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Chromium blacklists Nouveau

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Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#71

Post by XMPPwocky »

ddevault wrote: post #39
geofft wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not the browser's place to have any code whatsoever which even so much as glances at the graphics vendor to make meaningful decisions. I'm curious why you hold this position. I think it makes sense for the browser to attempt to deliver the best experience it can to users, and they may believe they get better performance and behavior from unaccelerated rendering. It's no different from websites looking at user-…

Note: I edited my comment to simply be a copy of the email I sent to the devs. You quoted the original text. >I think it makes sense for the browser to attempt to deliver the best experience it can to users, and they may believe they get better performance and behavior from unaccelerated rendering. So should they also blacklist Windows because it's spying on its users? No, of course not. They should do their best to…

> So should they also blacklist Windows because it's spying on its users? No, of course not. They should do their best to deliver a good experience in the domains for which they are responsible.

If a Windows graphics acceleration component spied on its users, Chromium should absolutely blacklist that component, and use software rendering instead.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#72

Post by lultimouomo »

nolok wrote: post #9

For anyone interested, the link really should be the full bug report: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=876523 The current link says it as if Chrome was not being fair, but reading their reasoning it makes total sense. Key quote from said bug report: > We thought about blacklisting nouveau driver long time ago, and decided to let more adventurous users to play around. Now that Ubuntu ships with no…

>> Unfortunately we don't have the resources to test every variation of every GPU/driver combination on linux

So Google doesn't have the resources to test the default driver on the most widespread linux distribution for one of the two most widespread GPU producers in the market.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#73

Post by emilsedgh »

geofft wrote: post #36
ddevault wrote: post #26

From: Drew DeVault To: graphics-dev@chromium.org Subject: nouveau blacklisted in Chromium I'm writing to complain regarding the decision to blacklist nouveau in Chromium. You're creating a hostile relationship with one of the most important projects on Linux. If you do anything about this problem, you should be using your influence to pressure Nvidia into being a better citizen on Linux. Hell, you could even sponsor…

> It's not the browser's place to have any code whatsoever which even so much as glances at the graphics vendor to make meaningful decisions. I'm curious why you hold this position. I think it makes sense for the browser to attempt to deliver the best experience it can to users, and they may believe they get better performance and behavior from unaccelerated rendering. It's no different from websites looking at user-…

> It's no different from websites looking at user-agent strings to work around known bugs, right?

No. Its more like blocking the access to your website to some browsers.

At best they should give a warning that youre using an unsupported browser/driver so beware if unexpected issues.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#74

Post by ryanobjc »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #49
ryanobjc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you expect it to be rolled back? What evidence leads you to believe that? Also, with this email it seems it is you who is turning a routine technical decision into a hostile relationship. As they say, them fighting words.

Yes, like North Korea's rocket launches are routine technical missions, too. Chromium is slinging mud at nouveau and I can't stand for that.

So, chromium is like "I want a better experience for my users out of the box" and this leads to you comparing them to North Korean nuclear launches?

You need an internet timeout. Go get drunk, stoned whatever you do and try again Monday.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#75

Post by MereInterest »

StreamBright wrote: post #50

#year-of-the-linux-desktop On a more serious note what is the motivation for Nouveau? The drivers provided by Nvidia are not good enough or we just need an opensource alternative?

As I understand it, the latter, and it is completely justifiable to do so. Requiring users to run binary blobs in order to use their hardware is non-free.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#76

Post by StavrosK »

moonbug wrote: post #16
cheald wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amdgpu drivers in Linux are fantastic these days. Works out of the box with most hardware. No proprietary binaries needed, other than the firmware blobs. AMD is doing a really solid job of supporting their Linux user base.

Nvidia also does an excellent job of supporting linux. It's just not open source.

I don't know, I upgraded to 18.10 and my XPS's brightness control doesn't work. The Prime switchy thing can't change cards without a reboot, and if the screen goes to sleep between switching cards and rebooting, it never comes up again. Actually, with 18.10, it never comes up again anyway. I have a whole host of issues with nVidia cards, my next card is going to be AMD.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#77

Post by StavrosK »

computerex wrote: post #55
bubblethink wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent is a stretch. It works for things they support. Look at optimus and wayland for instance. Also, they restrict nouveau from working by signing blobs and enforcing checks. And this is years after Linus flipping the bird and other repeated requests.

Optimus was the single most pain in the ass thing I have ever experienced in linux. Never again, am I going to run linux on an optimus machine with Bumblebee.

Never again am I going to buy an Optimus machine.

EDIT: Wait, there's an open source thing? Is Bumblebee any good? Optimus is such a pain in my ass that it's making me want to smash this laptop.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#78

Post by marcinzm »

geofft wrote: post #33
fhrow4484 wrote: post #18

Will this make Firefox the best browser on Linux by default then? Also, as mentionned in the bug thread, if nouveau is actually stable on Newer versions, similar to User Agents, the newer nouveau versions could change their name to bypass the blacklisting. No need to pretend to be NVIDIA, just something different that nouveau, like 'nuevo' or something.

Can't they also use GL_VENDOR / GL_RENDERER and parse version numbers out of it?

Chromium said they'd do that if someone tested which Nouveau versions work fine and provided a test suite to use. Ilia Mirkin (in the link) said he tried to run their test suite but got errors on the latest Nouveau (possibly due to a browser issue). So as it stands now Chromium doesn't know which if any versions of Nouveau are stable.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#79

Post by codeflo »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #46
ahmedalsudani wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Clarification: at the time I was writing this comment, parent referred to the team that closed the bug as sons of bitches] The language you use is unnecessary. (Don't mean this in the blanket sense -- calling a SOB a SOB is fine -- but in this particular case.) The Chrome team was receiving bug reports due to driver issues, and now this driver is the default. They can either compromise the experience for some Ubuntu…

Here's why I used that language (and though I edited the comment, it was not because I rethought the use of the phrase): it is not the Chromium team's place to make this decision, and this decision actively harms the health of the Linux ecosystem. The decision of which driver to use is up to the user and up to the distro, and Chromium has absolutely no right to interfere with that. Nvidia is one of the worst actors o…

What you're suggesting is actively harming users to put pressure on NVIDIA to become a better citizen in the Linux ecosystem. I don't find this very ethical, but I don't think this would work anyway. When Chrome crashes, users blame Chrome. But when Chrome runs slower on NVIDIA, users blame NVIDIA.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#80

Post by zapzupnz »

lultimouomo wrote: post #72
nolok wrote: post #9

For anyone interested, the link really should be the full bug report: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=876523 The current link says it as if Chrome was not being fair, but reading their reasoning it makes total sense. Key quote from said bug report: > We thought about blacklisting nouveau driver long time ago, and decided to let more adventurous users to play around. Now that Ubuntu ships with no…

>> Unfortunately we don't have the resources to test every variation of every GPU/driver combination on linux So Google doesn't have the resources to test the default driver on the most widespread linux distribution for one of the two most widespread GPU producers in the market.

I mean, just because it's one of two GPU producers, that doesn't mean the nvidia product line is simple. There are desktop chips, there are notebook chips, there are multiple versions of the same card made by different manufacturers who add their own little touches, there are different chipsets, there are different configurations, there are different X11 setups, there are different desktop environments which may enforce different settings, etc.

It's not as simple as "one of the two most widespread GPU producers in the market".

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