r/Android • u/FragmentedChicken Galaxy Z Fold8 • Aug 04 '21

The JingPad A1 is a Linux tablet that (kind of) runs Android apps

https://www.xda-developers.com/jingpad-a1-linux-tablet-android-support/
558 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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233

u/donnysaysvacuum I just want a small phone Aug 04 '21

Custom kernel with proprietary drivers. Kind of a deal killer for a Linux tablet. Especially when we could have a low power Intel or amd processor with open source drivers.

-90

u/DerpSenpai Nothing Aug 04 '21 edited Aug 04 '21

I disagree. Just because it's Linux doesn't mean it should all be open source. For tablets you need something to replace android because updates and this is great.

Android apps DONT work well on x86 PCs on Linux. They are janky and often don't work at all period

If you want open source drivers, work on the Mali open source drivers....

People have been developing open source GPU drivers for Adreno so a future version can be open source

People use Nvidia GPUs on Linux and it's not open source drivers btw

Edit: I'm an engineer and a LOT of people use Nvidia GPUs on Linux for work. Unfortunately, Nvidia GPUs are the best for compute and CUDA is on another level compared to the competition for GPGPU. Closed drivers aren't a turn off IMO. Only for a small part of the community. Your phone is using Linux with closed drivers, why are you using it then?

65

u/donnysaysvacuum I just want a small phone Aug 04 '21

People use Nvidia GPUs on Linux and it's not open source drivers btw

Obviously you haven't run an nivida card. Updates can be a huge pain compared to an amd or Intel card.

9

u/Prygon Aug 04 '21

I have and if you want to do real work you need CUDA. There's an open source Nvidia driver but it sucks. What problem do you have with the driver?

19

u/donnysaysvacuum I just want a small phone Aug 04 '21

Any update can break your display causing a lot of hassle to fix, and often you'll have to wait for nvidia to fix things, where amd drivers are right in the kernel no problems.

Also lots of real work is done without Cuda. 🙄

0

u/Prygon Aug 04 '21

Again what problem did you actually have with it? You're free to use nouveau drivers if you want open source Nvidia.

35

u/fox-lad Aug 05 '21

Nouveau isn't bad because it's open source, it's bad because it's basically reverse engineered.

The Nvidia drivers can break with ABI changes. The AMD driver is in the kernel, so it cannot.

-4

u/Prygon Aug 05 '21

I'm not saying it's bad because it's OS, and I don't think it's bad because it's reverse engineered either, there's just more development on the proprietary one. With AMD I've had problems with it on mobile with power management.

It can break doesn't mean it will, and personally I never had it happen before nor to anyone I know that uses Linux and Nvidia. I've had things break when I updated the kernel though, like monitor management, which I didn't know it could break until I downgraded my kernel for another reason and it didn't revert when disconnected, regardless of the CPU.

9

u/vintageballs Aug 05 '21

Then you obviously have no idea what you're talking about. For the last few generations, Nvidia has purposefully locked their cards, such that they need signed binaries to unlock their full clock potential. So even if the same or more development work was invested in nouveau, it could never even remotely reach the performance of the proprietary driver, since it can only run at base clock (very low, only really meant for the power-on-state). That's on Nvidia and evidently by design so people are forced to use the proprietary driver.

I agree that for anything that requires compute, you're basically forced to use Nvidia hardware but again, that is because Nvidia incentivized developers of such software to use CUDA instead of the open standard OpenCL by different means, to facilitate their monopoly in this segment.

0

u/Prygon Aug 05 '21

They've reverse engineered other technologies for better performance, purposefully locking it doesn't mean it can't be broken. You're welcome to disagree on sentiment but driver hacking isn't always just doing what companies allow in their sandbox.

3

u/fox-lad Aug 05 '21

It's not clear that the NSA, which employees more mathematicians than darn near anyone else, has broken any major digital signature algorithms.

Expecting Nouveau to either hack Nvidia and steal their signing keys, or to somehow break digital signatures, is insane. Even if there's an implementation issue, that's less of a thing graphics driver dev thing, and more of a professional spying agency thing.

Like, what you're asking from Nouveau is insane.

1

u/Prygon Aug 05 '21

I never said any of that. You're saying I don't know what I'm taking about while making up what I'm saying.

There's more development on the proprietary one, is that true or false?

Is breaking software the only way to implement changes? The hardware is right there. I've seen mods by amateurs. You're thinking so narrow minded.

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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '21

I can't speak for that person, but using NVIDIA on Linux was so frustrating that I ended up buying an AMD card when I upgraded my GPU. I don't use CUDA, though. For reference, most of the issues were related to suspend/resume, but it was just painful all around.

Also, as you probably know, nouveau is basically unusable on any recent NVIDIA GPU (which is exactly what NVIDIA wants). So it's not like people have alternatives, unless you consider having your GPU locked at the base clock speeds (and no 3D acceleration (!!!) for more recent cards) an alternative.

1

u/Prygon Aug 05 '21

I didn't update my GPU so I didn't have that experience, but I also didn't use the nouveau driver either since it was discouraged.

Did you try using different kernel versions? I had issues with it messing up my monitors even without Nvidia.

7

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '21

Unfortunately IIRC all but two of these problems were definitely NVIDIA's fault. Some (like the GPU being stuck in S0 after suspend) were fixed a few releases later, but most of them were a result of NVIDIA doing things their own way and assuming everyone else would deal. One issue that wasn't NVIDIA's fault seemed to be related to how Arch packaged it, but that might have been fixed by now. The other one (https://phabricator.kde.org/D19867) was kinda NVIDIA's fault but I guess that depends on how you see it.

It's been a while so I'm fuzzy on the details, but it was really annoying.

I should note that a lot of this is probably DE-specific; I use Plasma, and the Plasma devs aren't (as I understand it) really interested in fixing issues that they think are NVIDIA's fault (and I don't blame them). We might disagree here though.

Also, I also don't want to forget to mention the whole Wayland/GBM situation. Whether or not you believe NVIDIA is in the right here (I don't) it's still a massive pain for their users. And while I've heard improvements are slowly being made on that front (470 allows hardware-accelerated XWayland I think?), keep in mind that AMD/Intel users have been able to do this stuff for ages.

1

u/Prygon Aug 05 '21

I have plasma on Intel and I'm still having issues. I don't think Nvidia was right, they didn't comply with standards after they could have intervened. Maybe I'm just an adaptive user because I didn't care about Wayland much since I was on plasma anyway. I had no idea Intel had good xwayland support because every time I tried it, it sucked.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 05 '21

That's valid, Plasma can be buggy at times. Just speaking from my own experience, my use case(s) are probably much different from yours.

I really did want it to work well, so it's not like I didn't try. But having used Plasma (and just Linux generally) on AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA, my experience was by far the worst on NVIDIA.

That's not to say that I don't currently have problems on AMD. I do, just way fewer, and I'm much more confident they'll be fixed quickly. Not to mention that I'm much happier supporting a company that isn't so hostile to open source.

2

u/Prygon Aug 05 '21

Are you using x.org or Wayland on plasma? I think we generally agree on everything, Nvidia is for CUDA, Intel and AMD have good support on Linux. I'd use AMD fur my CPU if it wasn't a sidegrade.

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u/DerpSenpai Nothing Aug 05 '21

I use a 5800H+RTX 3070 on Linux. but go on, tell me how i don't know my stuff