I am also quite skeptical on this. Usually when Nvidia talks about open drivers, they just mean their Tegra, nothing else. Hard to believe they would change their minds on the GPU side, if they can't even ship their closed firmwares in time for the open driver to get basic functionality. As far as I remember, not long ago there was a case when they promised to ship it and they ended up months later with it. And these were just some closed source files.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: HadBabitsThe game really is quite charming :) I played several major updates ago and enjoyed my time, but decided to wait until launch to play further, hopefully that's not too far off now ^^

Same here. Though those quantum slimes are quite tempting. :)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

You can update your system with unsupported packages from this untrusted PPA by adding

PPAs usually have this kind of text, it's something to take note of. I use the Mesa stable ppa on Ubuntu.

Support multiple devices

That's not crossfire, but something special to Vulkan. But it can only be used if it is coded into the software you are using.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: wolfyrion

Quoting: tuxintuxedoClosed source drivers have nothing to do with Mesa. Also, Nvidia doesn't care about Mesa at all.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Mesa-EGL-Debug-Patches [External Link]

If you read what that is all about, you will know it's just some tiny patch they need in the newest driver frame for their closed source driver to work. Also, if I remember right, they were the ones proposing the new frame some time ago. It doesn't change the facts and doesn't change anything on their relationship with Mesa and open-source.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Closed source drivers have nothing to do with Mesa. Also, Nvidia doesn't care about Mesa at all.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

There is a stable Mesa ppa for Ubuntu, which you can use. As the others said, you are already using Mesa (though the name of the driver is different).

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Phoronix posted an article about a bigger patch just yesterday. Things seem to be moving faster.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: buenaventuraI'm not sure I understand Vulkan, I presume it brings better performance? So, if I have a game that supports both OpenGL and Vulkan, I would be better of using Vulkan (when this driver is mature)?

It depends on the developers. If they use it the right way, it can achieve better performance. Although in Unity3D or other engines, it should be more like a switch to turn on. In that case, it depends on their own implementation.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestWill Mesa 17 be available for Linux Mint 18.1 as a standard upgrade? (or via a ppa in a worse scenario?)

Mesa 17 should be a big upgrade for Radeon cards.
https://openbenchmarking.org/result/1611123-TA-UBUNTU16165 [External Link]

I would like to know because I will replace Linux Mint with Antergos on the Radeon pc of a friend if Mesa 17 won't be available soon on Linux Mint.

There is a stable Mesa ppa [External Link] for Ubuntu based distributions. Mint itself is quite conservative regarding kernel and Mesa updates, so don't expect them.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: dodrian

Quoting: GuestThanks for the info.
I have an NVDIA GTX870 in my laptop.
And was all excited about Vulcan.
But I guess I will have no benefit from it then?

If I'm understanding this right, there would be no benefit in immediately updating Mesa on your computer, but benefits will 'trickle down' as NVidia will no doubt make use of the newer Mesa when they update their drivers down the road.

Mesa will only benefit Intel and AMD cards. For Nvidia, people basically only use Nvidia's own driver (which is totally unrelated to Mesa), as the other driver (which uses Mesa) has some serious performance issues (cause of Nvidia neglecting it). As long as you have a Nvidia card, you shouldn't care about Mesa.

View this comment - View article - View full comments