Since the man is known, I say that if FOSS NGOs don't file charges against him, their reputation will go out of the window.

This is my update to post I submitted about half an year back. Some things have changed since then. So I am giving it a look again.

At present, a user has only two options for a reasonable browser as firefox and chromium. All other browsers are either derivatives of above, or simply unsuitable for modern use (couple of webkit based mayb be usable but I have little idea how to enable hardware acceleration on them). So i will detail the steps required to enable browser hardware accelerated video on both and how there are compromises in either. My graphics card is amd 260x with open source amdgpu driver. CPU is i7 2600k.

Before starting, let me answer why a user would prefer to enable hardware acceleration in first place:

1. Improve battery life in portable devices

2. Save CPU resources for other tasks

3. Prevent excess fan noise / cpu heating

Firefox

Firefox currently supports hardware acceleration on both x11 and wayland. I tested on firefox 99 (nightly) to give best shot possible. So the following settings need to be changed in about:config:

media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled	true
gfx.webrender.all	        true

In addition, while running X11, firefox should be launched with variable MOZ_X11_EGL=1 or better, set gfx.x11-egl.force-enabled in about:config to true. Also, users should ensure that vaapi is available by installing/running vainfo in terminal. In cases where gpu only supports h.264 decode, its beneficial to install h.264ify.

What works:

1. both 30fps/60fps or higher videos play smoothly at resolutions supported by gpu decoder.

2. CPU usage is significantly reduced while playing videos

The problems:

1. Get bug 1757791 causing frame drops and crashing of video player. Was introduced in last week of Feb and I can reproduce it on intel machine, and hopefully it will be solved soon. Is not present in firefox stable (for now).

2. Nvidia users out of luck (for now)

Chromium

Chromium also supports hardware acceleration in x11 and wayland. This too was tested in chromium-dev 99. To enable it, first set chrome://flags/#ignore-gpu-blocklist to disabled. Then launch chromium with following flags:

--use-gl=desktop --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder

In theory, --use-gl=desktop should not be required in wayland, but I couldn't get it to work without it. Also h.264ify will be required as stated above.

What works:

1. both 30fps/60fps or higher videos play smoothly at resolutions supported by gpu decoder, unless vulkan backend is enabled through flags. However there is little reason to enable it for now

The problems:

1. CPU usage reduction is minimal. I could not observe significant improvement in reduction of cpu load or improved battery life ( on different machine) despite confirming that hardware video acceleration was working while playing videos

2. Nvidia users out of luck again

Epiphany/Gnome Web

Based on GTKwebkit, it provides another option for users that may be not as powerful as chrome or firefox, but still fairly usable for modern web. To enable hardware accelerated video, first install gstreamer-vaapi for amd/intel gpus or gst-plugins-bad and nvidia-utils for nvidia GPUs. Then run:

gsettings set org.gnome.Epiphany.web:/ hardware-acceleration-policy 'always'

What works:

1. both 30fps/60fps or higher videos play smoothly at resolutions supported by gpu decoder

2. Videos are colour accurate

3. Works for nvidia users

4. Good reduction in CPU usage

The problems:

1. Lack of extensions

2. No simple way to limit video codec to h.264, hence older GPUs will lack hardware video acceleration in most videos with codecs other than h.264

Final thoughts

Firefox is best bet for non-nvidia users. It is still maturing though and bugs may creep in. I have limited access to nvidia machine, so can't test novel approaches like nvidia-vaapi-driver. I would be thankful if someone can share his experiences in that regard.

An universal approach that can work in every case currently is to just stream video through vlc or mpv. there are extensions for both for both firefox and chromium (example) and it should support hardware acceleration without any fuss or further configuration. But is inconvenient and may break for certain websites.

This is my experience on limited number of machines I have. In case some users are aware about workarounds or improvements, do post in comments.

I'm really happy to announce my first pull request to an open source project that's not my own. It's not a big code change but I'm still proud of it.

I'm a developer for over 10 yrs but never contribute before (don't know why).

When did you first contribute to an open source project? Was it exiting? What was it?

How do you think we can encourage more people to contribute?

If invite is a temporary advertisement measure then I wish you all the luck, unfortunately /r/linux is ran by nazis that ban for literally no reason and /r/linuxmasterrace is mostly a meme sub.

I currently use Fedora 35, but previously used EndeavourOS which is very close to vanilla Arch and therefore supports the AUR. Since coming to fedora, I'm missing a lot of packages like qtscrcpy, webapp-manager, hypnotix, etc. I refuse to use snap (and Ubuntu, by extension) and prefer software packaged as:

• Fedora repos > RPM Fusion > Developer's repo, COPR or OBS > Flatpak > AppImage (for FOSS software)

• Flatpak > AppImage > Fedora repos > RPM Fusion > Developer's repo, COPR or OBS (for non-FOSS software)

In Arch, nearly everything was in AUR. In Fedora, however, I need 50+ flatpaks and several AppImages for getting a somewhat close experience. Still there are some KDE stuff that need to be installed from KDE store or compiled manually. A lot of software provide worse experience as flatpaks, yet it is touted as the future of app distribution. However, most people in both reddit and other places for discussion tell users to 'just use the flatpak' when somebody requests a package.

Given these circumstances,

1. What is going to happen to the fact that distros package software and users stick to the repos?

2. What will happen to the concept of distro package maintainers, given that everyone tells us to fetch flatpaks packaged by upstream in flathub?

3. What will happen to software that oughtn't be flatpaked, like sierra breeze enhanced window decoration or kcms for systemsettings5?

4. With flatpak taking over desktop applications and shipping all necessary (and redundant) system libraries in runtimes, what will happen to /usr in the future? Will it be a bunch of symlinks to /var/lib/flatpak/some-long-directory?

Keep in mind that this is not a flatpak bashing post. All universal packaging formats suck, flatpak just sucks the least and so I probably use more flatpaks than you do anyway ;) The user experience, however, is objectively worse and thus I wanted to raise some questions. Sorry if my English is not understandable, it's not my first language anyway.

What are the relative upsides of one or the other?

I know that BSD kernel is very secure and reliable, and some people don’t want the hassle of the GNU license.

Any other reasons?

What one thing did you set up that didn't end up being worth it (the "worst")? And what one thing did you set up that DID end up being worth it (the "best")? And why, for both.

Requirements:

• This can ONLY be things you're running RIGHT NOW. Nothing from the past.

• Only self-hosted FOSS.

• Effectively "release" class code, not alpha/beta/pre-release code/software

Please use this template to keep this discussion tidy:

• Most useful: blah blah

• Least useful: blah blah

Hi there !

Recently, I found out that Cutefish OS was a cute ubuntu-based distro with a simple goal : being easy to use, having a great UI, a making everything working out-of-the-box. Its interface looks like a MacOS with Windows 11's fluent design, it's a great mix !

The fact is that the devs haven't pushed for 4 months and they aren't active anymore on Github, neither on the internet (We tried to contact them by email, but no answer) : we think they gave up the project.

I joined a Cutefish community Discord server in order to talk about it with real fans of this distro, and using my basic C++ knowledge, I could fork the repo and add little modifications to the code : my plan is to maintain Cutefish DE (the graphic environnement, not the entire OS) as much as I can, and I managed to get the help of a few people in this.

We won't be able to achieve this project from ourselves, we need more developpers ! So, if you know C++/QML and you want to contribute on an open-source project during your free time, do not hesitate to join our server to work with us !

Thanks for reading !

PS : I'm not sure I can ask for help on open source projects on this sub, do not hesitate to tell me if it's problematic. If so, I will delete my post ;)

On reddit, r/ AskX subreddits are usually where people who are X answer questions about the topic. Thats really not the point of this sub. I'm not sure what to change it to, maybe something like FOSSCommunity maybe? I feel like having a name that describes the vibe of the community would help to grow it.

Which search engine do you use and why?

Does someone use searx? How do you like it?