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A comment on The death watch for the X Window System has probably started. Parent comment

Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by shmerl on Sunday July 07, 2019 @04:36PM (#20377672)
I recommend you simply to switch to AMD if you are using Linux and want a high end GPU. That's the only way for you to get a usable desktop with modern features.

Or wait until Intel will release a new GPU next year, it should work well with upstream too.

Nvidia has no interest in making their cards play well with Linux, so just avoid them completely to keep your sanity and don't waste your time trying to work around their mess.

Going forward, DE / compositor developers will support Nvidia use case less and less (due to Nvidia market share taking a further dip on Linux and Nvidia still not upstreaming their driver). So save yourself the trouble already today.

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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by themacguffinman on Sunday July 07, 2019 @05:07PM (#20377861)
> I recommend you simply to switch to AMD if you are using Linux and want a high end GPU. That's the only way for you to get a usable desktop with modern features.

This is just not true. Gnome with Wayland is one of the most popular and modern DEs and it supports Nvidia's proprietary drivers today.

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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by ufo on Sunday July 07, 2019 @05:42PM (#20378081)
Nvidia still doesn't work as well as other gpus under wayland, which is why GbOME still uses X by default for NVIDIA
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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by shmerl on Sunday July 07, 2019 @06:56PM (#20378536)
OP explicitly mentioned Sway (based on wlroots), not Gnome (mutter). Besides, even Gnome can't handle XWayland with Nvidia today. And if you play games, especially in Wine, that's still a requirement.

While Gnome developers bent under Nvidia's pressure, other compositor developers aren't interested in accommodating exceptions for blobs and wasting their resources on that.

TL;DR: just ditch Nvidia and forget about all their horrors. They really have no place in Linux ecosystem today, because of their refusal to upstream their drivers and because of preventing Nouveau from doing it for them.

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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by effie on Sunday July 07, 2019 @08:45PM (#20379041)
Well, they don't play as nice as AMD, but they do at least give you working drivers. They do have place for consumers, there are valid use cases for Nvidia on Linux, such as:

1) top performance available on the market;

2) off-the-shelf passive cooled 4K capable cards (GT 1030);

3) (significantly) better performance per watt and less noise for high-end cards.

I still prefer AMD for their play-nice attitude with Linux and seemingly better track record on behaviour towards consumers, but Nvidia for the last years have been offering better hardware.

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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by vbernat on Monday July 08, 2019 @12:21AM (#20379869)
I have run a GT 1030 with a pair of 4K displays for a few months and the performance is terrible (for a desktop usage). I don't know where the bottleneck is (PCI bandwidth maybe) but you should avoid this card. I have replaced it with an RX550 and I don't have any performance problem anymore. It is not passively cooled, but the fan can be stopped from software if you want.
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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by effie on Monday July 08, 2019 @06:03PM (#20387210)
Perhaps you got the "disgrace version" of GT 1030 with slow DDR4 in place of GDDR5? [1]

[1] https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3330-gt-1030-ddr4-vs-g...

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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by vbernat on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @02:27PM (#20404824)
Yes, I have the DDR4 version. I wouldn't have thought it would matter much for a desktop usage.
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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by shmerl on Sunday July 07, 2019 @09:21PM (#20379209)
Given all the above, I'd call them "working", not working :)

> top performance available on the market;

Not anymore with new Navi cards. And competition in the Linux market will probably get even stronger with Intel releasing new GPUs with open drivers next year. I.e. there will be no reason to buy Nvidia anymore with all the blob downsides that aren't going to disappear.

> off-the-shelf passive cooled 4K capable cards (GT 1030);

For gaming 4K is really a read herring today, and for regular non gaming desktop use case, you don't need strong GPUs even for 4K.

> (significantly) better performance per watt and less noise for high-end cards.

Also not anymore with Navi.

So I'd say things today look pretty bad for Nvidia on Linux, and they'll be gradually losing Linux desktop market, until they will start playing nice with upstream. Time will tell if they actually will. I don't think they care though. And neither Linux users would care to use them.

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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by themacguffinman on Monday July 08, 2019 @06:35PM (#20387394)
> OP explicitly mentioned Sway (based on wlroots), not Gnome (mutter)

My parent commenter did not refer to Sway, that's why I rejected the claim that AMD is the "only way for you to get a usable desktop with modern features".

> even Gnome can't handle XWayland with Nvidia today. And if you play games, especially in Wine, that's still a requirement

I'm not sure what you're referring to. I've successfully launched and played Wine games with Nvidia proprietary drivers in Gnome with Wayland.

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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by shmerl on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @02:06AM (#20389350)
> I'm not sure what you're referring to. I've successfully launched and played Wine games with Nvidia proprietary drivers in Gnome with Wayland.

How exactly, when it's not supported: https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/Wayland/NVIDIA

    There is currently no accelerated GLX support when
    running a GNOME Wayland session no top of the NVIDIA
    drivers, meaning X11 OpenGL applications will use
    software rendering.
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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by themacguffinman on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @08:10PM (#20407910)
I can't say I know the details, but I have played CS:GO (non-wine) and Overwatch on Wine without any special hacks with performance indicative of GPU, not CPU rendering. Perhaps it's because they're using Vulkan instead, or the docs are alluding to edge cases that I haven't encountered? I have very little technical knowledge of how it works, but I can say that it is absolutely working.
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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by shmerl on Thursday July 11, 2019 @01:42PM (#20413620)
You likely weren't using Wayland session, but X11 one.
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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by themacguffinman on Friday July 12, 2019 @03:53PM (#20423881)
No, I definitely wasn't. The games may be running through XWayland, but my Gnome was definitely running with Wayland.
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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by orbifold on Monday July 08, 2019 @08:39AM (#20382185)
Or you know, just don't use the linux desktop. Nvidia's drivers are the only ones with a good Vulkan / OpenGL implementation, the other ones are underperforming severely. Nvidia also exclusively develops CUDA, so it basically it the only serious alternative for accelerating scientific workloads. Basically no-one cares what Kernel/Window system developers think as long don't cripple the Kernel severely enough that NVIDIA can't around their nonsense.
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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by shmerl on Monday July 08, 2019 @10:55AM (#20383250)
> Nvidia's drivers are the only ones with a good Vulkan / OpenGL implementation

On the contrary, Nvidia drivers have bad reputation of violating OpenGL spec left and right. Mesa is a lot more strict about OpenGL compliance.

And they don't have Vulkan advantage either. Don't use Windows if you need good quality OpenGL.

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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by orbifold on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @06:47AM (#20390518)
This is not about compliance but rather features and performance. When OpenGL was relevant they had by far the largest set of well thought out extensions (mutidrawindirect for example). Their Developer Tools were second to none and they had CUDA as a unique value proposition.
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Re:The death watch for the X Window System has probably started by shmerl on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @10:06AM (#20391849)
Their blob has no features advantage, and neither performance advantage anymore vs Mesa. While it is known to cheat and violate OpenGL spec to show better results.
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