nixos/xserver: use modern video drivers #100402

TredwellGit · 2020-10-13T10:45:09Z

Motivation for this change

cirrus is obsolete: https://www.vintage3d.org/cirrus.php
nv is obsolete: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_kills_nv&num=1
vesa is obsolete: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzc3Nw
ati and ati_unfree are superseded by amdgpu and amdgpu-pro: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ATI_FAQ#Is_my_AMD.2FATI_board_supported.3F
nouveau and fbdev added for better fallback support.

Things done

Ensured that relevant documentation is up to date
Fits CONTRIBUTING.md.

TredwellGit · 2020-10-13T11:05:31Z

Also can someone merge #98974?

buckley310 · 2020-10-14T05:17:15Z

Working here.

I applied this change, removed xserver.videoDrivers from my config, and rebooted. Amdgpu driver was loaded.
I'm using an AMD 5700XT.

Colecf · 2020-10-18T01:45:29Z

Please don't remove vesa from the defaults. I have an nvidia RTX 3080, and the nix-packaged version of the nvidia driver is currently version 440.100, which doesn't support my card. Vesa is the only video driver that works for me.

Of course, it doesn't support the full display resolution, but its much better to at least get into a functioning version of the desktop as opposed to being locked out and forced to roll back to an earlier nixos generation.

TredwellGit · 2020-10-18T04:36:43Z

I would prefer if someone just merged and backported #98191.

Atemu · 2020-11-18T18:16:34Z

nixos/modules/services/x11/xserver.nix

@@ -248,11 +248,10 @@ in

      videoDrivers = mkOption {
        type = types.listOf types.str;
-        # !!! We'd like "nv" here, but it segfaults the X server.
-        default = [ "radeon" "cirrus" "vesa" "modesetting" ];


What's the reason for removing cirrus and vesa here?

Putting them as a lower priority than modesetting would be appropriate I think.

Did you read the articles? Both cirrus and vesa are obsolete.

Any reason we don't add nouveau here 🤔 ?

BTW, having vesa as the last option seems interesting at least. In case everything else fails at least the user would have a "working" X11 (and in the linked article provided from Phoronix this is exactly the use case they cite as valid, as a fallback driver).

Nouveau can't reclock modern GPUs and lacks Vulkan support. See pages 2 and 3 of this article. I don't see why anyone would purchase an NVIDIA GPU and want to use anything but the nvidia video drivers. If you cared about using libre software you would not have purchased NVIDIA in the first place.

Do you still want me to add it?

I still see value (because in the worst case the user will have no video, but in the slightly better case the user will have video but no accel), but:

We now refuse to run on machines with UEFI firmware (on Linux only, patches welcome for other OSes) since it won't work in the general case and you probably have a kernel framebuffer driver running already.
All users are recommended to upgrade, ideally to a better video card and/or dri

So maybe we should add fbdev as fallback instead? I also found this article about Fedora changing the default: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-VESA-FBDEV-Planning

But I don't know if they're setting fbdev or using something else.

Can you test to make sure that fbdev does not supersede modesetting on Intel?

#108442 #108443

So I set:

{ xserver.videoDrivers = [ "amdgpu" "nouveau" "modesetting" "fbdev" ]; }

Did a rebuild, sudo systemctl restart display-manager.service and it seems to work fine:

~ ❯ cat /var/log/X.0.log | grep fbdev [ 49210.177] (**) |-->Screen "Screen-fbdev[0]" (3) [ 49210.177] (**) | |-->Device "Device-fbdev[0]" [ 49210.177] (==) No monitor specified for screen "Screen-fbdev[0]". [ 49210.177] (**) ModulePath set to "/nix/store/d4ggz00ranwmx2isjjx5zmdv0gpnyl7s-xf86-input-libinput-0.28.2/lib/xorg/modules/input,/nix/store/qhgh8v03j4q2hj34ri42jdd1bl2cwll6-xf86-video-amdgpu-19.0.1/lib/xorg/modules/drivers,/nix/store/j1kpqqfqlhywhh0v41d7l6aq4a9cj5b3-xf86-video-nouveau-1.0.15/lib/xorg/modules/drivers,/nix/store/30a13n1yhqpx3fk18dxj7926rm9by65n-xf86-video-fbdev-0.5.0/lib/xorg/modules/drivers,/nix/store/9hzf53n2sd5y4d5ffbkwa8h4axg47b11-xorg-server-1.20.10/lib/xorg/modules,/nix/store/9hzf53n2sd5y4d5ffbkwa8h4axg47b11-xorg-server-1.20.10/lib/xorg/modules/drivers,/nix/store/9hzf53n2sd5y4d5ffbkwa8h4axg47b11-xorg-server-1.20.10/lib/xorg/modules/extensions,/nix/store/fhwz85bwfrv12xqkyjd8jbc3av1imccg-xf86-input-evdev-2.10.6/lib/xorg/modules/input" [ 49210.185] (II) LoadModule: "fbdev" [ 49210.185] (II) Loading /nix/store/30a13n1yhqpx3fk18dxj7926rm9by65n-xf86-video-fbdev-0.5.0/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fbdev_drv.so [ 49210.185] (II) Module fbdev: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 49210.185] (II) FBDEV: driver for framebuffer: fbdev [ 49210.197] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev [ 49210.197] (II) Loading sub module "fbdevhw" [ 49210.197] (II) LoadModule: "fbdevhw" [ 49210.197] (II) Loading /nix/store/9hzf53n2sd5y4d5ffbkwa8h4axg47b11-xorg-server-1.20.10/lib/xorg/modules/libfbdevhw.so [ 49210.197] (II) Module fbdevhw: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 49210.310] (II) UnloadModule: "fbdev" [ 49210.310] (II) Unloading fbdev [ 49210.310] (II) UnloadSubModule: "fbdevhw" [ 49210.310] (II) Unloading fbdevhw ~ ❯ cat /var/log/X.0.log | grep modesetting [ 49210.177] (**) |-->Screen "Screen-modesetting[0]" (2) [ 49210.177] (**) | |-->Device "Device-modesetting[0]" [ 49210.177] (==) No monitor specified for screen "Screen-modesetting[0]". [ 49210.185] (II) LoadModule: "modesetting" [ 49210.185] (II) Loading /nix/store/9hzf53n2sd5y4d5ffbkwa8h4axg47b11-xorg-server-1.20.10/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/modesetting_drv.so [ 49210.185] (II) Module modesetting: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 49210.185] (II) modesetting: Driver for Modesetting Kernel Drivers: kms "Screen-modesetting[0]" for depth/fbbpp 24/32

So yeah, it works. Just to make sure I also did:

{ xserver.videoDrivers = [ "fbdev" "modesetting" ]; }

In this case, the fbdev was selected as the default driver. BTW, it was nice because I also guarantee that fbdev works as a good fallback: I had full resolution desktop (but my composition didn't work, but I think this was expected).

P.S.: I tested this in release-20.09, but this shouldn't make any difference since both release-20.09 and nixos-unstable are using X.org 1.20.2.

This is good because using vesa prevents fixing #43984 according to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Rootless. The order being respected is nice since it means old AMD GPUs can be supported by default as well.

nixos/modules/services/x11/xserver.nix

TredwellGit · 2020-12-30T20:32:41Z

What needs to be done to get this merged?

ajs124 · 2020-12-31T01:38:06Z

This should probably have a changelog entry, besides that, it seems like a sensible change to me.

TredwellGit · 2020-12-31T02:41:36Z

You mean release notes entry, right?

ajs124 · 2020-12-31T17:14:55Z

Yes, sorry.

TredwellGit · 2021-01-04T17:40:23Z

I will write a release notes entry later today.

cirrus is obsolete: https://www.vintage3d.org/cirrus.php nv is obsolete: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_kills_nv&num=1 vesa is obsolete: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzc3Nw ati and ati_unfree are superseded by amdgpu and amdgpu-pro: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/ATI_FAQ#Is_my_AMD.2FATI_board_supported.3F nouveau and fbdev added for better fallback support.

thiagokokada · 2021-01-05T13:02:23Z

nixos/doc/manual/configuration/x-windows.xml

-  <para>
-   AMD provides a proprietary driver for its graphics cards that has better 3D
-   performance than the X.org drivers. It is not enabled by default because
-   it’s not free software. You can enable it as follows:
-<programlisting>
-<xref linkend="opt-services.xserver.videoDrivers"/> = [ "ati_unfree" ];
-</programlisting>
-   You will need to reboot after enabling this driver to prevent a clash with
-   other kernel modules.
-  </para>
-  <note>
-  <para>
-   For recent AMD GPUs you most likely want to keep either the defaults
-   or <literal>"amdgpu"</literal> (both free).


Won't we want to document amdgpu-pro here 🤔 ?

thiagokokada · 2021-01-05T13:06:26Z

nixos/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-2103.xml

+   <listitem>
+     <para>
+       <xref linkend="opt-services.xserver.videoDrivers" /> no longer uses the <literal>cirrus</literal> and <literal>vesa</literal> device dependent X drivers by default.
+     </para>
+   </listitem>


I would make this slightly more complete:

opt-services.xserver.videoDriver no longer sets deprecated cirrus and vesa drivers, but now enables both amdgpu and nouveau drivers by default.

This way, for people that used to put amdgpu or nouveau in their configuration, they can remove it if they want.

thiagokokada · 2021-01-12T17:05:40Z

@TredwellGit Are you still interested in merging this PR? Needs rebasing and fixing the merge conflict.

TredwellGit · 2021-01-12T17:07:46Z

Yes, just have been busy.

xaverdh · 2021-02-01T11:29:09Z

I rebased it: #111551

TredwellGit · 2021-02-01T13:07:45Z

It is not rebasing it that is the problem. It is being required to write documentation for a proprietary graphics driver that not even the maintainers of that driver want to write.

xaverdh · 2021-02-01T13:22:31Z

It is not rebasing it that is the problem. It is being required to write documentation for a proprietary graphics driver that not even the maintainers of that driver want to write.

I must have missed something, documentation on what needs to be written? Do you refer to amdgpu-pro, nvidia or something else?

TredwellGit · 2021-02-01T13:33:28Z

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/100402/files/541566b878d50f3669a03f1dcaefe494615e3a3c#diff-d8bd1210dab67b94b4639b9835d4077e1e28ef945212cfa0f20cd5993bfd03b1

thiagokokada · 2021-02-01T13:45:06Z

It is not rebasing it that is the problem. It is being required to write documentation for a proprietary graphics driver that not even the maintainers of that driver want to write.

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/100402/files/541566b878d50f3669a03f1dcaefe494615e3a3c#diff-d8bd1210dab67b94b4639b9835d4077e1e28ef945212cfa0f20cd5993bfd03b1

Are you saying that about my comments? I am not requiring you do to anything, I don't even have approval/veto powers here (no commit access). That was just a suggestion.

BTW, it is not like I asked you to do document something very obscure either, I just asked for add something similar that already existed for ati_unfree for amdpro.

TredwellGit · 2021-02-01T13:54:37Z

I am going to close in favor of #111551. Someone who wants to document amdgpu-pro can do so in a different pull request.

ofborg bot added 6.topic: nixos 8.has: documentation 8.has: module (update) 10.rebuild-darwin: 0 10.rebuild-linux: 1-10 10.rebuild-linux: 1 labels Oct 13, 2020

Atemu reviewed Nov 18, 2020

View reviewed changes

TredwellGit force-pushed the nixos/xserver branch from 0abfb1d to 541566b Compare January 5, 2021 06:57

ofborg bot added the 8.has: changelog label Jan 5, 2021

thiagokokada reviewed Jan 5, 2021

View reviewed changes

SuperSandro2000 added the 2.status: merge conflict label Jan 18, 2021

xaverdh mentioned this pull request Feb 1, 2021

nixos/xserver: use modern video drivers #111551

Merged

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TredwellGit closed this Feb 1, 2021

TredwellGit deleted the nixos/xserver branch February 17, 2021 16:38

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nixos/xserver: use modern video drivers #100402

nixos/xserver: use modern video drivers #100402

TredwellGit commented Oct 13, 2020 •

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nixos/xserver: use modern video drivers #100402

nixos/xserver: use modern video drivers #100402

Conversation

TredwellGit commented Oct 13, 2020 • edited

Motivation for this change

Things done

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