So Google doesn't have the resources to test the default driver on the most widespread linux distribution for one of the two most widespread GPU producers in the market.
> The default driver on the distribution we support is broken.
They do test the default driver on the distributions they support. The tests show that the driver is unacceptably unstable. It may work better on other distros/versions, but they don't have time to test those. They're happy for others to help out in testing these unsupported combinations, however:
> Again, if someone wants to spend the time to test thoroughly to narrow down the blacklist, we will accept patches.
And in any case the reason nouveau sucks (and yes, folks, nouveau sucks) isn't Google's fault to begin with.
You seriously want to complain about Google's lack of support for an open source driver that barely exists because of NVIDIA's lack of support?
It's crazy to suggest they should give web access (not just webgl, but CSS styling) to a buggy GPU driver by default without an opt in by the user.
(Not bring cynical, I genuinely don't know.)
From reading more about it, it seems these are all benign (in the sense of Chromium couldn't ship h264 because it's licensed but Chrome can).
This just about sums up the problem with open source. The response is always "if you don't like it, fix it yourself". Because everybody is a developer with copious free time to learn how to fix the problem in their favorite product. It's not like cloning and building Chromium takes hours. Or like you would lose anything by using Chromium instead of Chrome.
But that's the point. The response always works because it's proportional to the problem. For problems that are legitimately small and you could fix yourself, or pay someone to do it for an amount of money that a normal person could feasibly pay, it's a valid way to solve the problem.
And for problems bigger than that, it invites the user to consider what they're really asking for and who they're asking for it. Actually fixing nVidia's dumpster fire would be a huge ordeal for anyone other than nVidia. Asking a third party to do it without documentation... let's just say there is a reason nouveau is in the state that it's in, and it's not a general lack of interest in fixing it.
So in that case "go fix it yourself" means "if you think it's so easy then let's see you do it."
It takes copious free time to learn how to run chromium with an --ignore-gpu-blacklist argument? What kind of strawman are you trying here?
Look. The open source NVIDIA driver is terrible, and Google doesn't want it messing up the experience of the people using its product. Who are you to demand that Google fix someone else's terrible driver (which is terrible through no fault of Google's -- NVIDIA would prefer it not exist at all)?
If you really cared about this at all, you'd be upset with NVIDIA. But you're not. You apparently don't even like open source software, which presumably means you're using the binary drivers and unaffected, right?
The driver is hopeless? Fine.
You don't want to spend money on people that will most probably install an ad blocker? Go ahead.
You don't have the resources? Come on.
It's not as simple as "one of the two most widespread GPU producers in the market".
Chrome team, on the other hand, does not have the resources. Which is to say that this is not the thing they believe is most important to work on at the margin, and given the amount of engineers Google will fund for the project.
If Nvidia wants their cards to work well on an all-free-software stack, they can provide a free software driver. If users care about making an unofficial driver work, they can do the work or fund the work. Chrome is just trying to get web pages on the screen and it doesn't seem like it's worth the boil-the-ocean level of effort of taking responsibility for implementing a reverse-engineered graphics driver when they can just get web pages on the screen using software rendering.
Something doesn't add up to me there, and no one that I saw ever addressed that in more detail.
they are also saying their that driver may work fine on some less common linux configurations, and the chrome team does not have the resources to test those.
you are literally saying they are saying the opposite of what they said, then blaming them for it.
The common distribution was blacklisted not because it was not tested, but because it clearly has issues observed and reported by the users.
If a driver does not work in popular configs, and needs to be blacklisted in those configs, your solution is to still whitelist it in other configs and have the browser likely not work.
yes, "every company" does exactly what google did. you are being purposely dense, trying to catch a "technically correct" chance of not admitting the stupidity of your question. The problem is, you are not even technically correct - just purposely dense.
And the test suite failed on a minor issue where the cause was uncertain, which gets in the way of checking for the bigger definitely-the-driver problem.
I solved the Chrome/Chromium on Linux problem long ago by switching to Firefox. I'll still fire up Chromium for Google sites and a handful of other sites, but for the most part Firefox has been getting it done for me.
It's an Ubuntu/Nvidia problem, not a Google problem. AMD and Intel open source drivers work just fine.
That's still less than a percent of the market I think. Maybe shave off another order of magnitude. So the economic argument is not the one to make. However, it sucks nonetheless.
Honestly, you could fill up the number of people using nouveau with chromium in a stadium more likely. From the small pie of linux users, you drill down to nvidia, and then further down to nouveau. All laptop users, even with nvidia cards, will only use the intel gpu unless they explicitly enable the discrete mode and not install the nvidia drivers. Desktop users obviously only buy nvidia if they want to use the binary driver. What do you think remains of the pie ? I haven't met a single person in real life who uses this stack. I love nouveau. That doesn't change the numbers though.
To save those users from themselves, Google now disabled GPU accelleration for all Ubuntu users.
Seems like a bit silly to me.