Google Won't Enable Chrome Video Acceleration Because of Linux GPU Bugs 295
An anonymous reader writes "Citing 'code we consider to be permanently "experimental" or "beta,"' Google Chrome engineers have no plans on enabling video acceleration in the Chrome/Chromium web browser. Code has been written but is permanently disabled by default because 'supporting GPU features on Linux is a nightmare' due to the reported sub-par quality of Linux GPU drivers and many different Linux distributions. Even coming up with a Linux GPU video acceleration white-list has been shot down over fear of the Linux video acceleration code causing stability issues and problems for Chrome developers. What have been your recent experiences with Linux GPU drivers?"
Re:Permenant Beta (Score:5, Interesting)
to me this all sounds like a lame excuse for the lack of quality of their own software. I mean it's true that there are bugs in the kernel and everywhere on X and alike, but all other apps play nice. only chrome is playing the "poor little guy" part. all other software rants and complains when they find a bug, but they still manage to work it out and to help everything get better. Linux is not the only platform having frustrating bugs that can cripple any piece of software. but it's the easy prey for anyone preparing to become a competitor.
this is the typical tactic of making people "dependent" on their software, then complaining that some of the platforms it runs on doesn't have as much quality to be excused for a poor performance so they can make it work worse and then they have another excuse to impose a bit more of their own platform like the one running on chromebooks or something else about to be launched.
It's more like google can't write code.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:If Google dId care about Linux..... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't get this nVidia doesn't work on linux stuff. It's the only video card I've ever gotten to work, well not counting Intel which had until recently abysmal 3D performance. Two ATI cards returned because they just killed the machine but 9 years running Nvidia on linux. I think the problem with Nvidia on Unity is more because of Unity which is still pretty buggy.
Re:Permenant Beta (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, you got most of the issue correct.
I would add, however, that you missed a big one: hardware video acceleration in general quickly gets one into the world of DRM, patents, and other BigCorp-induced headaches that have been causing Linux trouble since day one. This has always been the major impediment to hardware acceleration in the open source drivers at least. Even the Linux binary drivers have had acceleration features stripped from the for DRM reasons.
As a Linux user for close to twenty years, I'd argue that the quality of the GPU drivers has improved remarkably over the past few years. For general desktop compositing and engineering 3D work I find the open-source radeon drivers work fine now; far better than they ever have in the past. Not gaming-quality yet, but improving all the time. This Google Chrome decision sounds more like the typical BigCorp excuse to avoid Linux support than a valid diatribe against the current drivers to me.