Skip Navigation
154 comments
  • This is the best summary I could come up with:


    If you were hoping at some point to see HDMI 2.1+ on Linux with AMD + Mesa, you're out of luck right now as it's simply not going to be happening.

    There's been a bug report on the Mesa GitLab of "4k@120hz unavailable via HDMI 2.1" that's been open for a few years now, with lots of comments and chatter about the issue.

    In an update on the bug report, AMD engineer Alex Deucher commented: "The HDMI Forum has rejected our proposal unfortunately.

    So if you're on Linux, it's going to continue to be best to buy hardware that uses DisplayPort.

    On the NVIDIA side though, it seems like it may not be an issue, as developer Karol Herbst wrote on Mastodon: "Even though AMD might not be able to add support for HDMI 2.1, nouveau certainly will as Nvidia's open source driver also supports HDMI 2.1 so there is no reason to believe that at least some drivers can't support HDMI 2.1

    It's quite backwards, but apparently having all the logic inside firmware (like Nvidia does) will probably help us implementing support for HDMI 2.1"


    The original article contains 244 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 25%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

  • If we had to relay exclusively on non-proprietary protocols, I doubt that GNU/Linux would have gone anywhere beyond the Commodore 64

    • Linux never ran on the Commodore 64 (1984). That was way before Linux was released by Linus Torvalds (1991).

      I'd also like to point out that we do all rely on non-proprietary protocols. Examples you used today: TCP and HTTP.

      If we didn't have free and open source protocols we'd all still be using Prodigy and AOL. "Smart" devices couldn't talk to each other, and the world of software would be 100-10,000x more expensive and we'd probably have about 1/1,000,000th of what we have available today.

      Every little thing we rely on every day from computers to the Internet to cars to planes only works because they're not relying on exclusive, proprietary protocols. Weird shit like HDMI is the exception, not the rule.

      History demonstrates that proprietary protocols and connectors like HDMI only stick around as long as they're convenient, easy, and cheap. As soon as they lose one of those properties a competitor will spring up and eventually it will replace the proprietary nonsense. It's only a matter of time. This news about HDMI being rejected is just another shove, moving the world away from that protocol.

      There actually is a way for proprietary bullshit to persist even when it's the worst: When it's mandated by government.

      • AV1 is a good example of a non-proprietary protocol replacing proprietary protocols (h.264, h.265, ...)

      • DRM is mandatory in any spec you expect content owners to support. We don’t have to like it, but it’s absolutely not going away.

    • Why? Most software wasn't proprietary before companies realized they could make more money at your expense (not all the profit is going into making a better product).

      If given the choice of an uncomfortable dormitory or a comfortable jail, at least the residents can improve the living areas in the former.

154 comments