The main problem with Vulkan isn't the programming model or the lack of features. These are tackled by Khronos. The problem is with coverage and update distribution. It's all over the place! If you develop general purpose software (like Zed), you can't assume that even the basic things like dynamic rendering are supported uniformly. There are always weird systems with old drivers (looking at Ubuntu 22 LTS), hardware vendors abandoning and forcefully deprecating the working hardware, and of course driver bugs... So, by the time I'm going to be able to rely on the new shiny descriptor heap/buffer features, I'll have more gray hair and other things on the horizon.

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zamalek an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Ubuntu LTS

This is why I try to encourage new Linux users away from Ubuntu: it's a laggard with, often important, functionality. It is now an enterprise OS (where durability is more important than functionality), it's not really suitable for a power user (like someone who would use Zed).

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6SixTy 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

My understanding with Mesa is that it has very few dependencies and is ABI stable, so freezing Mesa updates is counterproductive. I'm not sure about Snaps, but Flatpak ships as it's own system managing Mesa versions.

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BadBadJellyBean an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You don't have to run LTS. There is a new release every 6 months.

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fulafel 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Especially a 4 year old LTS. But I guess the point was that you will run into some users that do when you ship to the general audience.

You run into the same problem on other platforms too of course (eg Android)

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38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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esseph 33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I've been running Linux for a very long time.

Ubuntu has never ever been the most stable or useful distro. What it did have was apt and more up to date stuff than debian.

I would never willingly choose Ubuntu if allowed other options (Fedora, Debian, maybe CoreOS, etc)

	▲	horsawlarway 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I have a lot of respect for Canonical for driving a distro that was very "noob friendly" in an ecosystem where that's genuinely hard. But I mostly agree with you. Once you get out of that phase, I don't really see much value in Ubuntu. I'd pick pretty much anything else for everything I do these days. Debian/Fedora/Alpine on the server. Arch on the desktop.

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adithyassekhar an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Which one would you recommend for regular users and power users?

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zamalek an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If you want something relatively uninteresting: Fedora or Debian (honestly, stable is fine).

If you want something extremely reliable, more modern, but may require some learning to tweak: Silverblue or Kinoite.

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direwolf20 42 minutes ago | parent [-]

Debian updates even less frequently than Ubuntu and stays with years old versions of packages. If you're looking for fresh, Debian is not it. Maybe Arch?

	▲	horsawlarway 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, the folks in here recommending Debian as a solution to this problem are insane. I love Debian, it's a great distro. It's NOT the distro I'd pick to drive things like my laptop or personal development machine. At least not if you have even a passing interest in: - Using team communication apps (slack/teams/discord) - Using software built for windows (Wine/Proton) - Gaming (of any form) - Wayland support (or any other large project delivering new features relatively quickly) - Hardware support (modern linux kernels) I'd recommend it immediately as a replacement for Ubuntu as a server, but I won't run it for daily drivers. Again - Arch (or it's derivatives) are basically the best you can get in that space.

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horsawlarway an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not joking, Arch. Pick Gnome/KDE/Sway as you please.

Arch is a wonderful daily driver distro for folks who can deal with even a small amount of configuration.

Excellent software availability through AUR, excellent update times (pretty much immediate).

The only downside is there's not a ton of direct commercial software packaged for it by default (ex - most companies they care give a .deb or a .rpm) but that's easily made up for by the rest of AUR.

It's not even particularly hard to install anymore - run `archinstall` https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall make some choices, get a decent distro.

Throw in that steam support is pretty great... and it's generally one of the best distros available right now for general use by even a moderate user.

Also fine as a daily driver for kids/spouses as long as there's someone in the house to run pacman every now and then, or help install new stuff.

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stalfosknight an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Arch or Endeavour

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jauntywundrkind an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Debian/testing, with stable pinned on at low priority.

It slows down for a couple months around release, but generally provides pretty reliable & up to date experience with a very good OS.

Dance dance the red spiral.

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m-schuetz 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Tbh, we should more readily abandon GPU vendors that refuse to go with the times. If we cater to them for too long, they have no reason to adapt.

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afandian an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I had a relatively recent graphics card (5 years old perhaps?). I don't care about 3D or games, or whatever.

So I was sad not to be able to run a text editor (let's be honest, Zed is nice but it's just displaying text). And somehow the non-accelerated version is eating 24 cores. Just for text.

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/23623

I ended up buying a new graphics card in the end.

I just wish everyone could get along somehow.

	▲	ronsor 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The fact that we need advanced GPU acceleration for a text editor is concerning.

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hyperman1 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No. I remember a phone app ( Whatsapp?) doggedly supporting every godforsaken phone, even the nokias with the zillion incompatible Java versions. A developer should go where the customers are.

What does help is an industry accepted benchmark, easily ran by everyone. I remember browser css being all over the place, until that whatsitsname benchmark (with the smiley face) demonstrated which emperors had no clothes. Everyone could surf to the test and check how well their favorite browser did. Scores went up quickly, and today, css is in a lot better shape.

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Octoth0rpe an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> we should more readily abandon GPU vendors

This was so much more practical before the market coalesced to just 3 players. Matrox, it's time for your comeback arc! and maybe a desktop pcie packaging for mali?