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Re:Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off by microcolonel on Thursday November 16, 2017 @07:04AM (#15712025)
> proper GPU acceleration

What GPU is this?

> only beaten by macOS

Well, you said you wanted "proper GPU acceleration", macOS GPU drivers are terrible. They're unstable, they have limp shader compilers, they are CPU-intensive, and in the case of OpenGL, they are behind by nearly six years in terms of features. Today, your sleek MacBook Pro supports considerably fewer modern GPU features than your average entry-level smartphone. You're missing stuff like multi draw indirect, texture clears, 8-bit stencils, image copying, explicit uniform location...

> hibernation that actually works

Well, I have that set up (and in my case it really has to be optional, since I have a really disk-scarce device right now). It worked correctly. I believe systemd will even monitor my battery and hibernate before it gets too low, like you'd expect (though maybe it could be brought out of hibernation enough times in a row to eventually run out of power before systemd gets to it). Maybe there should be a smoother transition between suspend and suspend-to-disk like macs with macOS have, but that isn't strictly necessary.

Re:Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off by pjmlp on Thursday November 16, 2017 @07:27AM (#15712124)
> What GPU is this?

Any capable of DirectX 12, but only gets OpenGL 4.3 drivers or similar on GNU/Linux.

Or my AMD Brazos one on a Linux netbook, DirectX 11 class, which only gets OpenGL 3.3 drivers.

Regarding OpenGL on macOS, I don't care, that is what rendering engines are for, and all relevant ones already support Metal 2.

Re:Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off by microcolonel on Thursday November 16, 2017 @07:46AM (#15712214)
> Any capable of DirectX 12, but only gets OpenGL 4.3 drivers or similar on GNU/Linux.

What GPU is this? I don't know of a DX12 device which lacks OpenGL 4.5 support in a stable release of Mesa (or the blob, in the case of NVIDIA, since they are uncooperative with regard to firmware).

> Regarding OpenGL on macOS, I don't care, that is what rendering engines are for, and all relevant ones already support Metal 2.

Sure, if you're running only games, and those that were made before 2012, and after 2017, then that works fine. For an example of something that does not currently use Metal (2 or no 2): any web browser (to my knowledge, including Apple's own, except as a backend for the WebGPU prototype), professional graphics application, or visualization utility. The shader compiler is still subpar, even in Metal.

> Or my AMD Brazos one on a Linux netbook, DirectX 11 class, which only gets OpenGL 3.3 drivers.

IIRC Brazos in that range would be... Radeon HD 6330M, and you're right, that should support GL 4.4. If you're running Mesa from 2016 or later, it should have 4.1 (and most extensions, except compute shaders, up to 4.4), if you run AMD's blob you can probably get 4.4 on it today. Work on drivers for pre-southern-islands devices is slow these days, but anything after SI has full certified OpenGL 4.5 on Mesa along with every extension in in 4.6 except for SPIR-V loading (coming soon), and the performance is better in basically all cases than it is on Windows, or with the proprietary drivers on Linux (though for now you'll need the proprietary drivers for some features like FreeSync, which is unfortunate but oh well).

Re:Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off by pjmlp on Thursday November 16, 2017 @08:31AM (#15712462)
I was having rendering issues with a NVIDIA Quadro M1200 when I tried it out with a live CD, never bothered to check again.
Re:Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off by vetinari on Thursday November 16, 2017 @05:36PM (#15717332)
You are not going to find the Nvidia drivers on the live CD.

I assume what you saw was the Nouveau driver, which is enough to have you up and running to be able to download the proprietary ones using GUI.

Re:Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off by beavis2 on Thursday November 16, 2017 @07:51AM (#15712238)
I find that to be irrelevant for development (except games, of course).

In fact, my graphics card (the cheapest to support Vista) is the only thing I haven't upgraded in the past 5+ years. And it was from eBay, used.

Re:Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off by pjmlp on Thursday November 16, 2017 @08:33AM (#15712473)
Providing good native UI/UX development is similar to games, specially when using WPF, UWP, Qt,...
Re:Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off by beavis2 on Thursday November 16, 2017 @08:50AM (#15712566)
I would love to see what you develop.

My graphics card supports the native UI elements of Windows.

My users don't want a "Save as" dialog with life-like water refraction and fog, rendered at higher FPS than their monitor.

Re:Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off by pjmlp on Thursday November 16, 2017 @11:35AM (#15714019)
Software that adheres to nice designs like Material and Fluent.
Re:Dell’s gamble on Linux laptops has paid off by vetinari on Thursday November 16, 2017 @05:34PM (#15717321)
So basically working vsync, alpha blending, render to texture and some basic shaders like blur, where even Intel GPUs are overkill?

Then you are in luck; even Intel GPUs under Linux do support OpenGL 4.5. 4.6 is in the works, the only missing part is the SPIR-V support and I don't suppose you need that for fluent or material design.