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Comment by okasaki

2 years ago

Surprising, given the Wayland/GNOME sabotage.

(I installed Ubuntu 22.04 on a Dell XPS 17 yesterday. After running apt update && apt upgrade it boots into a black screen)

8 comments

okasaki

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doix  2 years ago

I take it those laptops have an Nvidia card? I wouldn't try to use Wayland with an nvidia card. I hear it works better with AMD cards from other HN users. Personally, I don't think I'll be changing over anytime soon though, as long as X11 still compiles and works, I'll probably keep using it.

  • bogwog  2 years ago

    > Personally, I don't think I'll be changing over anytime soon

    Maybe, maybe not. There are at least two forces at work on this issue:

    1. Nvidia themselves, who are collaborating with the Wayland project to improve compatibility with their driver (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests...)

    2. The new "NVK" open source Nvidia driver, which (unlike Nvidia's proprietary driver) can work perfectly on Wayland without changing Wayland (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/tree/main/src/nou...)

    I'm not sure if (1) will fix every Nvidia/Wayland bug that exists right now, but (2) will definitely be able to reach perfect Wayland compatibility faster without sacrificing performance like the original nouveau driver.

tapoxi  2 years ago

If you're using an Nvidia card, that's the likely culprit.

  • severino  2 years ago

    Shouldn't your distro know that yours is a Nvidia card, and make the necessary to avoid that you boot into a black screen after upgrading your system using the standard procedure?

    • tapoxi  2 years ago

      I don't think you can fault your distro because Nvidia in general is a mess. Here's how it works:

      * Kernel -> Nvidia shim -> nvidia binary driver

      * You upgrade, you get a new kernel, the shim needs to be recompiled (ideally automatic using dkms)

      * This fails for some reason due to missing kernel headers, some weird compilation bug, etc. You end up with a black screen.

      Ideally Nvidia just open sources and upstreams their driver, like AMD and Intel have done. I know they've been making steps, but there's nothing the Linux world can really do to solve this outside of trying to make a good open source driver like nouveau. But nouveau can only be developed using reverse engineering because Nvidia refuses to provide public detailed documentation on their cards.

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