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Matrox Releases XFree86 4.0.1 Driver
As the title says - Matrox has released a beta driver for their G200/G400/G450 which includes support for DualHead and QuadHead (up to 4 monitors), Flat Panel and TV out. This driver is a beta. You can get it here and I mirrored it here. You'll need XFree 4.0.1 in order to use this driver. Please follow the readme file carefully! (the readme file from Matrox's FTP needs to be converted dos2unix). Note: you cannot use the 3D hardware acceleration on the 2nd monitor (yet).Matrox & Precision insight - Keep up the good work!
...is that the new driver model for XFree86 v4 is something that works. Hardware manufacturers can now ship one driver, and not worry about which distributions to target (or even Linux vs. BSD issues, because they all use the same driver model). See that? When third parties have a single target, they ship stuff. When faced with fragmentation, they only sometimes ship stuff, and when they do, it's usually only for the most popular marget segment (cf. all the third party software advertised as "For Red Hat Linux"). Way to go, XFree (and Precision Insight, which contributed the module loader).
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The README file in the linked tgz states that the driver is for the Millenium (I and II) and the Mystique....no mention of the G400 or multihead or tv or ........
That said, I am still dying to get my hands on a good graphics card for Linux (it would be nice if it would do BSD and Be but Linux is _my_ OS of choice) and this is starting to sound closer to the mark. Anyone able to offer any real feedback on what this can do? The one thing we are really missing now in terms of X Video Card support is a "Tom's Hardware" site which reviews the cards and drivers so that we can all find out what features we can expect to get out of modern cards under XFree and what sort of performance they offer (primarly of interest vis-a-vis OpenGL frame rates and dvd playback cpu loads, but scalability (1head - 4 heads + tv) and video capture performance (achievable undropped data rates, resolution and frame rates). Anyone able to write useful benchmarks for any of these areas...if so please do and send them to Tom GPL'd (and/or anyone else you think might take this on).
The debate over Nvidia's open V closed drivers is so virulent because we do not have any good performance comparisons, and also because support for features beyond standard 2d and 3d are essentially undocumented/unsupported and therefore it is difficult to determine what features you would get out of your ATI All in Wonder 128 (to take what I feel is a good example) if you use it under linux without just buying one.
If Linux (and really the free OSs as a whole) wants to be any more mainstream for "home" users and not simply as a second OS on a machine designed for Windows, we need to start gathering up the hardware and driver (the two are inexorably intertwined for Free OSs) information so that people buying a PC can quickly see what there machine will/should do under their OS of choice. The vital areas are video and sound, but other items such as Nics and capture cards would be beneficial.
If such a site already exists please post the url:-)
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Hopefully they will allow their source to be publicly modified, as video drivers can make or break a graphics card.
One of the major problems with OS/2 was the video drivers. With good drivers it was rock-solid, but with the matrox drivers I had to use it crashed regularly - I eventually found this was the driver and not OS/2. But because Matrox regarded OS/2 as unimportant they never updated them - this was the main reason I abandoned it. If a Windows user tries Linux and discovers it crashes all the time because of an old driver - they're unlikely to come back.
If Matrox want the unix world to use their cards they'll have to release the sources.
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Because Nvidia is much worse about binary drivers. ATI could be another alternative depending on what your are looking for. Matrox has given back to Linux and they are working on doing more but it would really suck if they did something stupid like releasing things they license from other people. Let them work out the legal details so they can do it right. I'd hate to see any company get shutdown because of legal problems just so you can have source. Ok, I might cry less if I didn't see another Trident or Savage chipset but I still would some. Just be patient with these companies. It takes a lot of work to turn one of these big ships and I believe that Matrox is coming on around. Hopefully Nvidia is making the swing too but it will take time to work out the legal issues. Have faith.
There's a lot of confusion around here...
1. This is not open source; it's an open source wrapper around a proprietary "HAL" library which Matrox distributes in binary-only form. This bad, not only for philosophical reasons, but because it leaves non-x86 users out in the cold.
2. The G400 Dual-Head card does support acceleration on the second head, but the Windows drivers do not, which creates the common misconception that the second head is unaccelerated. Both heads share the same video RAM, and the accelerator can be used to write to either one. I don't know if the Linux drivers support acceleration on the second head.
3. If you're looking for 3D, you can apparently get DRI drivers, or at least information about them, from dri.sourceforge.net. With a stock XF86 4.0.1 (without this driver!), I have DRI working on my G400. It's not terribly fast, but it's cute (accelerated 3D in a window!).
4. These drivers crashed my machine! It seems that no matter what I do, as soon as I launch X with this .o file, my machine locks solid. I have one G400 dualhead and one MII (which I've been using to drive the second head, waiting for dualhead support). Has anyone had the same experience?
Matrox has released fairly complete documentation for the G400, in fact sufficient documentation to make a very decent GLX driver and an accelerated server. I've downloaded and had a look at the PDF file. They've told their customers how their cards work. Why are they under any further obligation to give out their code?
I prefer open source software, since it generally results in higher quality. I also believe that companies have an obligation to support their customers; for instance, NeoMagic has been very unhelpful with their specifications, and I think that sucks because their customers are the only reason they're in business. But Matrox has been helpful, and open source drivers have been written for most of their hardware. What's the problem, then, if they want to release their own binary-only driver?
Way to go, Matrox. I own a G400 Max, and I'm very happy with it. Keep up the good work.
-John
They are certantly both hardware accelerated. The W2k driver just sucks. The dual head support on the max is implimented by have a single large frame buffer (drawn by one accel) and outputting it to two differnt ramdacs (who are windowed to only look at their part).
Please look at the CVS tree of the DRI project, Matrox had worked together with Precision Insight to develop this drivers and the source is there. This particular release seems to be mising one bit (the HAL), but it looks like that will be released, too. Look at the DRI mailing list archives if you want more info about the current status of the DRI.