@TotallyNotElite - you can edit you post
also to you and @omano - please don’t condescend.
If nonfree is a option that works for everything why would be needed 2 options then? Why call it default, why call it nonfree?
It was genuine observation, didn’t try to ‘condescend’ at all. I read the whole thread at once, and genuinely saw multiple people who obviously didn’t read any message before theirs.
Still the supposition is incorrect.
In the past for example the Catalyst (nonfree) driver existed.
Also … mhwd is not intended to only ever be for graphics cards (wifi, etc)
The current proposal hinges on a few things…
- you are served nvidia-415 if thats your top available driver, and nouveau if none exists, etc.
- mhwd and its listings are always perfect.
- this is preferable, desirable
- there are absolutely no other considerations besides the above
As this is a relatively ‘dumb’ approach … in that its a hammer and just ‘happens’ to work if all of those other things are aligned (it just so happens that there arent many ‘nonfree’ profiles to automatically grab at the moment)… it requires an AI and/or a meticulous database or some other software approach, or is simply not feasible for the longevity of mhwd.
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That was/is not the point - is not if people read, is not if people understand 100% how MHWD works. Users in general will not know, nor bother to learn about how MHWD works. They care how they get best performance on their machines.
For that all needs to start with BOOT. If they get confused, they ask, if later they change their minds with the driver, they ask. Meanwhile there are a lot of problems related to GPU, and not much for the drivers but the outcome. That outcome, as also pointed out by @cscs is
Also, as i pointed out, i use my own nvidia.conf, but many users complain or get confused how that works also, and happens after the install. They encounter freezing or tearing; when they attach secondary monitor all gets scrambled, primary becomes secondary; the login greeter displays on the wrong monitor.
The discussion here is what to be the default.
But then, regardless what the default is, in a way, the important part is to not confuse users even more, and the default to at least provide a consisten behavior, till the users dive more into it and start playing with optimus-manager or optimus-switch or bumblebee. This is just for hibrid laptops.
How about Desktop PC with multiple GPUs?
I encountered a huge number of users posting about driver installation issues and then what is best for them to chose, how the conf to look like etc etc …
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I don’t think it is a great idea to force the selection to be the proprietary - no matter the outcome could be Intel.
The naming though could be changed to Opensource vs. Proprietary.
If the default was changed to Proprietary - then some hardcore OSS people would complain on promoting Nvidia (as Nvidia is the only closed source at the moment)
Also as pointed out by @bogdancovaciu - what about everything in between?
I think the current status is the best alternative since it allows for most systems to be able to boot - which is a requirement to be able to install the system.
The popularity of Arch derivatives is great - but it also attracts a user base which has a hard time understanding how to configure the GPU and the same user base don’t understand that the nonfree come at cost - a learning curve and a required deeper understanding of why Nvidia can be such a pain on Linux.
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Doesn’t Arch/Manjaro have the hardware detection utility?
Then why not switch to default proprietary when nVidia GPU is detected, and to FOSS otherwise?
Some older nvidia cards aren’t very well supported and may need either nouveau drivers or an older kernel to support older drivers. Also there’s nvidia-prime to consider , new users may not understand why there nvidia gpu isn’t working. Just think there’s a lot of things to consider if nvidia drivers are going to be installed as the default
Nobody here is suggesting that we force anything, not sure where you read that.
Yep, who cares. I’m a free software advocate myself, but this is clearly in the best interest of the distro. Just look at the success of PopOS.
Everything in between?
That’s not true. Proprietary NVIDIA drivers provide a much higher success chance compared to nouveau on semi-modern to modern hardware.
In my humble opinion, this is why it should be made as easy as possible.
Ah yes, yet another person who’s asking the same damn thing. AGAIN: THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SELECT NONFREE. You are on my side in this case.
Indeed, there was a case of this on t.me/manjaro today, where a GTX 210 GPU was unable to boot on the nonfree setting (shame on you, nvidia)
There are a lot of things to consider, most of them already being considered automatically. The amount of issues caused by nouveau far outweigh the amount of issues that would be caused by nonfree drivers. Don’t forget: You can always switch to free in the ISO boot screen if you want to/are advised to do so.
desktop-entry-spec: add PrefersNonDefaultGPU entry (!13) · Merge Requests · xdg / xdg-specs · GitLab Add support for "PrefersNonDefaultGPU" desktop key (!1226) · Merge Requests · GNOME / gnome-shell · GitLab and there’s also some talk on KDE’s end that I can’t find.
No need to shout, plus my comment was to the topic in general plus the debate…and yes i know what NONFREE is.
If you agree with my reply just +1 it or thumbsup etc…
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I agree, proprietary and open source would be much less ambiguous terms here.
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That’s just because as he said, and as I pointed three or four messages before yours, multiple people, probably like you, no offense here please, didn’t read the thread before replying, and this has been said at least 5 times, that the default behavior of MHWD does exactly that when selecting nonfree.
No big deal but I personally think for an important topic people should read it whole before replying, to see what have been talked about, maybe even changing opinion.
I think the biggest issue with proprietary nvidia blobs is that they don’t yet support xwayland, leading to crappy gaming performance on wayland. That’s pretty much the only practical reason to choose nouveau (philosophical and political reasons are of course different).
Once that gets sorted, I think defaulting to proprietary drivers for nvidia is a pretty obvious choice.
In general, I think the current free/nonfree is confusing. How about not having no submenu at all? Just have 2 straight boot entries:
- boot with proprietary drivers
- boot with open source drivers
Then there is no default, everyone wins.
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I think that would also be a proper solution, maybe even better actually. Also, when I first installed Manjaro I had to try and search what was the difference when selecting free or nonfree, for real I first though about money lol.
Out of curiosity, are there any Manjaro official ISO using wayland?
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But which one would be selected for the 30 second auto boot 
If you ask me, proprietary, but that is a marginal issue because most users will need to set keymap and timezone anyway. In practice very few people will wait for the timeout.
We could also have no count down at all
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While I like this, I feel like maybe there should be indication for GPUs such as:
- boot with proprietary drivers (Better for NVIDIA GPUs)
- boot with open source drivers (Better for AMD GPUs)
Or something along those lines?
Also, if someone boots with the proprietary drivers… does Calamares actually install proprietary drivers for you during installation?
I don’t believe there is an official ISO for this. Or maybe the GNOME edition uses Wayland? I am not 100% sure.
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Gnome iso has switch to toggle this, but it defaults to xorg. Because users are conservative
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Does mhwd actually even use closed source drivers with AMD?
I guess not, because you’d have to even obtain the proprietary drivers for AMD, you’d have to use AUR.
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Do, I think the explanation of AMD would be unnecessary. Nvidia is the only hardware actually affected by this.