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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

#131

Post by Steltek »

suby wrote: post #79
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.

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.

Has anyone tried using an AMD card for desktop/Wayland alongside an Nvidia card for ML/CUDA? Especially with Sway?

I use Sway/AMD for desktop but all the photogrammetry software out there requires CUDA. It's a bit of a PITA.

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

#132

Post by jrm4 »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #3

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…

If it is generally true that the bulk of the folks working on this space in Linux genuinely believe that Wayland is the "future" and X needs to be deprecated, they really need to put up or shut up. I'm not aware of what's going on behind the scenes, but it's painfully obvious that someone was entirely too confident on this whole deal.

It's just very surprising considering how well Linus' philosophy of "never break things backwards" holds up over time, and that the Wayland people appear to have nearly entirely missed this.

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

#133

Post by teddyh »

Shared404 wrote: post #44
teddyh wrote: 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…

> I guess that should be referred to as Busybox/Linux according to this?

I don’t know how you could come to that conclusion. The linked page basically says the opposite of that. The Linux project is a project to write a kernel (created to replace the existing MINIX kernel). The Python project is a project to write a programming language (for many operating systems). The GNU project, on the other hand, is to create (and integrate pre-existing parts into) an entire operating system, from the bare metal to the desktop. It’s more like the Debian project in that respect, except that the GNU project themselves write, or asks others to write, a lot of the non-existing components. Debian on the other hand tries to not do much software creation themselves, and has chosen to use the existing parts of the GNU system components combined with the Linux kernel to make a complete and working operating system.

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

#134

Post by pmontra »

Two questions.

1. Why not the .md URL for everybody?

2. Is this really a problem with Zoom or one with Wayland and the Linux distros? I mean Fedora switched to Wayland in 2016 and the screensharing API was added only in 2018. A rushed deployment?

Then maybe the Wayland team should make a list of the applications that must absolutely work with Wayland and support their vendors to release a correct implementation, not the screenshotting implemented by Zoom. I know time and money are finite but replacing X11 is a huge task. I'm still on X11 exactly because of problems like this one.

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

#135

Post by my123 »

suby wrote: post #79
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.

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.

> and that Nvidia did not support Wayland

Nvidia does support Wayland.

For KDE, the issue is: https://invent.kde.org/qt/qt/qtwayland/-/merge_requests/24

You'll have to wait until that gets to your distribution to have a usable KDE experience with NVIDIA on Wayland. In general, if you use those GPUs, please use the latest distributions.

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

#136

Post by Asooka »

This reads more like "How to ruin user acquisition at a critical time by being a stubborn jackass". There is no way just supporting the relevant X11 APIs wouldn't have been possible. Both projects live under the same foundation, it should be possible to make it so when an X11 application tries to record the desktop to pop up a notification in the Wayland shell like "App Z wants to record your screen, allow? [Yes] / [No]".

If there was an actual project manager this issue would have been marked "critical" two years ago and fixed. Because actually supporting the software that exists today, and not theoretical future software, is critical for projects that seek to replace foundational OS technologies, e.g. Wayland. I'm not asking for Microsoft-level iron backwards compatibility, but not supporting Zoom during COVID is about the most braindead move I can imagine.

Not that I expect anything to improve, I've been using Linux daily since 2005 and this is par for the course for the Linux "desktop".

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

#137

Post by pmontra »

mikepavone wrote: post #101

I think this is somewhat of a self-inflicted wound by the developers of the Linux desktop here. Linux+Wayland is the only major desktop environment that requires you to use an OS-provided dialog to pick the window you want to share when screensharing from a desktop app. Now obviously there are some security benefits to this approach (though in practice I'm not entirely convinced this is a big deal since you're usuall…

> Linux+Wayland is the only major desktop environment that requires you to use an OS-provided dialog to pick the window you want to share

Do you mean that you cannot share the whole desktop? The typical coding / debugging session (browser, editor, terminal) would be very difficult to do.

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

#140

Post by kxra »

CameronNemo wrote: post #125
duiker101 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _Pssst, coming from Hacker News? Add a ".md" to the URL_ This might have been added after your comment. Link with md: https://write.as/n5r0vjolumdnuk2k.md

@dang can we get the link updated?

Do we know why it was modified? I think hackernews stripped off the .md for some reason, but if you submit the URL with an anchor like https://write.as/hash.md#title that seems to preserve it
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