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Chromium blacklists Nouveau

lists.freedesktop.org

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Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#261

Post by apatters »

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…

This is actually a reasonable position in my opinion, but there are two problems (neither of them is Google or Chromium's fault):

1) Nouveau is buggy and problematic (related more to performance and a lack of support for many features)

2) The Nvidia drivers are buggy and problematic (related more to setup and compatibility with the rest of the system)

Both of these problems can be traced back to the same root cause, which is simply that Nvidia refuses to do a good job of supporting Linux in any way. They could give Nouveau some funding and information about their hardware, but they don't do that. They could develop proper Linux drivers, but they don't do that either. Every way you look at it Nvidia is at the root of the problem.

The solution on the consumer side is to not buy Nvidia products, and to encourage other people to not buy Nvidia products. The solution on the producer side is to contribute to Nouveau (easier said than done unfortunately, your average web dev can't just jump in and reverse engineer graphics drivers on a weekend).

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#262

Post by vetinari »

monocasa wrote: post #219
vetinari wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't, for the same reason you can't ship ZFS. The combining of proprietary and GPL code has to be made by the user and the result is un-distributable. That's why distributions cannot ship it. What they can do is to make the above step easy (which Ubuntu does).

It's way more complicated than that. AFAIU, Nvidia's legal argument is that their driver can't be 'derived from' the Linux kernel even though it's linked into the kernel since it's older than their Linux port and only is linked against their GPLed (and if push comes to shove, dual licensed GPL and proprietary) kernel abstraction layer. Judges don't care about linkers and the GPL doesn't actually say anything about li…

This is not the derivation argument (that would be forcing GPL on Nvidia, which they want to counter, of course).

This is about GPL infrigment; you can combine GPL licensed code with differently licensed code, but only in your privacy, without distributing the result to others. Once you would distribute the result, you would be breaking GPL, thus having no right to distribute.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#263

Post by vetinari »

threeseed wrote: post #121
vetinari wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't, for the same reason you can't ship ZFS. The combining of proprietary and GPL code has to be made by the user and the result is un-distributable. That's why distributions cannot ship it. What they can do is to make the above step easy (which Ubuntu does).

I thought you could just have the drivers be downloaded and installed during installation i.e. never technically shipped with the OS.

That's somewhat similar to what Ubuntu does, with the additional drivers applet.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#264

Post by vetinari »

ec109685 wrote: post #128
vetinari wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't, for the same reason you can't ship ZFS. The combining of proprietary and GPL code has to be made by the user and the result is un-distributable. That's why distributions cannot ship it. What they can do is to make the above step easy (which Ubuntu does).

This isn’t correct. WiFi router ships with GPL Linux and proprietary router software. The company / foundation creating the distribution just needs to have a license for the proprietary bits.

If the wifi routers are shipping with binary kernel modules, then yes, it they are breaking GPL. This problem is actually common with embedded devices.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#265

Post by vetinari »

jandrese wrote: post #255
vetinari wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fedora is Wayland-by-default for several releases already.

I had a handful of laptops at work that were briefly on 17.10 (because 16.04 had a showstopping bug for them) and the graphics were a complete headache until I switched them to X. Luckily 18.04 reverted to X and made my life easier.

I've never had problem with it; but then, my laptops have all Intel GPU and my only desktop with AMD GPU handles it nicely too.

Chances are, that you are using modesetting X driver anyway (i.e. the KMS driver, the same driver/backed, that is used by Wayland).

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#266

Post by ryacko »

vetinari wrote: post #264
ec109685 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t correct. WiFi router ships with GPL Linux and proprietary router software. The company / foundation creating the distribution just needs to have a license for the proprietary bits.

If the wifi routers are shipping with binary kernel modules, then yes, it they are breaking GPL. This problem is actually common with embedded devices.

I never understood why NanoBSD didn't take off after the Software Freedom Conservancy lawsuits.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#267

Post by magicalist »

loeg wrote: post #208
xyzzyz wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the distributor or administrator is free to rebuild the browser or just set the flag to disable blacklisting. It’s only default behavior that changed.

Chrome has the special sauce — distributors and administrators cannot rebuild it, only Chromium.

Flip the flag then.

It's crazy to suggest they should give web access (not just webgl, but CSS styling) to a buggy GPU driver by default without an opt in by the user.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#268

Post by vetinari »

zozbot123 wrote: post #64
stuaxo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome without acceleration == one very hot laptop in many cases (ie watching videos on YouTube).

Chrome without acceleration ~~ Firefox without acceleration. I don't think Firefox is enabling hardware video decoding in Linux, even on a fully-free driver?

Acceleration in browser is not only about video decoding.

The composition is GPU accelerated too. Chrome has it enabled by default, Firefox doesn't.

In the end, both browsers treat Linux as a second-class citizen. To make things even more weird, ChromeOS uses the same API (VA-API) and the same driver (for Intel GPUs) for video decoding acceleration that the stock Linux does, and the video decoding is supported on ChromeOS but not on Linux... And Firefox is just plain mess.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#269

Post by BurningCycles »

apatters wrote: post #261
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…

This is actually a reasonable position in my opinion, but there are two problems (neither of them is Google or Chromium's fault): 1) Nouveau is buggy and problematic (related more to performance and a lack of support for many features) 2) The Nvidia drivers are buggy and problematic (related more to setup and compatibility with the rest of the system) Both of these problems can be traced back to the same root cause,…

>which is simply that Nvidia refuses to do a good job of supporting Linux in any way.

I really dislike the way Nvidia makes it difficult for projects like Nouveau to reverse engineer an open driver, however I don't understand what you mean by poor support for their Linux driver, it's probably the one thing I can't fault them for as it is performing very well and stable.

I'm with you on not buying NVidia products though, that is the best way to send a message.

Re: Chromium blacklists Nouveau

#270

Post by yogthos »

mkoryak wrote: post #251
yogthos wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet I use Firefox with Nouveau just fine...

It works on my machine, ship it!

Uh no, means that you can make it work and some people are willing to spend the time to do it right. You'd think that if Mozilla can afford to do this so could Google. The only way the problems in the drivers can get fixed is through usage, if Chrome flat out refuses to work with the driver then the issues can't be fixed.

This also illustrates why it's important to have alternatives to Chrome for anybody who cares about open source.

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