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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

#71
post #14

Most desktop Linuxes are changing and deprecating APIs way too fast for the usual glacial development flow of a big commercial software company. The fact that apparently the API for Wayland/Flatpak screen recording is less than 5 years old and it still does not work on X11 desktops does not inspire a lot of confidence, either. However, desktop video calls and screencasting is one area where I think the free and open…

flat out incorrect in this case. this has nothing to do with a deprecated API. they just decided to abuse one API when there was an API available for their use case available. x11 is no long maintained expecting an modern API to support it is foolish.

> x11 is no long maintained expecting an modern API to support it is foolish.

Xorg is mostly unmaintained, but still extremely popular, and expecting things to work on it is completely reasonable.

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

#73
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.

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…

Same audio issues here. Zoom always wants to set my mic level to 0 and change the default output source for whatever reason.

My last company used Teams which I had a much better experience with on Linux (gnome+xorg) than Zoom.

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

#74
post #40
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.

The vast majority definitely isn't running Linux with a 3080. I've been running Wayland for 5 years on Gnome on AMD and Intel GPUs without issues.

I wasn't claiming the vast majority were running a 3080, merely that they were running an nvidia card. I mentioned the 3080 to demonstrate that the FPS problems were not a matter of old hw. Regardless, I was wrong on this because I wasn't considering integrated gpu's.

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

#75
post #36
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

X11 is moribund. Part of why is because literally everyone who was working on it in a major way, possibly excepting Keith Packard, eventually considered it a dead end and jumped ship to Wayland.

moribund, stable, I don't care what you call it; X11 actually works consistently, which remains more than Wayland can say

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

#76

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…

You have heard these stories because there were different APIs floating around, some specific to particular compositor families. The author is offering the generic API that should work with all of them.

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

#77

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…

> 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.

They support the distro just fine. They might not support one of its graphical layers, but you can run Zoom on Xorg on the same distro just fine.

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

#78
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“that is not the deepest way to consider the question.” — https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html

I... don't like the argument made here. > But the reason it is an integrated system—and not just a collection of useful programs—is because the GNU Project set out to make it one. We made a list of the programs needed to make a complete free system, and we systematically found, wrote, or found people to write everything on the list. First of all, I mostly use Alpine for Linux servers, so I guess that should be referr…

> First of all, I mostly use Alpine for Linux servers, so I guess that should be referred to as Busybox/Linux according to this?

Yes. GNU/Linux, Busybox/Linux, and Android/Linux are all different things, and all perfectly good descriptions.

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

#79
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.

>> I still cannot run a Wayland session on my machine w/ an nvidia 3080 with the latest drivers. You might try buying hardware that has proper Linux support. That would include graphics from AMD or Intel, and might even include Apple before nvidia gets it together.

I was aware that AMD had officially supported open source linux drivers, and that Nvidia did not support Wayland. Unfortunately, I needed a machine which would work well with the existing machine learning ecosystem, and that means getting an nvidia card over AMD. It's pretty terrible that the machine learning ecosystem is centered around nvidia hardware.

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

#80
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people uses intel igpus no? There's a good nvidia population but it's not the majority, especially in a work environment. The good news is that Nvidia has finally decided to fix its drivers, it's still beta though.

> The good news is that Nvidia has finally decided to fix its drivers, it's still beta though. Can you elaborate on that?

This should give a rough idea of the order of events:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-G...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Mesa-21....

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-4...

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