On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 4:13 AM, drago01 <drago01@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 2:54 AM, Chris Murphy <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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 -- desktop mailing list desktop@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
