[kvark]

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.

[zamalek]

> 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).

[6SixTy]

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.

[plagiarist]

I encourage them away from Ubuntu because of the Snaps. If people want an enterprise distro that lags upstreams by a lot they should go with Debian.

[fsloth]

" It is now an enterprise OS"

You really want enterprise standards support for your graphics API.

Bleeding edge ...is not nice in graphics. Especially the more complex the systems get, so do the edge cases.

I mean in general. If you are writing a high end game engine don't listen to me, you know better. But if you are a mid-tier graphics wonk like myself 20 year old concepts are usually quite pareto-optimal for _lots_ of stuff and should be robustly covered by most apis.

If I could give one advice for myself 20 years ago.

For anything practical - focus on the platform native graphics API. Windows - DirectX. Mac - OpenGL (20 years ago! Predates metal!. Today ofc would be metal).

I don't think that advice would be much different today (apart from Metal) IF you don't know what to do and just want to start on doing graphics. For senior peeps who know the field do whatever rights for you of course.

Linux - good luck. Find the API that has best support for your card & driver combo - meaning likely the most stabilized with most users.

[superkuh]

And this is a prime example of development-centric thinking prioritizing developer comfort over the capabilities and usability of the actual software. Rather than targeting stable older feature sets it's always targeting the bleeding edge and then being confused that this doesn't work on machines that aren't their own and then blaming everyone else for their decision. 4 years is not a long time (LTS). 4 years is the minimum that software should be able to live.

[BadBadJellyBean]

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

[adithyassekhar]

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

[yxhuvud]

Ubuntu's perfectly fine if you avoid LTS versions.

[MereInterest]

> There are always weird systems with old drivers (looking at Ubuntu 22 LTS)

While I agree with your general point, RHEL stands out way, way more to me. Ubuntu 22.04 and RHEL 9 were both released in 2022. Where Ubuntu 22.04 has general support until mid-2027 and security support until mid-2032, RHEL 9 has "production" support through mid-2032 and extended support until mid-2034.

Wikipedia sources for ubuntu[0] and RHEL [1]:

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu#Releases

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/fcppf7prx...

[thegrim000]

Yes, this is the problem. They tout this new latest and greatest extension that fixes and simplifies a lot, yet you go look up the extension on vulkan.gpuinfo.org and see ... currently 0.3% of all devices support it. Which means you can't in any way use it. So you wait 5 years, and now maybe 20% of devices support it. Then you wait another 5 years, and maybe 75% of devices support it. And maybe you can get away with limiting your code to running on 75% of devices. Or, you wait another 5 years to get into the 90s.

[exDM69]

> look up the extension on vulkan.gpuinfo.org and see ... currently 0.3% of all devices support it.

Afaik the extension isn't even finalized yet and they are pre-releasing it to gather feedback.

And you can't use gpuinfo for assessing how widely available something is or isn't. The stats contain reports from old drivers too so the numbers you see are no indication of hardware support.

To assess how widely supported something is, you need to look at gpuinfo, sort by date or driver version and cross reference something like steam hardware survey.

[m-schuetz]

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.

[afandian]

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.

[Octoth0rpe]

> 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?

[hyperman1]

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.

[Animats]

NVidia says no new gamer GPUs in 2026, and increasing prices through 2030. They're too focused on enterprise AI machines.

[xyzsparetimexyz]

Isn't that just a case of being a bit hardline and saying 'this program only runs on cards/drivers with support for Vulkan 1.3?'

[phkahler]

Now that Moores law is dead, people will be keeping hardware a lot longer.

[CAP_NET_ADMIN]

So.. like any other Graphics/Compute API when it was actively developed.

[shmerl]

Some just ignore it and require using recent Vulkan (see for example dxvk and etc.). Do that. Ubuntu LTS isn't something you should be using for graphics dependent desktop scenarios anyway. Limiting features based on that is a bad idea.