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Chromium blacklists Nouveau

lists.freedesktop.org

191–200 of 411 posts

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#191
post #15

Doesn't hardware accelerated graphics on Firefox on Linux require modifying a preference? AFAIK you need to go to about:config and enable layers.acceleration.force-enabled. (This is speaking as someone who uses Firefox on Linux as my main browser.) The bug for enabling hardware rendering by default on some systems appears to still be open: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=594876

Yes, Firefox is stuck with blacklisting basically everything. I guess developers didn't revisit drivers situation in the recent times.

Just set these in your $HOME/.profile

    export MOZ_WEBRENDER=1
    export MOZ_ACCELERATED=1

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#193
post #190
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's the part that's crashing. I'm suggesting Chrome use llvmpipe to do whatever they needed hardware acceleration for, generate a single boring texture on a single big rectangle, and pass that through to the graphics driver. That way Chrome itself isn't loading the Nouveau libGL and is much more insulated from incompatibilities between Chrome and Nouveau, whosever fault it might be.

WebGL requires far more than just blitting onto a single boring texture.

That's why you go through llvmpipe - you use the Mesa OpeGL implementation in LLVM-JIT-accelerated but pure software mode to implement WebGL, get the results onto a texture, and pass that texture onto your actual graphics card.

https://www.mesa3d.org/llvmpipe.html

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 enfo…

and it's not one of two, it's one of three. Intel has huge market share, also, especially in things like notebooks.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#196
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nvidia driver does not "work" in my project. I have added no code which explicitly blacklists it, and the day Nvidia releases a driver which implements the required APIs it will work with no changes in my code.

[deleted]

The new library which replaces wlc, wlroots, does not have that special code necessary to support the stupid Nvidia special-snowflake API.

In simple terms, sway+wlroots DOES NOT have this line of code:

    if (nvidia proprietary driver) {
        suck();
    }
Rather, it looks like this:

    do_important_gpu_stuff(); // Nvidia does not implement this
The Nvidia proprietary driver doesn't support the APIs necessary to run Sway. This is the correct relationship: the driver is responsible for implementing APIs and the software is responsible for consuming them. Nvidia didn't hold up their end of that bargain and thus does not work.

In Chromium, the following line of code DOES exist:

    if (nouveau driver) {
        suck();
    }
Nouveau implements the necessary APIs, but Chromium explicitly blacklists it. Nouveau holds up their end of the bargain here and Chromium does not.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#197
post #169
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's the part that's crashing. I'm suggesting Chrome use llvmpipe to do whatever they needed hardware acceleration for, generate a single boring texture on a single big rectangle, and pass that through to the graphics driver. That way Chrome itself isn't loading the Nouveau libGL and is much more insulated from incompatibilities between Chrome and Nouveau, whosever fault it might be.

That's what swiftshader does.

Whoa, I totally missed that! https://blog.chromium.org/2016/06/universal-rendering-with-s... So is it the case that you get decent (though perhaps not great) WebGL performance even if you have no GL-compatible graphics driver at all?

Then are Nouveau users only losing performance and not functionality as a result of this Google decision?

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They became famous on the net with this bug: https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee-Old-and-abbandoned/issue...

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#199
>We can also just take this, as yet-another nail in the nouveau coffin.

I don't understand the dramatics. Nouveau is great but being blacklisted on Chromium is not the biggest issue for it right now imo. A lot of Linux users (myself included) use Firefox anyways, and it's still a default in many operating systems. And you can of course override this. I would place lack of reclocking support much higher than this in terms of issues. And of course, the bugs that caused Chromium to decide to blacklist Nouveau in the first place are still going to affect other accelerated applications.

I'm a big fan of Nouveau, it is what I use on my laptop when in Linux. At the very least, it performs more than adequate for running a compositing desktop environment, and for many common configurations I've had few issues booting things up, the few issues I have had generally solved by using a newer kernel.

If we really want Nouveau to succeed though, the support needs to start coming from Nvidia. AMD and Intel both have in the past supported open source drivers to an extent and it really shows. Nvidia's contributions have been pretty piss poor, and unfortunately it seems they just don't care, which is sad.

I guess I do understand the frustration, but given the fact that this is in response to Ubuntu shipping Nouveau as a default, I think Nouveau's death is a bit overstated.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#200
post #88
post #21

Both projects seem to put the blame on the other project. IMO, there are at least two other factions that can be blamed equally well. First, nvidia for not providing OSS drivers and second, the user who runs an OS on hardware that can't be properly supported on this OS at the moment. For years I have the rule that I prefer hardware that has proper Linux support. Even going a bit further that I try not to buy hardware…

> First, nvidia for not providing OSS drivers and second, the user who runs an OS on hardware that can't be properly supported on this OS at the moment. nVidia does provide perfectly working closed source drivers on Linux though - how is it their fault that some 3rd party implementation of the drivers doesn't work in a stable manner?

Define "perfectly working". If I download the Linux sources, compile the kernel and install it, there is no official Nvidia driver to be seen.

I didn't say that Nvidia is at fault for the state of the nouveau driver. I said they are at fault for not providing OSS drivers. Nvidia doesn't want to play by the rules of Linux development but they still want to be on Linux. That's legally possible but why should the user or distro manager give Nvidia a pass here when other companies play by the rules?

Think about it. Which components would you be willing to download drivers for if they weren't OSS? Your monitor? Your sound card? Your harddisk? Your network card (oops)? Your mouse or keyboard?

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