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Minecraft Running on Asahi Linux with Open Source GPU Drivers

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Re: Minecraft Running on Asahi Linux with Open Source GPU Drivers

#41
post #38
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vulkan is a lot more work to get to, with far fewer applications using it. It would be a worse ROI, and take significantly longer to make an OS that can be a daily driver for most people.

Not sure if OpenGL 4.0-4.6 is less work in general. I'd argue implementing Vulkan gives the best ROI, since it gives all OpenGL after that without extra effort. And I don't think that few applications use it. Anything modern tries to. The rest are planning to move to it.

What common or high profile applications do you think actively target Vulkan? Outside of games very few do in my experience but I’d love to see some examples outside what I know of.

Re: Minecraft Running on Asahi Linux with Open Source GPU Drivers

#43
post #41
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if OpenGL 4.0-4.6 is less work in general. I'd argue implementing Vulkan gives the best ROI, since it gives all OpenGL after that without extra effort. And I don't think that few applications use it. Anything modern tries to. The rest are planning to move to it.

What common or high profile applications do you think actively target Vulkan? Outside of games very few do in my experience but I’d love to see some examples outside what I know of.

Wayland compositors are going to switch to it, with some already doing it (like Sway). Video players like mpv use it. Blender has some plan for it.

Basically, it's the way forward, not OpenGL.

Re: Minecraft Running on Asahi Linux with Open Source GPU Drivers

#44
post #43
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What common or high profile applications do you think actively target Vulkan? Outside of games very few do in my experience but I’d love to see some examples outside what I know of.

Wayland compositors are going to switch to it, with some already doing it (like Sway). Video players like mpv use it. Blender has some plan for it. Basically, it's the way forward, not OpenGL.

Sure, but that’s in the future and they aren’t not going to add Vulkan. But it makes sense to prioritize GL for now, especially because a lot of the GL work comes much easier thanks to their prior MESA work.

Even amongst your list, I don’t see mass adoption of the applications today that don’t also have a GL backend.

Blender alone will be a gargantuan uplift to get to Vulkan because so much of the ecosystem is coded agains GL directly.

Re: Minecraft Running on Asahi Linux with Open Source GPU Drivers

#45
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they're calling it Day 1 in the sense that the devs themselves are saying a lot of it is hacked together and not daily driver material for most of the users. A lot of releases and revisions before this is even upstreamed.

When talking about impressive performance of a "day 1" build I feel there is a difference between new drivers and new ports of existing drivers.

Correct. But this is a new driver.

Re: Minecraft Running on Asahi Linux with Open Source GPU Drivers

#47
post #44
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland compositors are going to switch to it, with some already doing it (like Sway). Video players like mpv use it. Blender has some plan for it. Basically, it's the way forward, not OpenGL.

Sure, but that’s in the future and they aren’t not going to add Vulkan. But it makes sense to prioritize GL for now, especially because a lot of the GL work comes much easier thanks to their prior MESA work. Even amongst your list, I don’t see mass adoption of the applications today that don’t also have a GL backend. Blender alone will be a gargantuan uplift to get to Vulkan because so much of the ecosystem is coded…

This kind of experimental project above looks pretty well aligned with where things are heading, so I think focus on Vulkan would be still fitting.

Meaning by the time it will be more usable, Vulkan will be more used as well.

And as above, if you implement Vulkan - you get OpenGL through Zink. If you implement OpenGL - you still have to implement Vulkan. So with limited resources, the first option looks way more effective.

Re: Minecraft Running on Asahi Linux with Open Source GPU Drivers

#49

Now we still need Minecraft to become open source.

The state of open source Minecraft is nuanced enough to be interesting. The Minecraft ip and codebases are currently owned by Microsoft and have technically always been closed source, but the nature of the game and its development history are such that third party mods and modding apis are very common. Because the original edition of the game is written in Java, it's relatively easy to decompile and develop for. In fact, Mojang Studios has been including a deobfuscation map with each snapshot release of the game for a few years now which would allow you to decompile the Java edition of the game and use the same names that they use internally [0]. Though, most modders prefer to use the mappings provided by modding apis like forge and fabric due to tradition and licensing conflicts. Depending on your definition of Minecraft, there's also plenty of open source implementations of Minecraft Classic, a much older version of the game that's easy to reimplement but apparently still has an active community [1]. Then of course there's Minetest, an independent totally open source voxel game that happens to have a lot in common with Minecraft [2].

I should probably also note that there's something of a conflict in this area surrounding the other edition of Minecraft, Bedrock Edition, which is written in C++ and therefore difficult to decompile and mod. Bedrock Edition is much more closed than Java edition in a number of ways, such as including a store built into the launcher for buying maps, texture packs and skins whereas these would need to retrieved externally (usually for free) on Java edition. However, Bedrock Edition does have a first party modding api, a more feature rich internal scripting system with the concept of "behavior packs" [3], and has led to the development of a number of tools used by mod authors for both editions, such as Blockbench [4]. Ultimately Java Edition and its community have the legacy of Notch and Mojang with a long history of community contribution while Bedrock Edition was only developed after the Microsoft acquisition and is much more in Microsoft's style.

EDIT: Turns out the Bedrock Edition modding api was discontinued earlier this year [5].

[0]https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Obfuscation_map [1]https://wiki.vg/Category:Minecraft_Classic [2]https://www.minetest.net/ [3]https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/minecraft/creator/document... [4]https://www.blockbench.net/ [5]https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/creator/article/removing-the...

Re: Minecraft Running on Asahi Linux with Open Source GPU Drivers

#50
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battery life is more about power management logic. I'd expect we'll be a long, long time, before Apple's power management logic is implemented.

Sounds more like it would be lower priority than very difficult?

It's not a single, difficult feature.

It's a system wide tuning of voltage frequency plus idle times for all sorts of micro-controllers, plus who knows what else.

In its own way, it's extremely, extremely difficult.

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