Firefox will support HEVC decoding on Microsoft Windows
Windows users have been asking for HEVC support for years: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332136
7 years ago, this was the answer:
Mozilla currently has no plans to support H.265. Our focus will be on AV1.
The reason we won't support H265 has nothing to do with the difficulty in finding a decoder, or that a decoder source code is released under GPL. Those are trivial matters.
We will not support h265 video while its patent encumbered.
BTW, even today vp9 provides better results than H265.
The conversation changed to, "Firefox could at least do hardware decode support without worrying about patents, right?"
My guess is they're doing this because Chrome added HEVC hardware decoding support last year.
I had some problems with alt tabbing in really old versions of Warcraft 3 (1.27 and older)
Have you tried Gamescope? I experienced similar issues with a lot of older visual novels. Gamescope was the cure-all for windowing issues like this. That said, if WineD3D works better than DXVK for the game, there's not much reason to look into it.
Oh, mobile. That's not a platform I use often. I'll defer to you on that!
All my media is in HEVC and I dont want to have to buy a video card for the server just so I can transcode it to Firefox when everything else can play HEVC out of the box.
As far as I know, Google Chrome did not support HEVC until last year. Safari is still the only browser with a software decoder for HEVC, but I'm pretty sure it was the only one with any form of decoding support for HEVC until 2022. Let me check caniuse!
So, it seems Samsung Internet (a browser I've never heard of, but presumably is the default on Samsung devices) also supported HEVC decoding for a long time, but aside from that, even hardware decoding support in Chrome is super recent: https://bitmovin.com/google-adds-hevc-support-chrome/
I was going to make a snarky comment about VP9 being good enough for Sisvel since they're trying to chase down Google for patent infringement royalties on HEVC, but yeah, transcoding all that media does not sound fun.
But on the other hand, a bug triager for Mozilla opened a new ticket for HEVC support 3 months ago: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1842838
It's a strange ticket. No description at all, and why would they care about bugs for a video codec they don't support? It suggests Mozilla is going to do...something with HEVC sometime in the future. Shrug.
Edit: Did some more digging. See this ticket: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1853448
HEVC playback will be supported via the Media Foundation Transform (MFT) and WMF decoder module will check if there is any avaliable MFT which can be used for HEVC then reports the support information.
HEVC playback can only be support on (1) users have purchased paid HEVC extension on their computer (SW decoding) (2) HEVC hardware decoding is available on users' computer
HEVC playback needs hardware decoding, and it currently only support on Windows. HEVC playback check would be run when the task is in the mda-gpu, which has the ability for hardware decoding. On other platforms, HEVC should not be supported.
Hooray for Windows users, I guess.
Reasonably sure, but willing to be corrected. See this section of the Winetricks code (it's just shellscript):
# Don't install if already installed
if test "${WINETRICKS_FORCE}" != 1 && winetricks_is_installed "$1"; then
echo "$1 already installed, skipping"
return "${TRUE}"
fi
Followed by:
winetricks_is_installed()
{
unset _W_file _W_file_unix
if test "${installed_exe1}"; then
_W_file="${installed_exe1}"
elif test "${installed_file1}"; then
_W_file="${installed_file1}"
else
return "${FALSE}" # not installed
fi
# Test if the verb has been executed before
if ! grep -qw "$1" "${WINEPREFIX}/winetricks.log" 2>/dev/null; then
unset _W_file
return "${FALSE}" # not installed
fi
Winetricks determines whether a verb has been installed by writing and reading to a winetricks.log file found in the root directory of the Wineprefix you're working with. It also tests if the file actually exists too, but let's just focus on winetricks.log for simplicity.
The first time Winetricks installs the dxvk verb, which takes the latest DXVK release at the time you run it, it writes dxvk to the winetricks.log file. When a new version of DXVK is released, and you run WINEPREFIX=~/.local/share/wineprefixes/whatever winetricks dxvk, it will hit winetricks_is_installed and read ~/.local/share/wineprefixes/whatever/winetricks.log to see if DXVK is already is installed. It will see that dxvk is in the log file and give up.
When I was writing the Visual Novels on GNU/Linux guide, I did a lot of experimentation with Winetricks. I installed dxvk in a Wineprefix a few months ago and haven't touched it since then. A new version of DXVK was released three weeks ago. When executing the dxvk verb in that Wineprefix again, I get:
Executing w_do_call dxvk
dxvk already installed, skipping
Years ago, Winetricks would write a new verb definition for every new DXVK release. Presumably when it was much less stable. You can see remnants of that with the 100+ verbs for installing particular DXVK versions. Now it just takes the latest stable release. Yay for the maintainers, because that's a lot less work. As a side effect, Winetricks doesn't have a way of updating it normally.
Why doesn't Winetricks have the ability to update verbs? Well, you're often installing very specific versions of a native DLL to override the builtin Wine component. You don't want that changing on you randomly. The w_get_github_latest_release function, which extracts the latest release, was created purely for and only used for DXVK. DXVK is the only component that really works like this in Winetricks.
There is an easy way of updating DXVK anyway. Just run Winetricks with --force:
WINEPREFIX=~/.local/share/wineprefixes/whatever winetricks --force dxvk
Now, admittedly, I misspoke about Winetricks "not supporting updating DXVK". I learned this option exists just now. So you can force-update it with --force, which bypasses winetricks_is_installed and installs the latest version of DXVK. Guide has been updated accordingly; thank you for making me look into this again!
Profile switching is a big one for me.
You can change profiles by going to about:profiles. I find the way it's implemented in Firefox preferable to other browsers but I can see why others wouldn't.
You can also start up the profile switcher when you launch Firefox when launching it from the command-line with firefox -p.
Is this what you were talking about, or were you referring to something different?
but I would like to at least have the option for H.265 support.
Google Chrome only recently implemented this via hardware decoding. I imagine it's possible for Firefox to do the same thing without infringing on patents, as the browser doesn't implement a decoder this way; rather, they use the decoder implemented by NVIDIA et al.
I can only laugh when I consider Google announced they were dropping H.264 support 12 years ago: https://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html
H.264 support only exists in Firefox by the grace of Cisco. Out of curiosity, why are you interested in H.265 support?
If you want to play visual novels, you should watch out for games encumbered by DRM.
It's possible to play non-Steam games without Lutris, Bottles, or Heroic Games Launcher, though it's a little more annoying. The easiest way to install DXVK in a Wineprefix is using Winetricks. Just run WINEPREFIX=~/.local/share/wineprefixes/name winetricks dxvk.
The problem is Winetricks doesn't support updating DXVK. Lutris makes managing DXVK a lot easier; you can turn it on or off and it will update DXVK and other compatibility components automatically.
Vulkan support is of course required for DXVK to work, but DXVK isn't your only option for Direct3D translation. You can also use Wine's OpenGL translation layer, WineD3D, which requires no setup. The downside is that WineD3D's compatibility and performance is generally not as good as DXVK for the same versions of the Direct3D APIs. However, if your GPU doesn't support Vulkan, then you need to use WineD3D.
On the other hand, if your GPU does support Vulkan, Lutris' documentation provides a good place to start on installing Vulkan support for your distribution: https://github.com/lutris/docs/blob/master/InstallingDrivers.md
I wrote a guide explaining how the various components of Wine work to make games compatible. That might help you understand what exactly you need to do if you're not using a Wine manager. And, if you want to make things easier when working in the terminal, you can try these Quick-Access Shell Functions the Winetricks wiki provides.
A popular spreadsheeting program that was displaced by Microsoft Excel in the '90s.
There's also this infamous quote:
DOS ain't done until Lotus can't run
More information investigating the source of this quote: https://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos_aint_done_t.html
I'm familiar with the history of GNOME, and somewhat with Xamarin and Mono. While I have made that argument in the past, it was pointed out to me that the GNOME name was used to ride off the coattails of the popularity the GNU project had in the '90s, and they ended the association when it stopped being convenient for them.
(A GNOME developer pointed this out to me using this language; I could link you to the interaction, but it was on reddit)
I mean, both RHEL and Debian use Glibc which means the vast majority of the Linux applications running outside the cloud are calling into GNU code.
This also includes the proprietary NVIDIA driver, which only works with glibc.
Unlike GNU, his vision of the Linux desktop was populated by music players, spreadsheets, email / calendar programs, PDF viewers, and video editors.
I think this is a strange characterization of the GNU Project's goals. This is the Initial Announcement for the GNU Project:
To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker, assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including on-line and hardcopy documentation.
and eventually a Lisp-based window system through which several Lisp programs and ordinary Unix programs can share a screen.
Do you know something I don't? I don't think the GNU Project was against multimedia software; they were just focusing on the more fundamental stuff first.
The GNU Project's biggest contributions were when the kernel was in its infancy. The most major contribution is undoubtedly the GPL. Without it, Linux would not be where it is today. I think enough has been said on that subject, but it's what made RHEL billions. It's the philosophy of free software that has made so much of the programs today possible. It's incredibly important.
Obviously, we also have the GNU Project financially backing Debian GNU/Linux in its infancy. And while you say GNU wasn't involved in the GUI layer, that's not true. They worked on the free Harmony toolkit as a matter of high priority, and would have kept working on it if GNOME had not been so successful. Thanks to the success of another GNU project, GIMP, the GTK toolkit was able to be repurposed for general usage.
I don't think it's fair to discard contributions that never panned out like HURD and Harmony, because it shows GNU was actively involved in making the desktop better for everyone, which has really been its mission from the start. Maybe they're not "the backbone" of the desktop, but I think it's fair to say their biggest/most notable contributions have been to the desktop, not the server.
I don't contribute to the GNU Project because frankly, they don't do anything I consider worthwhile at the moment. I don't contribute to the Linux Foundation, either. I contribute to user-facing software I'm interested in, like Lutris, GIMP, and Kdenlive.
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It's a good movie, but I find myself completely confused by the driving part at the end. The people who were in the van manage to catch up to him almost immediately, suggesting that the other guy could have just run across the distance to get to the van in the first place, saving everyone all the drama and hilarity.
I thought Wargames was a pretty good one too (mostly). It's by the same writers.
The NET is...fun...
That's a nice piece of hardware you've got there.
I'm just quoting the Free Software Foundation themselves. I didn't say I agree with them. It's a deceptive use of language that is rather unbecoming of an organization normally so careful with its words.
Edit: For the record, I think the GNU Project's biggest contributions have been to the desktop, not the server world.
They do say that:
Usually combined with the kernel Linux, GNU forms the backbone of the Internet and powers millions of servers, desktops, and embedded computing devices.
As the OSI says in the post linked above:
This is not to say that Elastic, or any company, shouldn’t adopt whatever license is appropriate for its own business needs. That may be a proprietary license, whether closed source or with source available. [...] What a company may not do is claim or imply that software under a license that has not been approved by the Open Source Initiative, much less a license that does not meet the Open Source Definition, is open source software. It’s deception, plain and simple, to claim that the software has all the benefits and promises of open source when it does not.
A lot of companies are trying to redefine what "open source" means. And regrettably, this is probably something that was inevitable with a name as open to interpretation as "open source", but it's unfortunate that the OSI was denied the trademark for the term. If they owned the trademark, nobody would believe projects like ElasticSearch and MongoDB are open source when they do not meet the Open Source Definition (OSD), because those companies wouldn't be able to claim they are.
Open source was never about preventing people from making a profit. That sounds more like the original Linux license, where Linus Torvalds didn't want money to change any hands in the process of conveying the software. I can't imagine how much worse things would be if Linus never transitioned to a license that met the OSD. My belief is that there is nothing wrong with making money so long as the software meets the OSD. I know at least the GNU Project actively encourages people to sell free software.
You've got Firefox and Brave. Edge + Chrome are based on the free software Blink engine, while Webkit is one of the only free software projects Apple develops and maintains. Who doesn't use VLC? Bitwarden is a popular password manager. About 50% of the world uses Android, which is nominally free software with some proprietary components. Blender is the world's most successful free software project. A surprising amount of mainstream artists use Krita. People who download torrents are probably using a free software BitTorrent client like qbittorrent, Deluge, or Transmission, rather than uTorrent. A lot of people use the uBlock Origin extension, which is a free software content blocker.
And hey, everyone who has played DOOM was playing a game released under the GPLv2 in 1999, minus the game data.
File hosting isn't really an issue of free software, because very few people will host their own cloud storage server. It's more about relying on servers to provide a service rather than software, which is a good and bad thing.
This is kind of a neutral point, but a lot of software has become services accessed through a web client (browser). This means anyone on any operating system can access the service so long as they have a browser, which evens the playing field for us SerenityOS and Haiku users :^).
The gaming performance issues you were facing might be related to Vulkan support for the card, if it works better on Windows, as apparently Kepler cards don't have great support for Vulkan: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=273935
I see Vulkan 1.2 is actually the latest version of Vulkan that supported Kepler architecture GPUs like the GT 730, which stopped receiving non-security updates after October 2021: https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5202/~/support-plan-for-kepler-series-geforce-gpus-for-desktop
On Windows, games probably used OpenGL. If you were playing games with Proton, it prefers DXVK because it offers better compatibility and performance than wined3d's OpenGL translation layer. DXVK 2.0 and onwards have used Vulkan 1.3, which requires a GPU newer than yours. I don't know whether Steam (and Proton 8+) falls back to using DXVK 1.10 or falls back to OpenGL/wined3d.
Either way, that means you haven't been getting the latest performance improvement updates in DXVK since late 2022. So force-enabling wined3d's OpenGL translation layer with PROTON_USE_WINED3D might help, if it's not doing that already? I don't know if OpenGL would actually perform better, so this is kind of a long shot...
If you were playing Native GNU/Linux games, it might be different.
I second the openSUSE recommendation. My brief experience with it was really nice.
Edit: Ah, I see you've quit gaming, lol. Well, either way, if you use Wine with DXVK, maybe the above will help.
I keep wanting to buy it because of the amazing sales pitch, except it provides zero value to me. I already use my laptop in bed, lol... and if I'm going outside, I'm not going to be playing games. It doesn't even make sense to pack for going overseas because my laptop works great for that. And it doesn't work very well as a new computer because it's likely far more underpowered than my other computers for video editing and other work I need to do, but is nonetheless a cool feature.
Not that it matters at all. Valve still don't sell it in my country.
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Ah, I see. I only used it once, so it's not something I do often, but it worked perfectly for me as a client to a Windows computer.
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You won’t get anything as useful as RDP or plain old Teamviewer
Is there something I'm missing? Teamviewer is available for Linux and I've done remote support with it: https://www.teamviewer.com/en/download/linux/
I...assume it also works as the machine being remoted into?
All in all, having AV1 support heavily benefits the open source community, as AV1 itself is an open source codec. This means that AV1 has a royalty-free licensing model that makes it suitable for adoption in various open source projects. It was also designed to solve long-standing patent litigation issues that were common in other codecs in the industry.
It was certainly designed that way. However, Sisvel believes that AV1 uses patented technology in the specification. Sisvel announced this one year after the AV1 standard was finalized, and not during the three years the standard was being developed. Of course, patent holders can't be expected to deeply investigate every new technology that's coming out on the market...but this was the largest new technology, formed by a coalition of some of the biggest companies in the world deliberately designed to get away from patent-licensing organisations like MPEG LA, under development for 3 years. Read into Sisvel (and its member companies) motivations as you will.
Nonetheless, Unified Patents is hard at work challenging invalid AV1 patents, among others:
- https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2023/8/25/gevc-patent-in-sisvel-av1-pool-appears-not-essential
- https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2023/7/12/kaist-etri-av1hevc-patent-patent-japanese-opposition-success
- https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2023/7/7/interdigital-av1vp9-patent-japanese-opposition-success
- https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2023/7/7/two-xylene-jp-patents-revoked-in-japan
- https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights/2023/6/15/interdigital-sisvels-av1-pool-us-9675556
Don't know who Unified Patents is?
Unified is a 350+ international membership organization that seeks to improve patent quality and deter unsubstantiated or invalid patent assertions in defined technology sectors (Zones) through its activities. Should Unified determine that its goals can be better served by settling a post-grant challenge (or agreeing to never file any challenges), Unified will consider settling in exchange for a license, though never for money. As with all aspects of its challenges, Unified acts independently when settling, and never provides members with advance notice of negotiations, draft settlement agreements, or actual settlement.
They also do...prior art competitions?
Unified is pleased to announce prior art has been found on three patents owned by Speir Technologies, an Atlantic IP Services subsidiary.
We would also like to thank the dozens of other high-quality submissions that were made on this patent. The ongoing contests are open to anyone, and include tens of thousands of dollars in rewards available for helping the industry to challenge NPE patents of questionable validity by finding and submitting prior art in the contests. Visit PATROLL today to learn more about how to participate.
In other news, more than half of the H.264 patents have expired, and all the essential ones will be expired by 2027.
Seriously though, a stable API is not the GTK/GNOME developers’ agenda here. Nobody wanting a stable API should write software with this toolkit.
This blog post doesn't mention GTK, but I've heard GTK will sometimes implement breaking changes in minor version bumps. I was thinking about writing some software with GTK, and I haven't been deterred so I guess I'll learn the hard way, but has GTK 4 had any of these stability problems yet?
I'm on GNU/Linux myself, and personally, I don't use HEVC at all. I don't even decode video in my browser most of the time. I'm usually using mpv with yt-dlp. Streaming services like YouTube, Facebook and Netflix don't use HEVC to my knowledge (being AOM members and all), but I don't use services that require me to enable DRM in my browser. I don't know of a service that requires HEVC decoding support.
It's possible Mozilla will support HEVC decoding on other operating systems in the future. Windows is just the easiest one to start with. It's worth noting that Chrome's HEVC hardware decoding support does not support Widevine, the DRM Netflix and other streaming services use. So you won't see them adopting HEVC in browsers, at least.
The fact that this bug for macOS is a part of the
hevcmeta-bug indicates that Mozilla also wants to support HEVC decoding on macOS: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1839107Chrome supports HEVC decoding on GNU/Linux, so I don't see any reason why Firefox wouldn't too, eventually.