sheep/...