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Comment by emsal | Hacker News Reader

Key caveat here is that it only works on AMD cards currently.

Aah that’s a shame... but not surprising given Nvidias track record with Linux drivers

My, how the times have changed.

Its been like this for about the past 5 years since AMDGPU was added to the kernel. AMD cards are better for everything except compute where they failed to support the 5700 series.

Compute is pretty bad all around no matter what card, but it is egregious that their flagships aren't even supported by ROCm to begin with.

>AMD cards are better for everything except compute

Ive heard this, but Im not convinced. Don't they have more memory, so while the processing is slower there is less fetching of memory outside of the card?

Of course this would require custom compute kernels for same throughput like matrix multiplication, but still.

it is a driver and software problem with compute, the hardware is fine. things just don't work right

What does that mean? I have an RX5700 card in my Linux computer. I'm not very interested in benchmarks but it works well so far. I mostly play simple games like Dead Cells, Caves of Qud and such.

It means nothing at all for gaming. The 5700/xt is a very good card for gaming on linux.

Where it fails is things that use the compute functions (not vulkan) like blender and many neural network tools. Basically AMDs version of cuda called ROCm. They only support ROCm on a few of their cards while nvidia has cuda on everything on day one.

How I would like to use the OpenGL 4.1 support of fxglr instead of "here OpenGL 3.3 and not complain" from the open source driver.

radeonsi supports OpenGL 4.6 just fine.

Next ROCm is supposed to support RDNA1/2.

It's supposed to be out, and still isn't. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Compute sucks on AMD no matter the OS. CUDA is so far ahead.

Runs on nvidia too but nvidia takes a bigger performance hit

edit: just realised i replied to a comment i didn't intend to..!

RTX2080Ti, ryzen 3800X, 32gb RAM, uninteresting vanilla ubuntu 20.04 install.

i bought the game at midnight not thinking it’d work straight away, and it “just worked”. completely unexpected.

that said:

* frame rate is.. less than ideal (managing 20-40fps). i can hear the GPU isn’t too stressed because there’s basically no coil whine, so i expect this will improve over time. i set it to highest settings, though.

* the character selection step had the player model under-illuminated. not impossible to use, but a lot more challenging. also the colour selectors didn’t look right.

edit: some more infos,

- i'm _not_ using the experimental proton build, rather GloriousEggroll[1]'s custom proton build. it's usually a bit ahead of proton in terms of support, and, most importantly for me, allows raw mouse input for games.

- i have ran on both nvidia driver 450.80.02 and 455.45.01, and i've not really noticed a difference.

[1]: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/releases

Comments in op seem to indicate some are able to run on NV cards.

Nvidia here, not quite there yet.

Well, at least my Windows 10 trial has a few more weeks left.

Does Windows stop running at that point, or does it just nag you with the text on the desktop?

There are some minor restrictions in addition to the nags. I think you can't change your wallpaper and some other silly stuff. You might also be limited in the types of updates you get.

As far as I know you get all updates (and definitely all security ones). The "trial" never expires. If you're okay with the watermark and not being able to customise your desktop, you can use the trial forever.

Is it illegal, or contract-breaking etc., to run the "trial" forever?

In theory, you would most likely be in violation of your license to utilize Microsoft’s intellectual property. In practice, they don’t seem to care much. I suspect most of their Windows-related profits come from enterprises and OEMs.

Do Microsoft even still "care" about Windows these days? I speculate they will eventually make it freemium to hook new users so they grow up and subscribe to their real cash cow - Office.

According to their 2018 reporting, Windows and Xbox is actually making more money than Office. In reality, they have an almost even three way split between Productivity, Azure, and Personal.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/19/heres-how-microsof...

5 years ago they changed their reporting segments and buried Windows in with devices because they knew which way it was heading

Low-margin high-volume sales of Xbox and Surface etc. really distort that segment to the point where it's almost useless to attempt to derive what Windows is worth anymore

This reflects Satyas move and shifts away from Balmers attempts to claw onto Windows as a profit center

They probably care if someone does it large scale, but for individuals it seems fairly clear that they'd prefer people running a current Windows they didn't pay for over them sticking with an outdated version or switching elsewhere.

EULAs are not contracts.

> EULAs are not contracts.

Literally the first sentence on wikipedia:

>An end-user license agreement (EULA, /ˈjuːlə/) is a legal contract entered into between a software developer or vendor and the user of the software

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement

Contracts have negotiated terms. You can't redline an EULA.

Contracts require both parties to agree not negotiation. I think your idea that EULA are not contracts is wishful thinking.

>Contracts have negotiated terms

Is that a mandatory requirement for a contract? There's this, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_form_contract#Contrac...

Yes and no.

For a contract to be binding, there has to be consideration [1] from both parties.

[1]: https://www.australiancontractlaw.com/contractlaw/formation-...

>Consideration is the price that is asked by the promisor in exchange for their promise – the price for a promise.

>In many jurisdictions consideration is not an essential element of a contract – it is sufficient that parties have reached a binding agreement. However, the common law requires that (subject to limited exceptioins), for an agreement to be binding, the promisee (or promisees) must provide consideration (payment of some kind) for the promise they have received.

>As a result, gratuitous promises are generally not enforceable.

Consideration doesn't have to be monetary, in the case of the Windows EULA Microsoft are receiving someone who may or may not go on to buy other Microsoft products, while the end-user is receiving a copy of Windows they can use for the period of the trial.

Ok, but the question is, would a legally-knowledgeable, unbiased person say I’ve done something legally “wrong” if I use Windows without entering a license key?

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