Quoting: wolfyrion

Quoting: soulsource

Quoting: NoYzEIs there any good resource about what mesa actually is? I think i am using nvidia libgl, so is a new mesa version affecting me in any way or is it just for the amd folks?

Yep, the FAQ on the Mesa homepage [External Link], although that's slightly dated information. If you are using the nVidia proprietary drivers, Mesa is not relevant for you, as the proprietary nVidia driver ships a complete graphics stack, that basically replaces all open-source components.
For modern Intel hardware, there is basically one Linux driver, the OpenGL (and Vulkan, and OpenCL) component of which is part of Mesa. The same is true for the open source AMD driver (which also has parts in the llvm project, namely the shader compiler). The proprietary AMD driver replaces the OpenGL (and Vulkan, and OpenCL) driver of Mesa, but uses the open source AMDGPU Kernel module.

I think that all graphic card driver developers are affected by each MESA upgrade , NVIDIA , AMD , Intel etc in one way or another.
I will explain... for example NVIDIA Proprietary drivers.

Each upgrade of Mesa affects NVIDIA because it has to do with OpenGL,VULKAN, OPENCL and so on.
I beleive that all the graphic developers contribute to MESA and at the end they will use the open source code and integrate it into their own proprietary drivers.

Well maybe I am wrong though.. if someone can shed some light on this ..

The contributions of nVidia to the open source graphics stack are very limited, especially when it comes to dedicated GPUs. Actually they are even reluctant to publish signed firmware binaries, which are required by the nVidia open source drivers to achieve acceptable performance, in a timely manner (see for instance "Nouveau Developers Remain Frustrated By NVIDIA's Firmware Practices [External Link]" ). Other contributions like libglvnd [External Link] serve mostly the purpose of making the installation of the proprietary drivers easier. The only really noteworthy contribution to Mesa I am aware of was to improve Tegra support [External Link], so also hardly relevant for desktop users.

(must resist urge to post Linus' "nVidia, fuck you" video)

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Quoting: NoYzEIs there any good resource about what mesa actually is? I think i am using nvidia libgl, so is a new mesa version affecting me in any way or is it just for the amd folks?

Yep, the FAQ on the Mesa homepage [External Link], although that's slightly dated information. If you are using the nVidia proprietary drivers, Mesa is not relevant for you, as the proprietary nVidia driver ships a complete graphics stack, that basically replaces all open-source components.
For modern Intel hardware, there is basically one Linux driver, the OpenGL (and Vulkan, and OpenCL) component of which is part of Mesa. The same is true for the open source AMD driver (which also has parts in the llvm project, namely the shader compiler). The proprietary AMD driver replaces the OpenGL (and Vulkan, and OpenCL) driver of Mesa, but uses the open source AMDGPU Kernel module.

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Quoting: STiAT

Quoting: soulsourcewine-gaming-nine should work with all graphics drivers, but in order to enable the Gallium Nine feature, you'll need to run a Gallium3D driver (AMD or nVidia open source drivers).
Also, I'd suggest not to waste time with AMD GPU-Pro drivers, as they in general don't have better performance than the open source drivers (except for a few games, Deus Ex: MD being the only one that comes to my mind) and are (except for *buntu) a pain to install.

So you'd recommend me to go with the radeonsi driver when testing with the RX460? That should be pretty straight forward then ...

Yup. The numbers are slightly outdated, but Phoronix has some comparisons between AMD GPU-Pro and Mesa, showing that for some games the one is faster, for other games the other: AMDGPU-PRO 16.50 vs. Mesa 13.1-dev [External Link]
The main issue I have with AMD GPU-Pro is that it currently brings along a patched kernel, making installation less easy than it should be. If there is a well packaged version of it available for your distribution of choice, you can definitely try it, but if not, it depends on how much time you want to invest.
If you use OpenCL, installing AMD GPU-Pro is still the best choice, as the open source OpenCL support is in a rather bad shape, and getting the proprietary OpenCL libs of AMD working on the open source graphics drivers is, while possible, also quite a bit of work.

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wine-gaming-nine should work with all graphics drivers, but in order to enable the Gallium Nine feature, you'll need to run a Gallium3D driver (AMD or nVidia open source drivers).
Also, I'd suggest not to waste time with AMD GPU-Pro drivers, as they in general don't have better performance than the open source drivers (except for a few games, Deus Ex: MD being the only one that comes to my mind) and are (except for *buntu) a pain to install.

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Quoting: MaelraneI honestly don't know: does amdgpu (mesa! Not proprietary pro one) profit from this?

Just to clarify: AMDGPU is the kernel DRM driver used by GCN 1.2 cards, while radeonsi is the user space OpenGL driver (part of mesa) used by all GCN cards. (For GCN 1.1 and 1.0 the kernel DRM module is called radeon.)

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Ah, right. I didn't think about Steam, as I bought Divinity:OS at GoG.
For Steam you'll need to preserve the original LD_PRELOAD variable, as Steam also sets it (for the Steam Overlay, for instance).
I think the correct launch options should be:
allow_glsl_extension_directive_midshader=true LD_PRELOAD="divos-hack.so:$LD_PRELOAD" %command%
It might be necessary to give the full path to divos-hack.so in case Steam runs the program from a different folder.

Thanks for bringing this up, I'll edit my original post.

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Is this a fix for a driver issue, or a workaround for broken game-code?

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Just to clarify:
You can play Divinity: Original Sin right now with stable Mesa, and you don't need any patches to mesa to get it running.
All you need is to set the environment variable allow_glsl_extension_directive_midshader=true, and you'll need to LD_PRELOAD the preload-shim linked in the upstream bug report (link [External Link]).

Step by step guide:
1) Download the source for the LD_PRELOAD shim [External Link]
2) Compile it using the command given inside the just downloaded patch file. This will give you a divos-hack.so file.
gcc -s -O2 -shared -fPIC -o divos-hack.{so,c} -ldl
3) Copy the just created divos-hack.so file to your Divinity: Original Sin game folder (the subfolder called game, within the install path)
4) now, from said game folder, run Divinity using the following command:
allow_glsl_extension_directive_midshader=true LD_PRELOAD="divos-hack.so" ./runner.sh

Edit:
Thanks, cRaZy-bisCuiT, for bringing this up. The instructions above are for the GoG version of PoE. For Steam multiplayer and overlay support you'll need to preserve Steam's LD_PRELOAD settings when launching the game, meaning that you'll have to run it through Steam. To do this, first create the divos-hack.so file as above, and then go to the preferences of Divinity: OS in your Steam Library (right click on the entry -> Preferences), and open the "Set Launch Options" dialogue. There, put the following:
allow_glsl_extension_directive_midshader=true LD_PRELOAD="divos-hack.so:$LD_PRELOAD" %command%
It might be necessary to give the full path to divos-hack.so for Steam (I haven't tested it, as I bought the game on GoG).

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Happy new year to both, GoL authors and readers! For my guests and me it's red, red wine right now. Cheers!

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That's really a hard question. Luckily my two favorite games of all time are available on Linux, it's just so hard to pick a favorite...
As one of them is still early access, I'll pick the other one, that has been officially released last year:
Kerbal Space Program.

I cannot say how many hours I spent playing it, but it might very well be a 4-digit number...

I could list all other games that I really loved to play on Linux, but the list would be immense.

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