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How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

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Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#61

Post by AshamedCaptain »

jatone wrote: post #60
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. X11 is definitely maintained, unless you are thinking of XFree86. Xorg's last release 2 weeks ago. Many LTS distros containing it are preparing releases with it _right now_ and they will also be supporting it for at least one decade, probably way more. I would bet that Wayland will become unsupported way before (at least some implementation of) X11 does. 2. This entire article is about avoiding the Gnome private A…

1. no its not, no security fixes or new features are being developed, its entirely on life support: the changes are to just keep it limping along while distros finish transitions to wayland. https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2022-January/060... 2. the article is about them abusing a gnome only API when alternatives existed that would have worked better. WLR had its first commits for its desktop portal api i…

1. Even if what you were saying was true (which it is not, even your own link is just showing that bugs and regressions are still being fixed), the distros who are shipping have commited to decades of security updates.

2. "The right fucking" Gnome-exclusive API is, obviously, Gnome-exclusive, and just didn't work for me for the reasons I mentioned in my original message, and probably didn't for them either (my guess because they have a custom H264 encoder for latency/licensing reasons). The "less-Gnome-specific" XDG portal API, Pipewire-based, wasn't really usable when the distro is not even packaging Pipewire.

My go-to conferencing solution is still Jitsi Meet and I am well aware of how crazy the entire situation is, even for browsers.

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#62

Post by chaorace »

asveikau wrote: post #53

This person wants to replace the window system and is calling that a Zoom issue. And says they're working on it. I fail to see the problem. Wayland is not a drop-in replacement and creates work to get to parity. Nothing will explode if they use Xorg. The problems with Xorg are exaggerated. That they find Xorg completely unacceptable due to theoretical security issues (nobody is really writing and deploying code that…

I guess the core problem is the false advertising. Zoom "supports" Wayland-only distros... with the fine print that they only support outdated builds from before the switch to Wayland.

Aside from that, my only complaint is that Zoom is unavoidable and thus the lowest common denominator. If Zoom doesn't work with your window system, you're forced to give up and change... even if it's the only piece of software in your entire system that isn't up to the job. Being forced to jump through hoops like that when you're using a common and modern system configuration is a sign of a poorly supported product and something users should rightfully complain about.

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#63

Post by pkulak »

suby wrote: post #4

I still cannot run a Wayland session on my machine w/ an nvidia 3080 with the latest drivers. It either fails to boot (KDE) or runs at about 15 FPS (Gnome). It seems a little unreasonable to be this mad at a company for not supporting an environment that doesn't work for the vast majority of hardware out there. Especially given that you can just use Zoom within Firefox.

Vast majority? I just searched for "laptop" on BestBuy and didn't see a single nvidia GPU in three page scrolls.

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#64

Post by boudin »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #45
boudin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean 3 years ago? It is a while. Definitely enough, lot of software implemented it in the meantime. Zoom is actually the only one I know that didn't LTS distribution before that are on X11, so this discussion doesn't even apply, supporting both is definitely possible since they already support X11.

No, I mean last year. The current API for screencast (the only one which might work on anything other than Gnome) uses Pipewire and even OBS didn't support it until last year.

No, Pipewire and xdg-desktop have been there for ~3 years.

OBS supported Wayland for ~2 years (maybe more, but I've been using it for ~2 years), but you had to install a third party plugin for it, and the app itself was running in Xwayland. The Flatpak version did include the plugin for a while.

And it's not MIGHT work on anything other than Gnome, it DOES.

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#65

Post by boudin »

onli wrote: post #23
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Pipewire even on distros by the time they decided to "abuse the one API" ? Even I have had to resort to abusing the one API, and it was just for taking the values of a couple pixels on the screen. Everything else is just too slow, requires setting up way too much infrastructure (e.g. PipeWire! a H264 encoder!), or has been fixed "last year" or some other uselessly recent date. X11 is no longer maintained is also…

> Was Pipewire even on distros by the time they decided to "abuse the one API"? No. Pipewire only arrived on the most unstable distros end of last year. It's in no way available for all, and not a common standard (yet). And you are right, wayland in general is not the norm yet. I'd even say it's likely to never replace X11 completely, given its shortcomings and X11's stability.

Pipewire has been there for more than that, I've been using it for a few years now. You might be mistaken with the audio part of it (that replaces Pulseaudio and Jack).

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#66

Post by IceWreck »

nine_k wrote: post #56
funcDropShadow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Zoom on Gnome almost daily in the last three years. I've basically no problem with video conference itself. Video just works for me. But audio is a never ending story. Zoom randomly selects other audio devices, when I quit one video session and start another. Sometimes, I have to to quit zoom and start it again. Sometimes I have to disconnect my table speaker/microphone to be able to use it in zoom ag…

Even though my experience with Zoom under Linux is much smoother, I can confirm the "random audio device" issue; it may be daunting. And the inability to accept command-line arguments is a choice, not a technical problem. Another fun bit: the same version of Zoom on the same hardware (T470, i5) offers virtual background support under Windows, and disables it under Linux. The machine has no dedicated GPU to have drive…

Virtual Background works perfectly for me on Linux. On a laptop with nvidia hardware.

(On Fedora 34, xorg)

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#67

Post by Proven »

nine_k wrote: post #56
funcDropShadow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Zoom on Gnome almost daily in the last three years. I've basically no problem with video conference itself. Video just works for me. But audio is a never ending story. Zoom randomly selects other audio devices, when I quit one video session and start another. Sometimes, I have to to quit zoom and start it again. Sometimes I have to disconnect my table speaker/microphone to be able to use it in zoom ag…

Even though my experience with Zoom under Linux is much smoother, I can confirm the "random audio device" issue; it may be daunting. And the inability to accept command-line arguments is a choice, not a technical problem. Another fun bit: the same version of Zoom on the same hardware (T470, i5) offers virtual background support under Windows, and disables it under Linux. The machine has no dedicated GPU to have drive…

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Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#69

Post by tuetuopay »

Fabricio20 wrote: post #6

I believe this is not entirely Zoom's fault, I've heard a few horror stories with Wayland and screensharing over the last few years. Particularly when I once tried using OBS Studio and it just didn't work on Wayland. I also remember screenshare from things like Google Meet or Discord only being able to share other chromium tabs and not able to share the desktop or any specific applications. This whole story sounds to…

If you can only share chrome and some apps, that's because you're running Chrome/Discord/Slack/etc in XWayland, hence only having access to other XWayland apps. Chromium (hence Electron apps) still hasn't made the switch to defaulting to wayland when available, you need a few CLI flags to get proper sharing.

Re: How Not to Support Desktop GNU+Linux, Zoom Edition

#70

Post by nine_k »

IceWreck wrote: post #66
nine_k wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though my experience with Zoom under Linux is much smoother, I can confirm the "random audio device" issue; it may be daunting. And the inability to accept command-line arguments is a choice, not a technical problem. Another fun bit: the same version of Zoom on the same hardware (T470, i5) offers virtual background support under Windows, and disables it under Linux. The machine has no dedicated GPU to have drive…

Virtual Background works perfectly for me on Linux. On a laptop with nvidia hardware. (On Fedora 34, xorg)

Yes, it works for me on NVidia hardware under Linux, too.

What's interesting is that the hardware requirements for the virtual background seem to be higher under Linux than under Win10.

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