@codemonkeymike Out of curiosity, were you a committed macOS user before you started using Linux? Just asking because if you were, it will be much more convincing than if you come across as a FOSS evangelist trying to convert the heathens.
I don’t mean that in a smartass way. There are a lot of people out there who could be happily using Linux full time but don’t realize it, especially with the growth of popular cross-platform apps. IMO Linux has benefited from Electron more than any other OS.
@EpiphanicSynchronicity and yes no offense taken! I don't wanna be "that Linux guy" either. And not trying to "save people". But more help people that are curious. It's been great for me, so was wondering if anyone else wanted to.
@dhry@codemonkeymike@EpiphanicSynchronicity One mistake I always see for both Mac/Win guilds on how to migrate is that the guides immediately go full zealot (avoid ALL closed source, only use the newest tech, etc) and it makes users first experience quite bad as often their hardware and software doesn't work with those extra restrictions . I'd love to see more guides that focus on actually making a usable system than try to force them straight to the deepend often chasing them back to windows.
@dhry@codemonkeymike@EpiphanicSynchronicity For instance the reddit boards in particular were awful about this (I couldn't stand the reddit linux community, haven't been over on that site in years now), they would literally tell a brand new user trying out linux to sell their 3080rtx and buy an amd card as it's the "only way" to "properly" use linux, that kind of shit just chases people away.
@raptor85@dhry@EpiphanicSynchronicity yeah. I mean avoiding Nvidia certainly makes things easier. But if you already have the hardware, use it. That's what Linux is, and should be
@dhry@codemonkeymike@EpiphanicSynchronicity yep, i run the 4090 myself, as a matter of fact they're the ONLY choice if you want to use ray tracing and compute at reasonable rates. (OpenCL just isn't there...). NVIDIA themselves do a lot of their research and development on linux, so while the full driver isn't open source it's extremely well supported by them. it's just a common thing in a lot of "migration" guides is to "dump" them over the licensing issue and it really does chase users off.
@dhry@raptor85@EpiphanicSynchronicity there is some legitimately there. Intel and AMD graphics are build into the kernel. So it "just works". It's nice. But Nvidia has been a pill about open sourcing the driver, which means it can't be baked into the kernel.
Distros like @pop_os_official have gone so far as to have a special Nvidia version of the os that has the driver built in.
So I understand avoiding Nvidia if you can. But it totally works if you install the driver. Just a pain.
@codemonkeymike@dhry@EpiphanicSynchronicity@pop_os_official the kernel SOURCES to be specific, device drivers while you can build in you should ALWAYS build as module even with ati.Tthe kernel module itself is mostly just a shim that loads the driver (they do it like this so you can build it against custom kernels), so distros that package the nvidia driver correctly there's literally no difference, they're all just binary modules in the kernel modules directory, 0 difference for end users.
@EpiphanicSynchronicity@dhry@codemonkeymike which has always been bizarre to me, because especially back at that time historically nvidia had been the ONLY hardware vendor actually going out of their way to support linux, they weren't dealing with the others because nobody else was bothering to make drivers! I'll never understand the hardline stance linus and the kernel maintainers have for all drivers to be maintained by them, it's led to so many barely working drivers in the tree.
@EpiphanicSynchronicity@dhry@codemonkeymike it's led to the drivers in kernel often being FAR behind the non-vanilla ones and many devices drivers barely being a loader for a binary blob the manufacturer provides. Especially in an age where pretty much every boot uses efi+initrd having built in kernel drivers makes less and less sense for anything outside of core cpu/memory features as no distro actually builds the kernel that way.
@raptor85@dhry@codemonkeymike There’s alway seemed to be a tension in the Linux community between FOSS fundamentalism and Linux as a practical tool for getting things done and solving problems.
The FOSS people often pitch it as the latter but then vehemently oppose the use of closed source drivers and software on it that would actually make it possible for a lot more people to use Linux personally and professionally, even though that would still be a net win for free and open source.
@EpiphanicSynchronicity@dhry@codemonkeymike yep, and it often falls to the distro maintainers to sort the bullshit out by patching everything and merging everything into a coherent distribution that users can actually install what they need. Even a lot of userspace packages if built to full GPL compliance are so bad to be almost unusable (who doesn't love a video player that doesn't support h264 or aac, what you mean you actually BUY movies sometimes, not just watch open source streams?!?!?)
@EpiphanicSynchronicity@dhry@codemonkeymike many just do such a good job users would never know, often making deals, licensing codecs, or even ripping out the kernel implementation of something for a third party one. Even in gentoo the patches are automatically downloaded with the ebuilds, and use flags can control pulling them in as you want. (Gentoo makes use of a accept_licenses flag so you can choose what types of packages you want). The pure vanilla/gpl only experience is shockingly bad
@EpiphanicSynchronicity@raptor85@codemonkeymike Am I the only person out there who doesn’t give a bollock about “community” and prefers to just use software that works well? Like for real, I don’t care about Gates, Torvalds or Eich or any of them or what they want or believe in. if an app or OS can do something then I just use it. Completely agnostic stance. This kumbayah solidarity thing is so teenagery and gang-bangeresque. #smh
@dhry@EpiphanicSynchronicity@codemonkeymike I would say thats the norm, it's just the online communities (where people turn for help/advice/etc) tend to be almost entirely the small, vocal group. Your average user gives zero shits that steam and elden ring aren't open source, or that linus doesn't like nvidia.
Unfortunately though the zealotry does lock out a lot of contributions from devs, the kernel in particular is NOTORIOUS for denying contributions & drivers for hardware they don't like
@dhry@codemonkeymike@EpiphanicSynchronicity to answer your actual question though, no, not really there's no technical reason, it's all license and politics. The only technical side of the complaint was that nvidia wouldn't keep modifying things rapidly to appease the wayland devs.
their RTX support on linux is S+, they use it themselves inhouse so it's not just a case of them "also" supporting linux alongside the "real" operating systems, it's a primary thing for them.
@codemonkeymike@RL_Dane I am in the process of doing that (except I can’t because I do dev for Apple stuff, so I use both in parallel). I am not sure what specific topics you’d go for ?
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