Comment by pbhjpbhj
1 day ago
It's got to be an edge case for Wayland to be used with a 2GB VRAM card? Targeting recent cards and letting people using older hardware install x-windows, or whatever, seems sensible.
You say (in your blog post) "Linux" didn't work well so you reverted to "Windows", but as is so often the case you buried the distro/version info. You don't seem to have been using Win11 (later you mention Win7 & Win10Pro) ... So it's cutting edge software didn't work on my 2014 system, but older software did. The Linux/Windows aspects aren't particularly relevant AFAICT.
Nvidia refused for many years to properly support Linux, whilst AMD have supported it. So no surprise if a Nvidia card didn't work well/stably but an AMD one did.
> You say (in your blog post) "Linux" didn't work well so you reverted to "Windows", but as is so often the case you buried the distro/version info.
Not sure what you mean. The post directly mentions I'm using Arch and was using the official drivers from NVIDIA (the latest at the time). I also didn't switch back to Windows. Although now the experience is much better with an AMD card. Totally worth the switch.
As for 2 GB on Wayland, I think it affects other cards too, but a low GB card feels it more. If you have 8-16 GB of VRAM you might not ever notice it's a problem since you have enough of a buffer to open up many more things.
> It's got to be an edge case for Wayland to be used with a 2GB VRAM card?
I had thought that one of the biggest "selling" points of Linux is the ability to extend the useful lifetime of older hardware. And if the distros are going to turn away from X11, well.
Yes, it has been a selling point that Linux can revive old hardware. It still is. But when a whole new desktop rendering system is implemented, just hitting the mainstream in the last year or so (for me on [K]Ubuntu) then I think you should expect backwards support of a 12 year old system to be limited. That's kinda my bugbear, they say (paraphrasing) 'linux didn't work' but they're comparing older Windows systems with newer Linux systems. Yes, ultimately the story was positive for Linux, but there's an inherent bias IMO where Linux is put down if it doesn't do everything better than every version of Windows for every piece of hardware. If you're using the very latest hardware, or older hardware, you're going to have to get your hand dirty choosing a distro or configuring an install (or possibly compiling drivers).
Win11 wouldn't work on 2 year old hardware (no compatible TPM was the complaint, but I worked around it with hacks that MS didn't publicise). I should probably have used that as a chance to move that family member to a friendly Linux distro ...