Ihavequestions wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 10:04 am
1. Open-source drivers are by no means 'automatically better' than closed-source ones. NVidia has had superior closed-source Linux drivers for many years, and while there's always a lot of ideological controversy around them, everyone is secretly thankful to NVidia for providing Linux gamers with good-quality drivers that typically will work out of the box.
Most people have been openly thankful to nVidia for providing Linux users with good quality drivers as they used to be the only ones to do so. Back in the before times, there were no open source drivers for nVidia, ATI, or Intel hardware that could do 3D acceleration. nVidia decided to make their Linux drivers use the same core code as their Windows drivers, with a little open source glue to interface a binary blob with the kernel and X. This provided a more consistent level of quality and features across OSs. ATI, later AMD, developed separate (closed source) drivers largely from the ground up for Linux, and were much buggier and lacking features compared to their Windows offerings. Consequently, nVidia drivers performed far better with comparatively few issues. People would happily focus their efforts on making sure their stuff worked with nVidia because it was the only way it could work well (if you wanted 3D acceleration, at least), and its behavior was roughly comparable as on Windows.
However, not everything stays the same forever. Times change, and at some point Intel decided to open source their drivers and provide documentation for their devices, working with the kernel devs and Mesa on their now-open-source drivers. This resulted in Intel graphics seeing a significant jump in stability and quality over time. AMD followed suit, providing documentation for their hardware and working with the kernel devs and Mesa for writing new open source drivers. This resulted in AMD graphics seeing regular improvements in stability and quality too. nVidia, in contrast, steadfast refused to provide any documentation or make any moves to having or allowing open source drivers, going business-as-usual. Sure their drivers may have been been relatively good since the outset, but this created a schism; the open source open source drivers were continually improving, and AMD and Intel would work with the Linux Kernel, Mesa, Xorg, and later Wayland, to fix problems and work out details for future development, while nVidia would stay in its own corner expecting others to do what they wanted.
Let's not forget Linus' infamous "nVidia, fuck you" middle finger, which was born as a result of nVidia's drivers creating many unnecessary issues and headaches for the kernel devs, amplified by the drivers being closed and nVidia not working with them like the other vendors do. There have been occasions like where Intel, AMD, the kernel devs, Mesa, and Wayland were in unanimous agreement on a new interface for Wayland's graphics management (GBM). nVidia was invited to those discussions where that decision was made, said they'd be there, then was a no-show. Some time later after everyone started working on and using that new interface, nVidia popped up saying they were supporting a different interface (EGLStreams). If you wanted a Wayland compositor to work on nVidia hardware, you basically needed a second implementation just for nVidia now, while AMD, Intel, and everyone else would all share the initial one. As Wayland was still under heavy development, that was extra unexpected work nobody was happy about. If you wanted to use Wayland on nVidia, you were in for a very rough time since that code ended up far buggier and less developed. nVidia eventually relented and began to support GBM too, but their support of it isn't the greatest. Wayland on nVidia is certainly better, but still hobbled.
Suffice to say, while nVidia may have been considered superior, that was a relative assessment when the alternatives were all utter crap. But AMD and Intel are both more viable now than ever, and plenty of people are no longer tolerant of nVidia's my-way-or-the-highway attitude. People don't have to kowtow to nVidia as much anymore, resulting in more code being written with a focus on AMD and Intel, and exposing more issues for nVidia. On a technical level, nVidia's drivers do have some advantages, but fewer people are willing or able to mask nVidia's BS these days. There are non-ideological reasons to see AMD and Intel as superior, as their drivers integrate into the system far better than nVidia's, the drivers being part of the kernel where they're expected to be and using a common graphics stack, creating a nicer user experience. Whether or not that's something that matters to you depends on what you care about, of course, but it's not the forgone conclusion it used to be,
Ihavequestions wrote: ↑Fri Mar 17, 2023 10:04 am
2. The whole 'Ubuntu' thing here is highly misleading. It is Debian and its derivatives; the GZDoom/LZDoom packages use the Debian package format; and GZDoom/LZDoom should install and run prefectly on any Debian-based distro from those 'Ubuntu' titled packages. It really has nothing to do with Ubuntu.
Ubuntu isn't Debian, it is a derivative sharing some (but not all) packages. In this particular case, the issue largely stems around having Flatpak support by default for distro-agnostic packages, and especially statements like:
Canonical’s community team had reached out to flavor leads for an open discussion on default packaging in Ubuntu flavors. In each conversation, we presented our point of view regarding these changes and were open to discussion. While there were differences in initial agreement, in most cases the flavor representatives signaled willingness to make the changes by the end of the conversation.
If that isn't coded language for "Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc, wanted to support Flatpak by default, we "listened" but forced them not to", I don't know what is. "Differences in initial agreement" is a really funny way to say "we disagreed", and "the flavor representatives signaled willingness to make the changes by the end of the conversation" smacks of double-speak to me (I mean, saying something like "don't do that or we won't allow you to keep using the Ubuntu trademark" would certainly create a "willingness to make the changes"; not saying that is what happened, but it gives off that vibe). At a time when Flatpak seems to be gaining the most traction as a distro-agnostic package system/format, Ubuntu is pulling further away from it to focus on using Snap as a more proprietary alternative that far fewer people are enthused about. Canonical has historically had a NIH (Not Invented Here) problem, but this is taking it to a new level by forcing Ubuntu flavors to not support Flatpak by default too. Sure you can still install the apt packages to support Flatpak, but that's an unnecessary manual step that people are going to increasingly run into as Flatpak support continues to grow. Better to have the packages installed by default so it Just Works
tm for users, but Canonical doesn't want that and is now forcing other distros to follow them.
I guess it's really time to dump it for good.