What's the current state and timeline of nvidia/wayland/GBM stability?

ArchM · 2022-02-15 02:15:55

Hopefully this is the right place to ask (or is the mailing list preferred?)

Being honest, a lot of the developments in this space are a bit over my head; I've picked up bits and pieces through reading and trying things out, but was hoping someone could run me through how things look in practice. Apologies for the vagueness of my question, as I try to figure out what the right questions even are.

For instance, as an i3 user that read a bit about wayland/sway, I'm familiar with some of the EGLStreams vs. GBM drama that took place, much less so about the technical details. My understanding is that nvidia eventually gave in and is starting to roll out GBM support as of 495.44(?). As I understand it, this was the main blocker in switching over entirely to wayland, and applications like sway.

From reading discussions about the topic, it looks like more work is needed to reach parity with Xorg and stability. What are the current limitations though? How does XWayland play into this? Is it too early to switch away from Xorg?

At one point I was using a dual monitor setup with a 4k and 1440p display and through a bit of effort found a way to configure different DPI scaling settings on each in Xorg... my impression is that this sort of thing is supposed to work better in wayland along with stuff like fractional DPI scaling, is that the case? I'm looking to buy a second monitor as I've given away the 1440p display, but I'm torn between a 1440p 144Hz display or a second matching 4k display. Do either Xorg or Wayland play nicely with mixing resolutions and refresh rates? My understanding is that some desktop environments like Gnome also play some sort of role in improving DPI scaling, is that a route worth exploring as well?

What's the situation with hardware acceleration, video decoding, etc. support with nvidia in Chrome? After several attempts I finally got it to work with the vdpau-va-driver-vp9 driver. Scrolling, page rendering and videos became a lot more snappy and I was really happy with it, but I also got random black rectangles, crashes and so forth and eventually reverted.

ewaller · 2022-02-15 02:20:25

As I commented on your other post, please use the report link asking moderators to move topics in the future. It is cleaner and easier on the moderators.

Thanks

jlindgren · 2022-02-18 23:39:46

My two cents is that things are very much still in a state of flux with Wayland and nvidia. I wouldn't rely on Wayland for a daily driver yet, though it's "fun" to experiment with if that's your thing.

Nvidia did add GBM support in one of the recent drivers (470? 495? can't recall offhand), and it partially works. sway will run (with the --unsupported-gpu option) and will show stuff on the screen, but there are issues with incomplete or old frames being drawn -- picom also used to have similar issues with nvidia, not sure if that's related or a coincidence. The wlroots-eglstreams fork doesn't seem to have the same rendering issues, but the previous maintainer (danvd) is no longer working on it, so its future is kind of unclear.

ArchM · 2022-02-20 01:18:49

jlindgren wrote:

My two cents is that things are very much still in a state of flux with Wayland and nvidia. I wouldn't rely on Wayland for a daily driver yet, though it's "fun" to experiment with if that's your thing.
Nvidia did add GBM support in one of the recent drivers (470? 495? can't recall offhand), and it partially works. sway will run (with the --unsupported-gpu option) and will show stuff on the screen, but there are issues with incomplete or old frames being drawn -- picom also used to have similar issues with nvidia, not sure if that's related or a coincidence. The wlroots-eglstreams fork doesn't seem to have the same rendering issues, but the previous maintainer (danvd) is no longer working on it, so its future is kind of unclear.

Thanks. From what I could gather in related discussion I could find, this seems to more or less summarize the situation... I do like using the most modern / "right" solutions and am even willing to deal with some of the experimental costs at times... but when it comes to the display I've had enough pain over the last decade with Xorg and GPU drivers bricking my session, dealing with reverting configs and downgrades in single user mode, etc. to take the recent few years of stability for granted...

In summary, it looks like there are no predicted timelines or roadmaps, and it's not yet worth cutting over. Will revisit in the next couple of months, or just get an AMD card if/when silicon prices fall enough to stomach an upgrade of this increasingly more decrepit desktop.

jlindgren · 2022-02-23 19:43:22

Partly for my own reference, and in case anyone is curious, Nvidia has acknowledged that the "incomplete or old frames being drawn" issue is a driver bug:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xse … te_1271303

asklow · 2024-03-02 09:03:45

Is gbm x11 only ?

V1del · 2024-03-02 13:09:08

No GBM is the mechanism used by Wayland compositors to talk to the graphics driver, there used to be EGLStreams by nvidia and GBM used by everyone else. Since nvidia opted to support GBM now, this distinction became largely irrelevant.

asklow · 2024-03-02 15:51:14

Ah. Then I guess this wouldn't be an issue at all in the linux nvidia saga. The only problem with the green team is closed source nature of their drivers right?

Last edited by asklow (2024-03-02 15:51:54)

V1del · 2024-03-02 16:03:59

Basically, and some wayland things not yet working properly and some issues with synchronisation on xwayland (however the method nvidia wants to use here is of interest to everyone, so the entire stack is working towards enabling explicit synchronisation that nvidia will use as well)

asklow · 2024-03-02 16:15:47

Yes but these hickups also boil down into other cards as well. Because wayland is still underdeveloping. I hope the protocol & software around it flourishes so damn well such that hardware wouldn't be a thing of differentiator in any given space.
Regarding GBM stability, I think this thread has no discussion to offer as of now I guess.

Arch Linux

#1 2022-02-15 02:15:55

What's the current state and timeline of nvidia/wayland/GBM stability?

#2 2022-02-15 02:20:25

Re: What's the current state and timeline of nvidia/wayland/GBM stability?

#3 2022-02-18 23:39:46

Re: What's the current state and timeline of nvidia/wayland/GBM stability?

#4 2022-02-20 01:18:49

Re: What's the current state and timeline of nvidia/wayland/GBM stability?

#5 2022-02-23 19:43:22

Re: What's the current state and timeline of nvidia/wayland/GBM stability?

#6 2024-03-02 09:03:45

Re: What's the current state and timeline of nvidia/wayland/GBM stability?

#7 2024-03-02 13:09:08

Re: What's the current state and timeline of nvidia/wayland/GBM stability?

#8 2024-03-02 15:51:14

Re: What's the current state and timeline of nvidia/wayland/GBM stability?

#9 2024-03-02 16:03:59

Re: What's the current state and timeline of nvidia/wayland/GBM stability?

#10 2024-03-02 16:15:47

Re: What's the current state and timeline of nvidia/wayland/GBM stability?

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