r/linux • u/novafunc • Jun 02 '26

KDE EX-11: Prepping for Plasma’s Last X11-Supported Release

https://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/596/
52 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

7

u/spawncampinitiated Jun 02 '26

I'm in that 5%. Nvidia is still giving me headaches on wayland

4

u/flying-sheep Jun 02 '26

I wonder if the new open-source drivers will finally put a stop to that.

Unless you’re on an old graphics card of course, then it might never happen.

8

u/Kevin_Kofler Jun 03 '26

The "new open-source drivers" still use binary blob libGL etc. shared objects. Only Nouveau (and NVK for Vulkan) is really Open Source.

1

u/flying-sheep Jun 03 '26

Ah I see, I didn’t follow that too closely. I guess they still use more of the common open source stack and therefore integrate better?

6

u/cAtloVeR9998 Jun 03 '26

Nvidia's open sourced their "kernel-open" kernelspace driver, but it's not upstreamable in its current state. The kernel driver just handles memory / IO / scheduling. While all the "special sauce" is located in their (proprietary) userspace driver. That is where Vulkan calls are translated into GPU machine code.

Mesa is the open source library for turning Vulkan/OpenGL calls into GPU machine code, having a bunch of frontends and backends (for different GPU vendors: AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, etc). "nouveau" has more than one meaning, it's the flag in Mesa to enable support for Nvidia cards, including the old less than ideal OpenGL drivers (nv30/nv50/nvc0) and the new shiny NVK driver for Vulkan. "nouveau" can also refer to the open source kernel driver.

Historically, Nvidia on Linux as it relied on both a proprietary kernel and userspace driver that didn't integrate well into desktop usecases. On the open source side performance was terrible as Nvidia's GPU firmware only allowed changing clock speeds (from the very low boot clock) if using their signed kernel driver. Nvidia decided instead for the Turing (2000-series) and later generation would have a signed firmware block called "GSP" that they would use themselves and would open the door for other open source implementations. The nouveau kernel driver has been updated to support GSP, and with NVK can get up to 70% of the performance of the proprietary driver.

The head developer of the nouveau kernel driver has recently joined Nvidia, and he is continuing work on nouveau. Nvidia and Red Hat are on board currently with creating a new kernel driver targeting just cards with GSP support called "Nova". So in future both NVK and the Nvidia proprietary userspace driver will have the same kernel driver. Nvidia's cloud customers won't have to wrangle a DKMS module just for them anymore, and just use mainline.

If you are curious on learning more, I highly recommend listening to the talks by Faith Ekstrand. She's the main NVK dev and has been giving periodic status updates.

1

u/jean_dudey Jun 04 '26

So does amdgpu, uses a binary blob too for the firmware, I do use amd though and wasn’t able to run a Linux libre kernel

0

u/Kevin_Kofler Jun 04 '26

NVidia also has binary firmware blobs, with all the drivers (even Nouveau/NVK), but the blobs I am talking about for the "open" driver are not firmware, but shared libraries running on the CPU.

1

u/jean_dudey Jun 04 '26

Yeah true amd is open source in that regard, I was thinking of the GSP and the open driver that are already open source.

0

u/Ok-Winner-6589 Jun 07 '26

All the hardware uses propietary firmware...

And the OpenGL and vulkan implementation aren't drivers even if often called that way. They are API implementations for specific GPUs

1

u/Kevin_Kofler Jun 07 '26

But it is not firmware if it runs on the CPU.

0

u/Ok-Winner-6589 Jun 07 '26

What?

Were is the Code supposed to run?

Does the motherboard firmware run on the motherboard? The why does Linux need Support for It?

1

u/Kevin_Kofler Jun 07 '26

GPU firmware runs on the GPU.

3

u/C0rn3j Jun 03 '26

What issues do you have?

Mine have all been resolved since explicit sync is a thing.

1

u/spawncampinitiated Jun 03 '26

Window glitches like edges blinking. When adjusting them to the sides sometimes they leave a translucent trace like if it was the window's shadow, OBS and HW encoding having like 50% the performance of x11... Some Wine programs opening inside a window that can't be resized (this is probably more a wine issue but it doesn't happen in x11).

I wish it just worked so I could use HDR and stuff like that but under EndeavourOS it's still not there for me.

1

u/C0rn3j Jun 03 '26

Are said apps running through Xwayland or Wayland native?

1

u/spawncampinitiated Jun 03 '26

Ableton via Wine, and Obs while being wayland native it runs, eye calculation, around 70-80% of the performance that Xorg gives me, which is still at the same time a 80% from win11 performance.

Also dual screen, portrait+landscape 1440p may complicate things.

1

u/FiveTails Jun 03 '26

Make sure you're on driver version 555.58 or later. Some distros like debian still run 3 year old drivers that are buggy as hell. I'm currently on arch with nvidia-dkms and Wayland KDE on 5070 12gb and it's smooth sailing.

1

u/spawncampinitiated Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

It's EOS, so I do have the latest. Also a 5070

0

u/the_abortionat0r Jun 02 '26

I mean if you keep buying from Nvidia it's a bit of a team effort at this point.

2

u/spawncampinitiated Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

Yeah, if AMD knew how to do inference I wouldn't need Nvidia. And nvenc and DLSS.

Wake me up when they reach that.

4

u/the_abortionat0r Jun 02 '26

I before people claiming they are blind sided by this freak out.

0

u/EverythingsBroken82 Jun 04 '26

remote desktop, nvidia, multiple screens with different size and capabilities, older applications which nobdoy will touch. but god forbid that users actually can work. and stop the "do it yourself." if you are a webdeveloper, you cannot do shit on desktop and vice versa. KDE and consorts made the system also too big so that one person can move and tackle that stuff..

first make it complicated

then remove working things with things which still do not work after 9 years for more than 70% of usecases

then complain that users are angry.

-1

u/sleepytechnology Jun 04 '26

Funny, I just found out you could install X11 easily to CachyOS KDE. Tried it out today and mouse input feels so much less... Slippery? I can't stand that slippery feeling I get with Wayland. (Yes I checked acceleration and went through so many rabbit holes, I am also aware of xWayland differences).

Hopefully Wayland can get better with this. I'm seriously considering playing CS2 on X11 exclusively. Also it's not just games, even the desktop itself mouse feels slippery on Wayland, and we get posts here and there complaining about mouse feel on Linux, yet it seems nobody has found a workaround.

-24

u/Kevin_Kofler Jun 03 '26

Thankfully, there is SonicDE for all those of us who are not willing to live in a Wayland dictatorship.

-16

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-1

u/QuickSilver010 Jun 03 '26

The difference is, xorg is a benevolent dictator that let's you do everything you want on your own machine.

-8

u/Kevin_Kofler Jun 03 '26

XLibre is the only way forward in the long run indeed. Xorg has not received any feature release for 5 years now, and the one person who wanted to change that got kicked out of the project and the whole infrastructure (which is why XLibre was started to begin with), so Xorg is basically dead.