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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

#81

Post by AshamedCaptain »

boudin wrote: post #64
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even the _current_ LTS from Ubuntu does not ship Pipewire 0.3, which is _required_ to use the portal API for screencasting (no dma-buf import in pipewire 0.2), unless you want for it to be significantly slower than using X11 and Xshm. So this API doesn't even work in the current fastest-LTS-cycle distro.

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

well, I say that because even thought single-window screencasting now works in Gnome since sometime around last year, when I try to do it on _anything_ else I get a black screen.

And turns out because _as of today_ it is not yet implemented for wlr https://github.com/emersion/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr/blob/c34d...

This stuff is just way too recent and unstable and changing every day.

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

#82

Post by wnoise »

SahAssar wrote: post #47
988747 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why won't trimmed URL simply redirect to a proper one? Or throw 404 even? This seems like a webserver misconfiguration of sorts, kind of like being able to access raw PHP pages, instead of rendered ones.

I'm guessing write.as is supposed to support multiple languages, and only renders the markdown if you have .md as an extension.

Which is the exact opposite of what I expect and want -- the bare filename should render, and the .md extension should get the markdown source.

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

#83

Post by nemetroid »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #77
chaorace wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can run it, but not with reasonable screen sharing support, which arguably is a part of "supporting the distro".

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

#84

Post by pdimitar »

nemetroid wrote: post #80
pdimitar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

These are very helpful, thanks!

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

#85

Post by pie_flavor »

shadowgovt wrote: post #49
computerfriend wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In January 2020, Zoom had over 2,500 employees, with 1,396 in the United States and 1,136 in international locations. It is reported that 700 employees within a subsidiary work in China and develop Zoom software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications#Work...

And Zoom is using that headcount to support 55 billion hours of videoconferencing a year. In contrast, YouTube is supporting only six times that much video watched annually with 40 times Zoom's staff. "Small" is relative, but Zoom is punching above its weight for the size of its userbase and the load on its services.

Testing on the desktops you claim to support isn't a relative question, it's an absolute question. You can do it - or at least an approximation of it that covers the major facets like Xorg vs Wayland - with 25 employees, let alone 2500.

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

#86

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #59
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #33

I think a better title would be: How Desktop GNU+Linux sucks for desktop developers: Zoom edition Windows will happily run GUI apps written 20 years ago. GDI is still supported. MFC Apps still run. Likely VB6 apps still run. Desktop GNU+Linux switches graphics engines, breaks backwards compatibility, ships something with performance and driver issues, and complains that user software doesn't work. Frankly this post t…

> Windows will happily run GUI apps written 20 years ago. Don't think this is true anymore. Old software on Windows just isn't guaranteed to work anymore. Last time I tried to play an old game on newer Windows versions, it didn't even start up despite automatic and manual installation of a ton of dependencies. I suppose the Raymond Chen stories about heroic bug fixing in third party code is a thing of the past.

Games are an especially difficult case as they have a habit of bypassing higher level APIs and abusing undocumented behavior for performance reasons. Still, a shockingly high number of games from 20+ years ago work out of the box on the latest Windows despite things like the shift from 32 bit to 64, all without recompilation.

Linux Desktop's compatibility story is laughable by comparison unless you count WINE, which works so well in part because Windows APIs are so stable.

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

#88

Post by [deleted] »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #42
phkahler wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

They are probably running a distro with an old kernel and can't be "bothered" to figure out and fix the actual issue.

[deleted]

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

#89

Post by suby »

smcl wrote: post #34
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.

I dunno. This isn't a person who's throwing a tantrum because something just didn't work perfectly. This is a pretty even-handed description of a problem whose solution was delivered to Zoom on a plate multiple times, which they repeatedly ignored before declaring that they personally discovered the cause and then blamed Gnome. I would have understood if this person got upset and wrote expletive-laden write-up becaus…

I read it in a much different tone, but maybe that was me reading too much into it.

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

#90

Post by YEwSdObPQT »

chaorace wrote: post #62
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…

I used Linux 95% of the time at work and generally it is a mess when it comes to proprietary stuff. Even if it is decently supported there are about 4 different ways to install it and because I use Debian and not Ubuntu I have to hope the package just works with my distro or use snaps.

I've distro hopped around and packaging is a perennial issue no matter which distro you use. Some proprietary apps only support Ubuntu, or Redhat based distros but not CentOS/RHEL and only Fedora even though they are kinda the same thing.

I think at this point I might just download the tarballs and install it manually because I think that might actually be easier.

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