Graphical Distribution Upgrades

[Chris Murphy]

On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 4:13 AM, drago01 <drago01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 2:54 AM, Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com> wrote:
>> Another challenge, tangential from upgrades: hybrid graphics. Apple's
>> been doing this for 5+ years, with completely seamless switching
>> between integrated and discrete graphics. More recently it's
>> increasing in popularity among even mid-range non-Apple hardware.
>>
>> And the kernel honestly doesn't do well here, it often gets the
>> switching confused, and as far as I know there's no on-the-fly
>> switching based on usage. The plus for the user is integrated graphics
>> for better battery life, and discrete graphics for heavy lifting
>> software and when running on a power adapter - best of both.
>>
>> Maybe the seamless switching becomes possible with Wayland? But the
>> intermittent confusion before x even starts is presumably kernel
>> confusion (and regressions). I'm not sure what the solution is, but
>> it's understandable users will pick the path of least resistance. That
>> doesn't mean Fedora itself is doing something wrong that it can
>> obviously correct.
>
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=734346
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=704387
>
> I have no clue what you mean with "kernel confusion".
> But non of these has anything to do with upgrades.

Like I said, tangential to upgrades. A significant part of this
thread's context is comparison to OS X, and the area of graphics
performance and stability is where OS X excels a lot better in pretty
much every possible describable way. Right now with 3.19 and 4.0
kernels there's a rather significant i915 regression happening that
results in total panics and no recovery. Using discrete graphics makes
the system hot, results in CPU high temp messages, MCE errors,[1] and
tainted kernels. And 2 hour battery life instead of 6. It's been like
this on every hybrid Mac I've tested with either Intel+nVidia or
Intel+AMD graphics. As these problems start to get sorted out, the
hardware is at a 3-4 year EOL.

By kernel confusion I mean it doesn't know which GPU to exclusively
use, and the result is either garbage on the display or a black
screen. In the i915+AMD case, blacklisting the Radeon driver isn't
enough, it has to be disabled in GRUB to use i915 graphics. [2] I
can't actually use only i915 graphics unless I do that.

I don't know how we do better in this area without clobbering the
problem with more developers poking hardware with sticks, or a
meaningful push for open hardware. The trend in mobile is, if
anything, even more closed than the closedness we've seen with
laptops.

[1]
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=924570
[2]
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=765954

-- 
Chris Murphy