nvidia-vaapi-driver

No browser on Linux supports any other backend for video acceleration except VAAPI, as far as I know. AMD and Intel use VAAPI, while Nvidia uses VDPAU, which is not supported anywhere. This single fact means that with Nvidia graphics cards on Linux, there isn't even such a simple and important feature for users as video decoding acceleration in the browser. Every silly YouTube video will use CPU (not iGPU, but CPU) to decode video, consuming resources and power. Yes, there are translation layers[1] which you have to know about and understand how to install correctly, which partially solve the problem by translating from VAAPI to NVDEC, but this is certainly not for the average user. Hopefully, in the future browsers will add support for the new Vulkan Video standard, but for now, unfortunately, one has to hardcode the browser launch param

I don't think it's your fault and I don't think you're using the wrong browser. > I should be working out the dependency story and compiling some driver from Github myself. no, nvidia _should_ make it easier for people using the 3rd most popular desktop OS to use their hardware. It would make them more competitive against AMD and Intel, which both support hardware video decoding. That's probably not going to happen, so the next best option is to install a package from the package manager [0]. There might be some kind of compilation needed, but in my experience that's rarely an issue (aside from time), especially if it's coming out of the package manager for a popular distribution. > It's just not a real option for maybe 99% of PC users. well, 99% of PC users with Nvidia hardware. It's an important distinction since this problem is speci

Just in case this might be useful: https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver works with Firefox.

> Nvidia lacks hardware video decoding on Linux That's… not true. Fact, they don't support VA-API, but there is support for some other methods like NVDEC. Programs like mpv can use it directly while for something like Firefox you can use a wrapper like nvidia-vaapi-driver[1]. It's not ideal, but that's what you get from buying their stuff. [1] https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver