Posts by J-M-Z

  • Generic LE13 nightly after 2026-05-17 needs 1GB boot partition

    Quote from chewitt

    At the current time "you get output" .. what bit-depth, colourspace and colour-range I've no idea. It's probably not brilliant as we're forced to use the elFarto VAAPI shim until Kodi gains NVDEC support. There are also quite a few things to unwind/redo in Kodi's EGL rendering path to resolve. The x86 world is oriented towards RGB rather than YUV but this isn't an issue as long as things are being done right, i.e. fixing some of the limited/full range issues in the display chain; which is actively being worked on. So no advantages over Intel/AMD that I can see (both suffer from some of the same RGB issues) and I'd still advise anyone considering new purchases to avoid nVidia cards until more of the plumbing has been straightened out.

    NB: Support for nVidia now means only GPU's that can use the 580.xx driver series; and we've intentionally held off bumping to the latest driver because that orphans eveything before RTX cards. Current stats show nVidia tiny user numbers on the 580.xx driver, though to be fair we have been telling users to avoid nVidia cards for the last decade so there's an element of "built it and they will come" in-play. I'd expect numbers to increase once there is clear direction on support.

    Hi chewitt,

    Replying to your points about the EGL rendering and the 580.xx driver: I am definitely one of those "build it and they will come" users!

    Taking your advice, I didn't buy this card specifically for LE. I am repurposing an RTX 3070 Ti from a previous workstation to build a dual-boot Media PC, connected to a 1080p Sony TV.

    Since I have the exact Ampere hardware you are supporting now, I'd love to offer my rig for testing. Whenever you guys have new test builds to straighten out that EGL plumbing and color mapping, just let me know. I'm happy to test and provide logs!

    Thanks for bringing this to the Generic image!

  • Supported SFP+ Cards

    Hi chewitt,

    I just saw that PR #11533 got merged into master! Thank you so much for the incredibly fast response and for enabling the Mellanox support (and bumping the kernel along with it).

    Just a quick heads-up: I am currently hunting for the specific 1-port version of the ConnectX-3 (MCX311A-XCAT) on the used enterprise market, so it might take a little while before I have it physically in my hands. However, as soon as I manage to grab one and get it installed, I will update to the latest Nightly, test the SFP+ connection, and post the dmesg logs here as promised.

    Thanks again to you and the rest of the team for your amazing work!

  • Supported SFP+ Cards

    Hi chewitt and everyone,

    I am currently planning a high-end HTPC/Media PC build and I'd love to use a 10Gbps SFP+ connection. My main goal is to completely isolate my audio/video gear from electrical noise (galvanic isolation via fiber) while having enough bandwidth for high-bitrate 4K remuxes from my main server.

    I am looking to buy the Mellanox ConnectX-3 10GbE SFP+ (specifically the MCX311A-XCAT or MCX312A-XCBT). Seeing this thread, I wanted to add my voice that there is definitely a growing interest in SFP+ support for x86_64 builds among A/V purists.

    To answer the valid questions you raised earlier regarding the Mellanox ConnectX-3 (mlx4):

    1. Modules needed: CONFIG_NET_VENDOR_MELLANOX=y and CONFIG_MLX4_EN=m (which should also pull CONFIG_MLX4_CORE=m).

    2. Firmware: The ConnectX-3 cards run their firmware directly from the onboard EEPROM. No additional firmware blobs are required in /lib/firmware, so the impact on the LE default image size would be absolutely minimal (just the compiled kernel module itself).

    Before I pull the trigger and buy the card, would you be open to enabling this in the Nightly (master) branch? If you are willing to spin up a test build or just enable it in the next Nightly, I will gladly buy the card right now, test it thoroughly, and provide the dmesg logs here as proof of it working flawlessly.

    Thanks for all your hard work on LE!