3DLabs Releases Linux Drivers

wilfie writes "3DLabs have released linux drivers for their for Wildcat III and Wildcat 4 Graphics accelerators. Being closed source they'll taint your kernel, but what the heck. Press release with penguin-friendly quotes available too." DataSquid has a note about ATI's Linux support: "While on the job hunt, I came across this posting at ATI seeking a project team lead. Last on the list of key responsibilities is "Act as a leader to improve the overall quality of Linux support at ATI." Good news? Certainly better news than what was suggested before."

Comments

Remainder of Linux Team

[The Analog Kid]

What happened to it, were they fired, or move to some other department?

Re:Remainder of Linux Team

[kinnell]

What happened to it, were they fired, or move to some other department?

Someone took a rocket launcher to a nerf gun shootout

This taints our image

[sabshire]

Being closed source they'll taint your kernel,

This is the kind of statement that taints the integrity of the ope source community, and is a prime example of why few commercial companies support Linux.

Re:This taints our image

[Dicky]

Taint, in this case, is a technical term. The kernel keeps a flag showing if all the code in it or loaded into it (i.e. modules) is open source, and if a module containing closed source code is loaded, the taint flag is set.

The point, of course, is that when you post on the lkml saying "Wah wah my kernel's dead", they can come back and say "Sorry - we can't fix that because you're running code in your kernel which we don't have access to". Or possibly something less polite :-) But anyway, that's why the taint flag exists.

Re:This taints our image

[Joey Vegetables]

Freedom is what makes Linux special, and "tainting" the kernel by linking in closed-source software directly compromises that freedom, together with security, maintanability, and upgradeability.

Linux works just fine without "commercial companies" (by which I'm sure you mean developers of proprietary closed-source software that denies its users the freedom to use, study, modify, and share it) and will continue to do so.

On the other hand, many successful companies (including IBM, Red Hat, SuSE, Oracle, Sun, and even M$) do manage to make money selling software that is free as in freedom, proving that freedom and commercial success are far from mutually exclusive.

More commercial support would be nice, but only insofar as it is consistent with freedom.

Closed source is the past. Open source is the present, and it is my hope and prayer that FREEDOM will be the future.

Re:This taints our image

[madmarcel]

Bah, tainted code schmode mr troll.

More drivers for linux = more users = good thing.

If you ain't got the users you ain't got the market-share and you ain't going nowhere.
(3DLabs is probably a bad example, but we're talking in general here ;^)

Re:This taints our image

[grub]

This is the kind of statement that taints the integrity of the ope source community

Bang on the money.
I'd like to know how many free OS users have the source code to their BIOS or the microcoding to their CPUs and other low level hardware yet don't squawk about it.

Re:This taints our image

[wirelessbuzzers]

Another point of the taint flag is that you cannot make a binary distribution of a tainted kernel. Under the GPL, if you distribute any modifications of the original kernel, you must include the source, which you can't do if you have closed-source drivers.

Re:This taints our image

[mirko]

Sorry, but if you "need" the driver which doesn't exist in a Free Version, just taint your kernel and accept whatever technical issues with this.

I guess this is becoming ridiculous to read such statements, it's like those Jehova Witnesses who can't take any medication if they're ill because their faith is against such necessity.

The first Freedom that Free Software should bring would be the Freedom to choose.
If you don't have a choice, whether commercial or not, then consider the risk and do with what you have.

In the current situation, the main hazard would be to make a compromise, but if it's the only way to make it work, then...

Re:This taints our image

[ThogScully]

Being closed source they'll taint your kernel, but what the heck.

At least take the whole quote. It does taint the kernel and that is an important point to make because to some it makes a difference. Clearly, the majority probably won't be bothered by this, hence "but what the heck."

-N

Re:This taints our image

[fireman sam]

Here, here. And to those people out there of the form "I want everything open source, death to binary modules...". Say it with your wallet, don't buy the hardware, email 3DLabs and, in a diplomatic manner, inform them that you have decided not to purchase their product because there drivers are not compatible with your ideals.

Personally, I believe that binary drivers are better than no drivers (as long as the company maintains them) but if the company is not prepared to maintain them, the drivers should never be released.

Re:This taints our image

[Joey Vegetables]

If you value freedom, you won't purchase hardware that "needs" unfree drivers, especially when better, cheaper, faster, free alternatives exist.

Re:This taints our image

[turgid]

It's because 't ain't supported :-)

Re:This taints our image

[damiam]

There is no decent consumer graphics card with Free drivers better/faster than the nonfree ones.

Re:This taints our image

[13Echo]

Not that I don't agree in some ways, but do any faster chipsets (with "free" drivers) exist?

I've not found a single, modern, 3D graphics chipset with adequate 3D accelleration available to Linux without using some closed-source binary drivers. I don't really have a problem with closed-source drivers, but an open option (that's fast) would be nice.

Re:This taints our image

[cowbutt]

do any faster chipsets (with "free" drivers) exist?

Check this support matrix for DRI

--

Re:This taints our image

[markhahn]

WTF do you think "our" image *is*? Linux is about having the source; it's absolutely essential that vendors who release binary drivers should be publicly pissed upon. after all, that is precisely what they're doing to "us". releasing a binary driver is a blatant slap in the face of the whole open-source/linux/gnu/bsd movement.

source or docs: vendors have exactly that choice.

Re:This taints our image

[aonifer]

This is the kind of statement that taints the integrity of the ope source community, and is a prime example of why few commercial companies support Linux.

You misunderstand. What they mean is if you have a problem with these drivers, 'tain't the kernel's fault.

Re:This taints our image

[Dicky]

Kernel 2.4.21, file char/lp.c, line 257:

printk(KERN_INFO "lp%d on fire\n", minor);

Re:This taints our image

[sabshire]

I think we should strive more for an image contrary to a bunch of whiners who complain and complain about not having this or that, who argue over desktop choices (when both really are striving to duplicate Windows), who argue over the term free, and who want everything but are not willing to pay for it. How many of you are software developers? How many of those are custom software developers? By this I mean, you don't work on a product, but rather projects, that end up going to one customer. Wanna give them your custom projects? I highly doubt it. If you do, you won't be in business long.

now, I agree that there are cases where free software can be profitable, but it is not for evryone, and by us Linux users moaning and groaning about getting something for nothing, we don't help the situation.

Software companies look at that, and say to themselves, "They are not going to pay the software, let alone support, so we are nto going to support that platform. We can make enough money supporting the mainstream platform, Windows."

An attractive proposal...

[jkrise]

Looking at the plethora of video cards with differing amounts of VRAM, performance specs, drivers for Linux, stability problems with Windows (especially newer OS versions and Service Packs which often make video drivers unstable), I've got a suggestion.

Why not make a commodity video card with about 8MB video RAM (a Mattrox 8MB card out-performed a 32MB S3 hands down), and a stable open-source Linux driver? Will this lead to commoditisation of the video card and drive all other mfrs to imitate?

Just wondering...

Re:An attractive proposal...

[Joey Vegetables]

We have that already. Older ATI chipsets (like Rage 128) have decent support from the DRI project (http://dri.sourceforge.net) and give quite acceptable 2D and hardware-accelerated 3D performance for most uses, at a quite reasonable cost. DRI supports some newer ATI cards as well. However, it can't support chipsets whose makers won't release specs, such as those made by NVidia.

Re:An attractive proposal...

[Anonymous Coward]

The older Matrox cards are already very well understood, documented and supported by Matrox. Open Source drivers for loads of systems abound. Same for the older ATI chipsets.

Re:An attractive proposal...

[Dark Lord Seth]

Why not make a commodity video card with about 8MB video RAM (a Mattrox 8MB card out-performed a 32MB S3 hands down), and a stable open-source Linux driver? Will this lead to commoditisation of the video card and drive all other mfrs to imitate?

Well, the same reason as to why we don't have room-temp (or only requiring passive cooling) 500mhz processors for $25, silent single platter 10gb HDs for $25, 256mb 266mhz DDR RAM for $25. Flashy new stuff sells, innovation of older products doesn't. Hence why Intel and AMD are pushing up specs instead of improving and lowering the cost of older processors. The HD manufacturers thrive on selling larger and larger HDs instead of coole, more silent and cheaper ones. Hence why we have expensive 250Gb IDE blast furnaces instead of silent 5 to 10 Gb drives whic only cost about 25 bucks. Same thing for memory; pushing up the ammount of memory and speed sells while improving older technologies to be cooler, cheaper and more efficient... Doesn't sell.

Which is kind of stupid really; I'd imagine computers with lower specs but increased stability, efficiency (wasting less power on warming the office) and lower costs would be popular in the corporate scene. Then again, I bet those people are rather thick and convinced by marketing that Office '97 and Windows 98 really do require 200gb of disk space (well, almost) and a P4 3ghz with HT. Not to mention that 512mb of DDR400 and that Ati 9800 that makes Excel run smooth. Woo!

Re:An attractive proposal...

[Zathrus]

Why? What's the point? It doesn't have 3D capabilities (at least none worth even mentioning at only 8 MB), and 2D video is old hat nowadays. You can get any number of cards with fully accelerated 2D drivers under Linux. The issue is 3D drivers... and then it's only an issue if you want open source drivers that actually perform to the cards capabilities.

I think you have a complete and total lack of understanding about video cards based on your 8MB vs 32MB comment. You realize that 1600x1200 32-bit 2D video uses only 5.7 MB of memory? There are higher resolutions, but they're rarely used. The only need for more memory is texture buffering and z buffering, which are both purely in the realm of 3D graphics. More memory does not have any impact whatsoever on 2D graphics. In fact, most 3D cards are relatively unconcerned about their 2D speeds because it's all "fast enough" nowadays (and yes, I'm old enough to remember when 2D speed was a key measurement -- and remember getting my first card (a Number9 Imagine128, won at Comdex) that could actually scroll text in a window faster than it could full screen).

Re:An attractive proposal...

[dabadab]

Well, there's the venerable VESA2.0 standard which is implemented in all video cards produced since mid-late '90's, and you can take advantage of this by the vesa XFree86 driver.

The problem is that the VESA standard interface gives you just a framebuffer: there's no 2D or 3D acceleration and that is a real performance hit. (BTW, memory size has nothing to do with speed).

So, what you ask for is already done: you can use any videocard to display a (somewhat slow) X session.

But 2D is a solved problem: if you want that, you don't need an ATI 9700Pro or a GeForceFx, an old Matrox card will do it (the G100, G200 and G400 have very decent drivers, they are fast and the picture quality is superb). People want screaming fast 3D with all the latest features, and while there is a cutthroat race for this among the videocard manufacturers I don't expect really open source drivers.

(Oh, and there's the good old Macrovision stuff for TV outs, which is often cited as a reason why is it, that there are no open source support from the vendors for the TV out)

Re:An attractive proposal...

[Cthefuture]

Which is kind of stupid really; I'd imagine computers with lower specs but increased stability, efficiency (wasting less power on warming the office) and lower costs would be popular in the corporate scene.

Except for the lower cost thing I'd swear you're talking about a Mac.

Personally, I want Doom3 to run at 1000 FPS just like I like my Quake3 (yes, I can tell the difference and it makes a difference in competition).

I want my 3D renderings to be completed instantly and I want my videos encoded in real time.

I don't want to ever give a damn about running out of disk space. I want everything stored in a never ending, version controled, file system (searchable and indexable of course, even with many items and a large version database).

Plus everything else I could do if I just had a computer that was faster and had more disk space.

The current hardware is too slow, the current drives are too small. We don't need slower stuff.

Re:An attractive proposal...

[13Echo]

I use a Rage 128 with the GATOS drivers in my machine at work. And while they are adequate for simple things, they *are not* enough for heavy 3D accelleration.

Even though this Rage 128 works fine at work, it still won't meet the needs of things that I do at home. I play games on my home Linux machine (Yeah, yeah... Don't beat a dead horse, trolls.) and there is no open solution that is suitable for that.

Re:An attractive proposal...

[Llurien]

There actually are such products as 25$ 500 MHz processors and all the other stufff you just described. However, they are not used in the typical PC you buy at Walmart or some such store. Rather, they are used by OEMs, usually in speciality devices, such as controllers for automated processes or robotized assembly lines.
The main reason is that up till recently there was a real need to get faster processors, and graphic cards and so on. However, we are reaching a point where the latest and greatest in CPU and graphic cards will only be of interest to a very limited number of users.
I foresee a not-so-distant future where the PC market as it exists now will mostly dissapear, except for the aforementioned group of high end users. The remainder of the market will probably be filled up with XBox or DVR-like devices, which allow its users to do the most common things, like websurfing, playing games, listening to music. The internals of such a device will probably be largely based on the PC-architecture, but the look and interface of such devices will be different.
It will probably be much more like a VCR than like a PC. The manufacturers of such devices will obviously not use the latest and greatest technology if the device doesn't need it. Think XBox: it's a PC with a high end graphics card, but only a 10GB hard drive, because it needs to have fast graphics, but doesn't need to store that much data.

Re:An attractive proposal...

[zsazsa]

Well, the same reason as to why we don't have room-temp (or only requiring passive cooling) 500mhz processors for $25, silent single platter 10gb HDs for $25, 256mb 266mhz DDR RAM for $25.

600MHz passive-cooled processor for $15
Silent single-platter 20gb HD for $39 (can't hit the magic $25 price point, but it is 20gb)
256mb 266MHz DDR RAM for $22

It CAN be done for the prices you quote; but your point still is valid. The flashy stuff sells and gets the PR.

Re:An attractive proposal...

[kasperd]

I want Doom3 to run at 1000 FPS just like I like my Quake3 (yes, I can tell the difference

Bullshit. When the rendering rate is as high as the screen refresh rate, it is impossible to do any better. Screen refresh rates are rarely higher than 100Hz. The only reason for not getting smooth graphics with 100 frames rendered per second would be the rendering and refresh not properly synced.

Re:An attractive proposal...

[luisdom]

Maybe it is because you can't get so high margins with $25 a part, specially taking into account that you are going to sell more or less the same units... being them $1000 computers or $300 computers.
Or maybe I'm wrong and they are just sticking to the "proven" way of doing things...

Re:An attractive proposal...

[codeguy007]

Whatever, the Gatos Drivers have never been about getting good 3D support and thus hardly worth comparing to DRI drivers. The goal of the Gatos Project is to provide video capture, tv tuner support and DVD playback with ATI Video cards as the AIW and VIVO lines. Occasionly the may merge in some DRI stuff into the CVS tree but they never provide the cutting edge 3d support that current DRI drivers provide.

Also I have played games on a Rage128 under Linux with the DRI driver and they were not as good as performance of my current 9100Pro that has little to do with the drivers and everything to do with the fact that the R200 core Radeons are very much faster than the Rage 128s.

I have used both the ATI drivers and R200 DRI drivers and yes the ATI drivers are faster but the open source drivers are adequate for gaming.

Re:An attractive proposal...

[Josh Booth]

Not only that, but in 15 years we will have to learn to do quantum computing because we just won't be able to go any smaller with traditional semiconductor technology. We may have holographic mass storage by then, so we will have nearly infinite storage, but if it is not fast then we will still have to resort to some sort or RAM, and that will still be some sort of semiconductor.
Fast foreward to the present...
It would be nicer for that digital paper stuff to come out (probably never). Of course, mine has to run GNU/Linux AND I want it to be able to record and rewind live TV and radio, play Oggs, store all my pr0n, and play Half Life 2 at 75 FPS (well, the last one's not that important; I don't play to many games.).

Re:An attractive proposal...

[iabervon]

You'll probably never see $25 hard drives, because there's a substantial cost to the parts of the hard drive that aren't storage. Regardless of the storage capacity of the platters and the precision of the heads, you'll always have a motor spinning the disks really fast and evenly, which costs money. This means that mid-range disks are more cost-effective than either high-end or low-end disks. Prices are really like $20 + $1/GB (until you get to the capacity limits), so you're not going to see less than ~$40 hard drives, where you're paying about as much for storage as you are for overhead.

Similarly, there's a cost to producing DIMMs which is unrelated to the size and speed, in addition to costs for making it large and fast.

On the other hand, low power and small physical size are reasonable features, which is why, if you want a 1 GB hard drive, it'll burn a milliwatt/MB and be 6 cubic centimeters, and cost $300. You can trade off speed and capacity for efficiency and size, but not cost.

Personally, what I'd like to see would be a desktop computer with laptop components. If the power fails, it'll play DVDs for two hours before suspending itself cleanly.

Re:An attractive proposal...

[dylan_-]

The main reason is that up till recently there was a real need to get faster processors, and graphic cards and so on. However, we are reaching a point where the latest and greatest in CPU and graphic cards will only be of interest to a very limited number of users.

As way of reply, I offer you this quote.

(ElCabalero) said on 22nd Feb, 1995

"I am going to make a prediction. Basically everyone has heard about the
net by now. My prediction is that most of those who will want access,
will have it soon, and projections for its continued exponential growth
will be shown to be grossly erroneous."

"Expect the net to peak in the next year."

Regards,
The Gentleman

Why not open source graphics card drivers

[mikeophile]

Are the card companies afraid more of revealing technology to their competitors, or of revealing their benchmarking cheats...er optimizations?

Re:Why not open source graphics card drivers

[onion2k]

Probably because these drivers are just a little pet side project of one small team, they'd be riddled with bad code, hacks, kludges, and possibly even bugs. Once some OSS zealot gets hold of the code it'd not be 'Cool, they've released the source for us to work on and improve!' but 'Jesus, these people have no idea about writing open source software, wah wah wah.'

Linux drivers are a priviledge, not a right.

Re:Why not open source graphics card drivers

[The Analog Kid]

In nVidia's case they licensed code from SGI or some company like that. If they GPL'd the code their would be a lawsuit which I don't think they want. Now you could atleast release the spec for the cards , so the community could create its own drivers. That is proabably why many companies don't get involved in Linux for drivers, because the community already made them.

Re:Why not open source graphics card drivers

[dpilot]

IMHO because it takes *work* to open the source. One nice/bad point of closed-source Windows drivers is that it lets you skimp on documentation and ship just-working code.

"Nice" because every word of that documentation had to be typed and verified, and that calls for a paid employee. "Nice" because the code just has to "work", not be presentably clean.

"Bad" because it means that drivers are coded based on sketchy documentation, informal notes, hallway conversations, and developer memory. Losing a developer may mean having to rediscover proper programming technique for some key feature. "Bad" because "just working" code may not work for all cases, and may be difficult to fix and upgrade for the next chipset.

So in the long run, "Nice" may be cheaper than "Bad" or at the very least not much more expensive. But in the short run, "Nice" is always quite a bit more expensive. Few in the computing industry manage to have a long-range view.

As for the IP arguments, IMHO the only valid ones are contractual. Drivers can be disassembled, and I've been on both ends of silicon delayering and analysis. It's not like you're trying to rebuild a clean-room clone - there are targeted features you go after, not a schematic of the whole design or source of the whole driver.

Re:Why not open source graphics card drivers

[SubtleNuance]

Linux drivers are a priviledge, not a right.

Neither really. When I buy a pc of hardware, I look at the companion drivers as a 'feature' of the hardware (wont work without it really - i cant write my own). When I get 'good' drivers Im happy. When I get 'bad' drivers im not. I consider the driver being GPL it is another +plus+ in order to make me happy, it weighs in my purchasing decision...

so, while it is neither a right nor a privilage, my $ are spent with companies who'll support Lignux in the best way possible -- with GPL drivers... anything less is a comprimise.

Re:Why not open source graphics card drivers

[Elendil]

In nVidia's case they licensed code from SGI or some company like that.

SGI was indeed mentioned on several occasions about this. And they repeatedly denied that they had signed such a restrictive deal with Nvidia...
The only reason why the card makers won't release their specs or open-source drivers is because they're afraid that a concurrent will steal their IP. That's very sad IMHO.

Re:Why not open source graphics card drivers

[Whyzzi]

A better question is:
Why don't we have a hardware developer developing exclusively for open source software? The answer to that question is, IMHO, putting it quite flatly: is $money$. Although at the same token there is no reason why such a hardware developer can't write a Windows driver too.

Re:Why not open source graphics card drivers

[codeguy007]

That is not totally true. ATI's DVD compensation technology was licensed from a 3rd party. The restrictions put on the software where such that the DVD software for my Rage128 use to only come on CDROM. The original IP holder would allow downloading of the software. The company name escapes me at this time but remember distinctly being ticked off that I had to order the DVD Software update CD (it was free).

Re:Why not open source graphics card drivers

[obi]

really?

Don't you know practically all of this SGI 3D stuff, IP, people has been transfered from SGI to nVidia?

If you are still really unsure, well, know that SGI opensourced GLX (old news) but also the "OpenGL sample implementation" on which practically all commercial opengl drivers (more than likely including SGI) are normally based.

see http://oss.sgi.com/projects/

The reason nVidia keeps their drivers closed, is probably not because of some mysterious "IP" that crept its way into their drivers, but I believe it's because it's one of their major advantages over other companies - a lot of work and techniques (memory management, features, hacks) have gone in them. They also would want to use the same codebase for Windows and Apple (obviously).

Now, I personally find this annoying (no nVidia based powerbook for me, because no PPC Linux drivers for instance - when all it would take is a recompile) - but it is their right.

The people who would have something to gain from using opensource drivers, would be the smaller 3D chipset makers: SIS, S3/VIA, PowerVR, even Matrox etc.

They usually have crap 3D drivers for windows - it would be cool to see them have a mesa based implementation working for both Linux/Windows/Apple. By pooling the common code together, and improving it together they'd get a solid base, and they would take advantage when another company improves a part of the foundation.

I mean, how can someone like SIS or Via, or even Matrox compete against the huge driver development labs of ATI/nVidia.

Don't forget, they 're not in the driver writing business. They're in the "selling hardware" business. Clients don't care and don't need to know that their driver was made in an opensource way.

Oh well...

Re:Thanks for nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

If a cop came to your door and demanded to search it (sans warrant), would you say "what the heck"?

Speak for yourself. The cops can search my door as much as they want. I'd assume if they wanted to search something that specific they'd have a very good reason to. For example, there could be a nest of terrorist termites hiding in it. If there were terrorist termites hiding in YOUR door, wouldn't you want the cops to deal with it?

Closed source as usual

[boer]

I has to be closed source, so application specific cheats^H^H^H^H^H features wouldn't be so blatant. I wouldn't expect any graphics card driver from a manufactorer to be Open Source.

question about these cards

[Anonymous Coward]

3Dlabs® Inc., Ltd., a leading innovator in professional visual processing, today announced the immediate availability of Linux drivers for the Wildcat®4 and Wildcat III workstation-class graphics accelerators.

this may be slightly off-topic, but how do these "workstation-class" video cards perform on the tasks average computer users would do... gaming, etc. are they a better card for something like quake 3 than something i might get in a high-end gaming machine, or are they specifically designed to do big number-crunching tasks like rendering?

Re:question about these cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumer-class video cards push fillrate, which are ideal for games. They suck for 3D professional work, though.

Workstation-class video cards, which 3DLabs make, push polygons over fillrate. They suck at Quake 3, but are great for 3D professional work.

Re:question about these cards

[Merlin42]

Workstation cards are optimized for SPEC Viewperf, 'consumer' cards are optimized for Quake3. Case and point.

In particular compare the Radeon 8500 (a reasonable but not really spectactular 'consumer' card) to the Wildcat3:

e.g.

R8500 is ~ 17% faster in q3 but the WCIII is ~39% faster for ProCDRS

Re:question about these cards

[Lumpy]

They suck at Quake 3, but are great for 3D professional work.

Sorry but if I am working with live 3d rendering the damn card had better give me fast-ass quake speeds.

We switched to Geforce 4 ti's here from the crap-quality $2000.00 3d labs cards because the customers when previewing the 3d renderings thought it looked BETTER on the low end geforce card under openGL.

final rendering has NOTHING to do with the video card anyways, and it's only good for preview.

if you are lucky to have apps that will use OpenGL for preview rendering... toss the "workstation" crap out. get a el-cheapo gamers card and make your clients thing you upgraded the hardware.

Re:question about these cards

[TimoT]

We used Intense Wildcat 4000 for VR stuff at the university VR lab. Only workstation cards costing $$$ supported multiple monitors at that time. I'm happy to say that now we "upgraded" from I3D WC4000/WinNT workstation to Linux/nVidia GeForce4 on commodity hw and I can say the latter works much better. It seems that the "workstation" cards do antialiased lines faster but suck at game gfx. Since the gaming cards are moving at a really forward at a really fast pace; I wouldn't waste money on workstation gfx cards unless there's some feature you really must have (like OpenGL stereo buffers).

Re:question about these cards

[GiMP]

If they thought the Nvidia card rendered nicely, perhaps they should look into getting
Quadros.

The nice thing with Quadros and other workstation cards is that they can handle more rendering windows, and they can do 2d clipping. Gaming cards are designed to be 'on top' and don't perform nearly as well when clipped by windows which are overlaying them.

Or so I hear.

Re:question about these cards

[MrMr]

OpenGl Stereo which Nvidia disables on their closed source Linux drivers for all Non-Pro (i.e. low profit margin) products, even when the card supports it...

Re:question about these cards

[TimoT]

Yep. Crippleware is damn annoying. Anyway for the work I do (VR gfx on a HMD) it's possible to implement stereo by making one large window span two monitors and draw the image for the left eye in one half and right eye in the other (using glViewport).

Re:Thanks for nothing

[cenobita]

Exactly...and just as you have the freedom *not* to use a closed-source driver, you also have the freedom to take advantage of it.

Too often, I see people confusing freedom with politics. Though they sometimes collide, they are *not* the same thing.

Personally, I don't give a crap whether or not the drivers are closed-source. If I ever put the cash down on a 3DLabs card, i'd be a lot more interested in being able to use it on my OS of choice. The freedom to do high-end 3D or video work on Linux as opposed to Windows is a lot more interesting to me than the ability to modify the source code of the drivers.

Can you say Reverse Engineer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it is probably illegal or something like
that (DMCA violation or the like I am sure) but
OTOH, when you shell out between $300 and $1500
for a 3dlabs I would think you "own" it enough
to make it work on your system.

Re:Make the darn drivers Open Source!

[CaptnMArk]

In 2 words: I agree.

It may not be acceptable for gfx card manufacturer to release full specs for their hardware immediately after hardware.

But there is no reason to hide specs for hardware older than 6mo or a year.

(Currently running radeon 9000, because of it's open source dri drivers. I'm buying r9500 or higher as soon as there are open drivers for it).

I've nvidia too, but if they don't start releasing some of their hardware specs, I'm not buying their stuff again. I won't even mention the closed drivers for their motherboard here.

Re:Thanks for nothing

[pe1rxq]

The only problem is that 3DLabs isn't supporting Linux... They are supporting "linux-somespecificprocessor-somespecificversion"
Might be better than nothing, but not much...

Jeroen

The heck

[Anonymous Coward]

3DLabs have released linux drivers for their for Wildcat III and Wildcat 4 Graphics accelerators. Being closed source they'll taint your kernel, but what the heck.

The heck is that we can't port them to other systems and platforms

Re:great news!

[dinivin]

Its really good to see that ATI are sorting out the linux debacle withe their drivers, hell even BSD has better support than Linux and that isn't even a graphics intensive system.

I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. ATI releases drivers for all cards newer than (and including) the Radeon 8500 for Linux x86 + XFree86. You will find no such support for the BSDs. In addition, for all Radeon cards older than the 8500, the primary driver development effort for XFree86 occurs under Linux and is then ported to FreeBSD, typically.

Dinivin

Re:Make the darn drivers Open Source!

[dinivin]

I am just taken aback that these drivers are not Open Source. The Open Source developer community would have a lot to contribute to these drivers; they could enhance the performance, add new functionality, and make them more robust.

One word: Bullshit. All R100 and R200 Radeon cards have open source drivers. There are, at most, about a dozen people who work on those drivers and the majority of them are paid to do so. Being open source isn't going to make a flock of people go running to improve the drivers.

Dinivin

Why not open source

[CastrTroy]

I don't see why hardware drivers are not made open source. Considering these companies don't make any money off of the drivers, and instead only make money off the hardware, how do they benefit from keeping the drivers closed source. This only means that there's a smaller number of people who are able to use their hardware. It also means that they are loosing out on improvements that could be made by others, making the hardware more valuable. There is no reason to keep these things closed source

Re:Why not open source

[doktor-hladnjak]

My impression on at least one of the reasons why they do this, is that there is certain proprietary code licensed from other companies in these drivers, which they simply do not have permission to release with an open license. I suppose the primary manufacturer (ie, nvidia, ati, or 3d labs) could work to get the people who do own the proprietary licenses on that code to open it. However, this seems like a lot of work from a video card chip manufacturer's perspective, for (debateably) little gain. I've also heard grumblings (maybe just rumors though) that companies are afraid to release their drivers open source, because then competitors can see how their architecture is set up.

From the my-linux-is-9.1-what-about-yours dept.

[Kickasso]

These are not Linux drivers. These are Red Hat 7.3 drivers. I'll stick with NVidia for now, thankyouverymuch.

Re:From the my-linux-is-9.1-what-about-yours dept.

[Minna Kirai]

The drivers provided by NVidia corporation aren't "Linux drivers" either. They are "x86/IA64/AMD64 Linux drivers". If they were genuine Linux drivers, you could use them on any platform supporting both Linux and AGP cards- such as a Macintosh/powerpc.

(However, the unaccelerated open-source drivers for NVidia cards can work on non-x86 Linux)

Re:great news!

[cide1]

Yeah, but the drivers they release suck. I bought a Radeon 9000 from them, after the website said supported in Linux. The driver has the option for dual screen, however, there is no way in hell I can get it to work. I have found hundreds of Usenet posts where other people can't get it to work. I haven't found a single post of it working. I emailed ATI on two seperate occasions. The first time I received no response. The second time I asked for a known working XF86Config, and I got a canned response saying they would get back to me. They never did. Right know, I have a $130 piece of silicon that doesn't work. The drivers they do provide only work under XFree86 4.1.0 and 4.2.0. To me, ATI has no Linux support.

The question I couldn't find the answer to...

[Sevn]

is will their best card with their driver burn
smoking rings around my nvidia card with nvidia's
drivers the way that nvidia cards with nvidia
drivers burn smoking rings around ATI cards with
ati drivers under linux? I tell you this... If
ID does a 180 and doesn't release a Linux version
of Doom3 at the same time, or a reasonably short
time after the windows version, I'm getting
whatever card is fastest under XP and giving up
on Linux gaming altogether. It's really nice
having a quake3 link in my blackbox menu, but
I'm already sick of having to reboot to play
counterstrike, NOLF2, and other games.

Re:The question I couldn't find the answer to...

[brsmith4]

Why do you reboot to play counterstrike? I play half-life, tfc, and cs on winex without a hitch. You should try it if you have an Nvidia card. It works quite well on my humble laptop.

hmf. kinda poor effort if you ask me.

[ashridah]

Well, since they've only released rpms for specific kernels that are shipped with redhat 7.3, I don't know that you can say they're supporting linux, so much as supporting a very small subset of linux.

Too bad if you need to step outside the box, but then, if you're using high-end workstation graphics software, that's probably something you don't want to do, since the software's probably targeted at the same place. You tend to lose support from vendors quickly, even tho 99% of the time, the differences mean jack, unless the vendor's got crappy software to begin with. (you hearing me oracle?! your installer is a PITA)

Still, redhat 7.3 is miles out of date, and that you're SOL if you need to say... use your own kernel for some reason, or hell, NOT use redhat at all.

I really hate companies that do that. Redhat's always been far more annoying to configure and use than I'm even remotely interested in dealing with, and they keep making it more useless every time they make a release. Hell. I'd happily tell people to use windows than deal with the annoyances that come with trying to use redhat to get stuff done.
[end generic rant]

If course, since I just ragged on the HOLY REDHAT, I'm probably going to be on the receiving end of a massive moderation smackdown. oh well.

ashridah

Re:hmf. kinda poor effort if you ask me.

[Creepy Crawler]

>>>If course, since I just ragged on the HOLY REDHAT, I'm probably going to be on the receiving end of a massive moderation smackdown. oh well.

I wouldnt come to that conclusion. If anybody has ever installed RedHat's new'ish version and then NMAP'ed it, you'll find some interesting things started.

I always find: Telnet, Finger, Chargen, Mail, and other services started on DEFAULT install.

If anything, I think we learned from Windows that default daemons/services automatically started at install/startup is a BAD idea. Systems like Windows, BSD, and Linux for servers should be set for the most secure (eg: no servers) settings.

In that case, Windows AND RedHat both fall in the same category.

Re:hmf. kinda poor effort if you ask me.

[Rinikusu]

Well then, you've got a few choices:
1) Don't buy a Wildcat. Vote with your wallet and pick up a nice nVidia card with "proper" (Open Source notwithstanding) drivers.
2) Buy a Wildcat and put up with Redhat 7.3 (or figure out a way to get them working with something you like)
3) Buy a Wildcat and use Windows.

In any case, shoot 3D Labs an email with a brief discussion about why you didn't purchase their product. Chances are, they don't care because quite a few hardware companies have realized that creating Linux drivers is going to bring out the trolls and it quickly becomes a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario.

company: "We released drivers for our product under Linux!"
Linux Fan Boi: "What? But *I* don't use that distro! It's worthless to me!"
Linux Fan Boi2: "Psssshhh.. The drivers aren't open source! I'll just go back to my Matrox.."
Linux Fan Boi3: "GNU/LINUX, dude."

While conveniently ignoring that SOMEONE somewhere spent money and development time to get something working under some distribution. They don't even get the A for effort. Such a sad sad day.

Re:hmf. kinda poor effort if you ask me.

[brsmith4]

/sbin/chkconfig --del xinetd

It's not that hard.

Re:hmf. kinda poor effort if you ask me.

[caseih]

I wouldnt come to that conclusion. If anybody has ever installed RedHat's new'ish version and then NMAP'ed it, you'll find some interesting things started.

I always find: Telnet, Finger, Chargen, Mail, and other services started on DEFAULT install.

Guess you haven't tried RedHat out in quite a while. The telnet server hasn't ever even been installed by default, let alone turned on since the RedHat 6.2 days. Sendmail is installed and turned on by default, but it is only bound to 127.0.0.1, so you can't even connect to it remotely unless you explicitly turn it on.

In that case, Windows AND RedHat both fall in the same category.

Hardly. RedHat out of the box in workstation install has no services running by default (except ntp), and the default firewall config only allows in ssh anyway. Even in custom or developer install, only ssh is on.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

ati customer care:

[leuk_he]

from ati support
Please note - ATI Customer Care has NO INFORMATION regarding:

* which ATI chips or products are supported in a particular version of Linux or XFree86
* how to configure Linux for a given ATI chip or product
* when or if drivers are being developed to support ATI chips in a given version of Linux or XFree86
* what features these drivers might have


In short: we dont care about this.

In other words: if more people decide the buying on the quality of the linux drivers we would improve it.

Re:Make the darn drivers Open Source!

[Winterblink]

Only when we unleash the power of Open Source can we convince Matrox to decrease the retail price of the Parphelia

Unleash the power of your wallet then, by NOT buying their product. They'll either clue in and open their source and start selling product, or they won't and nobody will buy it and their company may suffer.

Pretty pitiful, really

[HisMother]

This is a sad offering. They only support specific, official RedHat 7.3 kernel patchlevels -- i.e., there's no compilable kernel module like NVIDIA uses. This somewhat limits the audience for these drivers -- certainly makes them useless for me. I'll stick with my Quadro.

Why use "tainted"?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Taint may well be a technical term but the common usage of the word evokes very negative images, and its usage here is clumsy at best.

Tell someone who doesn't know this technical term that their system is tainted and they'll probably panic, imagining that their PC has been hit by a virus, trojan horse or other undesirable event, where the reality couldn't be further from the truth. (We'll leave the debate about the pros and cons of closed source drivers to another discussion.)

There's got to be a better way of describing a kernel that contains closed source software that isn't so dramatic or apocalyptic. How about "ajar"? At least "ajar" is a better, less ambiguous, description - to me it says "not 100 percent open, and not 100 pecent closed", which is what we're talking about.

Re:Why use "tainted"?

[sharkey]

There's got to be a better way of describing a kernel that contains closed source software that isn't so dramatic or apocalyptic.

How about "hainted"? Damn Richers, putting their closed code in our kernels.

Re:Why use "tainted"?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

"imagining that their PC has been hit by a virus, trojan horse or other undesirable event,"

A tainted kernel is. undesirable. And it very well may be trojaned, You can't check.

I'm not saying these big name companies would backdoor their own drivers, but someone could easily[*] hack their server and modify them

[*]Easy as in this has happened with IRCII, BitchX, OpenSSH, and who knows how many others.

Re:Why use "tainted"?

[pivo]

You're using an OS that claims code quality and security as a result of massive code review (lots of eyes looking at the code.) Then you stick this binary-only 'black box' into the kernel, code nobody's seen except a few programmers of unknown ability from a company with most likely only a mediocre interest in Linux support. Yeah, I'd call that tainted code.

Not to mention the pain you'll go through if XFree gets updated but your binary-only driver doesn't. If you don't consider it tainted in the first case, you will when you get hit by the second.

Re:Why use "tainted"?

[Crazy Eight]

"Ajar" makes no sense here except in your very abstract logic. No one unfamilliar with your Slashdot post will draw conclusions about source code availability when they find that their kernel has been "ajared". I don't understand how you can offer this wierd suggestion and call "tainted" "clumsy at best" at the same time.

"Taint" seems quite apt to me. Sure, it isn't positive, but you associate "taint" with "very negative images". Are you really Ned Flanders? This isn't the F-word. It stems from a word meaning "to dye". It evokes corruption only in the sense of adding something foreign to something pure -- like a stain, or pee in a pool. That's hardly "dramatic" or "apocalyptic". I doubt anyone will "panic" over this.

Re:Why use "tainted"?

[WIAKywbfatw]

I apologise for the long answer but I wanted to respond to your comment with accurate facts. Here we go:

"Taint" seems quite apt to me. Sure, it isn't positive, but you associate "taint" with "very negative images". Are you really Ned Flanders? This isn't the F-word. It stems from a word meaning "to dye". It evokes corruption only in the sense of adding something foreign to something pure -- like a stain, or pee in a pool. That's hardly "dramatic" or "apocalyptic". I doubt anyone will "panic" over this.

1. Dictionary.com definition of "tainted":

taint
v. tainted, tainting, taints
v. tr.
To affect with or as if with a disease.
To affect with decay or putrefaction; spoil. See Synonyms at contaminate.
To corrupt morally.
To affect with a tinge of something reprehensible.

v. intr.
To become affected with decay or putrefaction; spoil.

n.
A moral defect considered as a stain or spot. See Synonyms at stain.
An infecting touch, influence, or tinge.

[Partly from obsolete taynt, to color, dye (from Anglo-Norman teint, from past participle of teindre, from Latin tingere), and partly from Middle English tainten, to convict (short for atteinten, from Old French ataint, past participle of ataindre, to attain, touch upon. See attain).]
taintless adj.
taintlessly adv.
taintlessness n.

So, "taint" doesn't mean "dye", unless you're from 11th century England. It does, however, is shown to have a lot of negative meanings.

1. Thesaurus.com definition of "tainted":

Entry: corrupt
Function: adjective
Definition: polluted
Synonyms: adulterated, altered, contaminated, decayed, defiled, distorted, doctored, falsified, foul, infected, noxious, putrescent, putrid, rotten, tainted
Antonyms: clean, pure, purified, sound, unaltered
Concept: dirtiness

Entry: defiled
Function: adjective
Definition: violated
Synonyms: besmirched, common, cooked, corrupted, desecrated, dirty, dishonored, exposed, impure, mucked up, polluted, profaned, ravished, spoilt, tainted, trashed, unclean
Antonyms: cleansed, hallowed, pure, purified, sanctified
Concept: dirtiness

Entry: diseased
Function: adjective
Definition: unhealthy
Synonyms: afflicted, ailing, catching, communicable, contagious, endemic, epidemic, indisposed, infected, infectious, infirm, rotten, sick, sickly, tainted, unsound, unwell, unwholesome
Antonyms: fit, healthy, well
Concept: health (poor)

Entry: faulty
Function: adjective
Definition: not working
Synonyms: adulterated, amiss, awry, bad, below par, blamable, blemished, botched, broken, cracked, damaged, debased, defective, deficient, distorted, erroneous, fallacious, fallible, false, flawed, frail, impaired, imperfect, imprecise, inaccurate, inadequate, incomplete, incorrect, inexact, injured, insufficient, invalid, lame, leaky, lemon, maimed, malformed, malfunctioning, marred, rank, sick, tainted, unfit, unreliable, unretentive, unsound, warped, weak, wrong
Antonyms: flawless, perfect, sound, working
Concept: error

Entry: foul
Function: adjective
Definition: disgusting
Synonyms: abhorrent, abominable, barn, base, contaminated, despicable, detestable, dirty, disgraceful, dishonorable, egregious, fetid, filthy, hateful, heinous, horrid, icky, impure, infamous, iniquitous, loathsome, malodorous, mucky, nasty, nauseating, nefarious, noisome, notorious, offensive, pigpen, polluted, putrid, rank, raunchy, repellent, repulsive, revolting, rotten, scandalous, shameful, squalid, stable, stinking, sullied, tainted, unclean, vicious, vile, wicked, yecchy, yucky
Concept: dirtiness

Entry: impure
Function: adjective
Definition: unclean
Synonyms: admixed, adulterated, alloyed, black, carnal, coarse, common, contaminated, corrupt, debased, defiled, desecrated, diluted, dirty, docto

Re:Why use "tainted"?

[AsparagusChallenge]

...the common usage of the word evokes very negative images...

So what? The technical jargon actually includes killing children (processes), beheading (lists), slavery (master/slave drive), etc. One more can't be so bad.

Re:Why use "tainted"?

[msborg]

Aw, geez... I had a client once who wanted all the dialogs that used the word "Abort" to be changed because the Anti-Choice folks at the company didn't want to have to read that nasty word. Technical usage nearly always differs from everyday usage. When was the last time you saw a floppy that could actually flop?

Re:Why use "tainted"?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Hmmm, perhaps I haven't made myself 100 percent clear on why I think "tainted" is perhaps a poor description for a kernel that isn't fully open source.

As I said in my lengthy (because it of some cut and paste dictionary definitions) reply to another poster, "tainted" is a synonym of "infected".

Now, which of these is worse:

1. A Windows PC that's been infected by a virus.

2. A Linux PC that's been "tainted" by a video card driver from ATi.

Obviously, the first scenario's worse than the second one because in the first one, something's definitely wrong whereas in the second one, there's only the very slim possibility that something might be wrong.

Now let's introduce a third PC to our world:

3. A Linux PC running fully open source code.

Now is this system any more secure than the second one? In theory the answer is yes but in reality the answer is perhaps. Just because this you can the code running on this new machine is openly available for public inspection, it doesn't mean that every single line of code has been thoroughly inspected and verified problem free.

Let's not forget that Linux vulnerabilities are found from time to time, which means that it's highly likely that this latest machine isn't truly problem free. (And let's not rehash old ground - I know and you know that most of these vulnerabilities are found and/or tracked down faster because the source code is readily available, which is a good thing.)

Obviously, ATi has its reasons for not making its drivers open source, no doubt commercial ones. But at the same time, ATi must know that its Linux code must be whiter than white, otherwise its reputation (on that platform at least) will be irrevokably damaged.

If I'm the guy in charge of the Linux drivers for ATi, I'm making damn sure that those drivers aren't released until they've been checked, rechecked and then rechecked again by my own people, then verified as secure by an independent team of coders before I even think of releasing them to the Linux community. Remember, I know that Linux users are like elephants - they never forget - so the last thing I want to do is release code that I'm not 100 percent confident in.

Now I'm not the guy who's in charge of ATi's code (and I don't work for them or any other hardware or software manufacturer) but I have no doubt that the guy who is making these decisions knows just as well as I do how important it is that ATi's Linux code is clean. After all, if he's the guy who responsible for giving a script kiddie root access to hundreds of thousands PCs then he's going to have a hard time ever getting a job in the industry again - that alone is a pretty big incentive to get things right.

Anyhow, let's look at how secure our three PCs really are:

1. Virus infected Windows PC - badly compromised, in need of immediate attention.

2. Linux PC with some closed source drivers - OK but potentially compromised (if we're being paranoid).

3. Linux PC running fully open source code - ideal but potentially compromised (if we're being paranoid).

For all practical purposes, 2 and 3 are just as secure as each other. You can argue until you're blue in the face that the opposite is true but if you're that paranoid about a couple of MB of worth closed source drivers then you've can't ignore the potential threats that might be present in hundreds of MB of open source code.

Grrr. And I've said more than once that I didn't want to talk about open vs closed source code.

Anyhow the my point again is this: "tainted" to most people is the same thing as "infected", so when you turn around to your non-technical CEO or CFO and describe your latest server as "tainted", he's
not going to be worrying about closed source code he's going to be worrying about his business being severely disrupted and/or melting down right then and there.

Now do you see what I'm getting at?

Grammar Police

[goldspider]

"3DLabs have released..."

I hate to burn karma on something so silly, but really folks, you sound uneducated when you fail to observe simple grammar rules.

3DLabs is a single entity, and therefore the sentence should read "3DLabs has released"

That grates on me as much as "boxen" and "virii".

Re:Grammar Police

[SD-VI]

Actually, officer, it is correct to treat corporations as collective entities. The author was perfectly correct when he used the third person plural with 3DLabs.

Re:Grammar Police

[Dan Ost]

In the USA, corporations and organizations are treated as singular.
In Britain and many other parts of the world, they are treated
as plural.

For examples of this, try looking at BBC news items.

Too right

[rjforster]

My problem was DVD playback. I got RTCW etc working with my 9700 and it was nice.
But try a DVD and only the left side of the movie was shown. I couldn't resize or swap to full screen to show the whole picture, it would always only show part of the picture. None of the rest of the desktop showed similar problems so it (hopefully) wasn't thinking there were two monitors plugged in. I never got it fixed and the ATI site hasn't updated the drivers yet either.
Back to the old matrox G400max now. No RTCW but I can watch DVDs.

Re:Too right

[FroMan]

What were you using to watch DVDs? I use the 9000pro with the ATI drivers and don't have a problem with ogle. I am running ogle .85 though, there were issues with .91 though.

I find RTCW-ET has issues though. I turn off OGL Extensions (with the extensions on I get a lot of flickers ?reversed triangles?) and I can usually play for half hour or so, but then it will lock.

Re:Too right

[rjforster]

Ogle, vlc, mplayer, xine. Tried them all. Usually ogle for normal use nowadays. vlc used to be my first choice but the newer versions skip on chapter transitions on my box. Mplayer just complains about my system being too slow[1] and xine doesn't do the css properly on my box (possibly becasue of the other players installed alongside).

[1] Yes I know I shouldn't go for a spiffy video card without upgrading the processor(s) as well. It is just that the card I ordered worked (kinda) and the dual athlon mb was d.o.a.

Re:Make the darn drivers Open Source!

[geekoid]

If a lot of people use that card, you'll get people who will improve the driver.

Re:Thanks for nothing

[mrgaribaldi]

I wouldn't want the cops searching my door I'd want it to be the FBI (Federal Bureau of Insecticide)....

Testing testing one two seven . . .

[patch-rustem]

. . . nope. That's not working right.

a word about Viseo drivers

[geekoid]

We have this issue about 'optimization' or some people like to say 'cheats'. But can't we make a driver that is optimazed for many things?
The driver would see, oh you running game X, will load these parameters now.

Or perhaps a different Video driver modual that loads depending on the application?

I say bravo 3DLabs

[Cthefuture]

Although I'd really like to see a driver that installs on something other than RedHat (how about a plain tar.gz maybe?). It shouldn't be that hard to repackage.

The driver works with kernel 2.4.18, so I don't know why so many people are complaining about only supporting old kernels. It should work with any system with that kernel (it might work with any 2.4 kernel), even newer and other distros.

I assume they recognized that there are tons of 3D movie, animation studios, and medical research labs that are all moving to Linux. 3DLabs provides some of the higher-end workstation-class graphics cards used for 3D work.

Re:I say bravo 3DLabs

[Minna Kirai]

It shouldn't be that hard to repackage.

It is slightly tricky to package, but NVidia has accomplished it well. You need to split the driver into it's binary core, but also ship the functions which call that core as source code, so your installer routine can recompile them to work with whatever Linux it finds on the target system.

One standard complaint about Linux is that it makes no effort to support compatibility with binary kernel drivers from different (older/newer) versions. Thus NVidia had to go through this trickiness.

Too late for ATI. Already lost me.

[bonez_net11]

It's too late for ATI to win me back. I've had so many problems with their products and/or the companys tech/customer support that I'll never switch back. NVidia ALL THE WAY!! The only way I'd use ANYTHING from ATI is because as far as I can tell, they have the best setup for the CableTV input card. I have one of those, but I'm using it with a Dell GeForce2 GTS card. Digital-VCR is pretty cool on the computer. I only wish I had a TiVo or at least a TV-out to use with it. Oh well :) Oh, anyways. As I was saying... I'll never use a ATI GPU ever again.

Tainted is negative

[nuggz]

That's the point.

By using closed code in your kernel you are putting an unknown in it.
This is bad, the kernel developers can't help you, you can't fix it yourself, you're just stuck with broken software.

I think removing the ability to fix a problem is a dramatic change, particularly when that is a major benefit of free software.

Re:Tainted is negative

[SuperDuperMan]

There isn't much of a benefit to open source software if the drivers aren't available. I don't think many people would want to use Linux if they didn't have access to many of these closed source drivers.

Re:[partiallyOT phrase info] Re:This taints our im

[fireman sam]

Thanks for the (OT) correction. it is late here. There are some companies out there that do in fact do this. Sigma Designs drivers for the EM84xx chips have a GPL'd kernel driver and a closed source shared library.

The only issue with this is that even though the kernel driver is open source, it exists purely as a "RING 0 gateway" for the shared library. So if bugs exist, they cannot be fixed by the open source community.

Still no 3D support, even in closed-source driver

[ralphclark]

Develop and test a user space driver for X Windows, 2D rendering and other non-3D related functionality.

Re:Make the darn drivers Open Source!

[ranessin]

You over estimate the average computer user. They just want to turn their computer on and have it work, not write their own drivers.

Take a look at all the open source 3D drivers for Linux today: there are probably about 25 people who regularly contribute(d) to the drivers and, again, most were paid developers.

Dinivin (posting at Ranessin because Slashdot insists I've already moderated this discussion and absolutely won't let me post as Dinivin).

ATI Linux Drivers link...

[Karem Lore]

Although many of you guys say that ATI don't support linux, they do have information and links to drivers for 2D and 3D for up to and including 9700 family..."Where?" I hear you should.

Well here of course.

Re:ATI Linux Drivers link...

[SuDZ]

Yeah that would be nice if the 3d would actually work using those drivers. Right now it still doesnt let you use them, you still have to change settings in the config-4 file it makes to even get past 800x600 screen sizes.

The 9700 diver I am using is almost useless.

SuDZ

ATi

[SD-VI]

They fixed their Windows drivers, so let's hope they can do the same for their Linux drivers. ATi's cards are fairly nice; certainly a little better than the dim-looking GeForce FX line, and I say that as someone who is completely neutral when it comes to corporations. (No reason to make generalizations about anything except their products. Unless they're Rambus, in which case they're evil.)

Amusingly enough, the only nVidia card I'd recommend buying right now is their Titanium 4200, the very card that taught them a valuable lesson about market segmentation. In case you missed the whole thing, the Ti4200, Ti4400, and Ti4600 were spaced about $50 apart, except they had a performance difference of maybe 2-4% between each of them. The Ti4400 cannabalized the Ti4600's sales, then the Ti4200 cannabalized the Ti4400's sales. (ATi learned this too with their Radeon 9500 Pro, a fast card selling for less than the Radeon 9700 despite the small speed difference. They were quicker to react than nVidia, though, and stopped the 9500 Pro's production run short. Now they make the Radeon 9600 Pro, which is considerably slower than the old 9500 Pro.)

Re:Make the darn drivers Open Source!

[Minna Kirai]

a flock of people go running to improve the drivers.

"Improving the drivers", in this case, is low-hanging fruit. The current drivers are only available for a small number of Linux kernel revisions. Anyone with the source code could trivially recompile them for newer/older Linux versions.

Where did these Wildcat drivers come from? Xi?

[green pizza]

Up until now, 3D Labs has maintained a link to Xi Graphics for Linux drivers for the Wildcat cards. (www.xig.com)

So my question is this... are these drivers just a free re-release of the drivers originally built by Xi? Are they totally new drivers written by folks at 3D Labs? Are they from a combination of the two?

I'm curious (for both political and practical/technical reasons).

Radeon 9800 Pro with Debian unstable?

[Idimmu Xul]

I've been trying to get mine to work for ages. The version of XFree86 that comes with unstable is 4.2.1, the 'ati' drivers that come with XFree don't seem to work, and unstable comes with glibc2.3, and the binary ATI drivers are compiled against 2.2 only, so they don't work either.

Also they only supply the drivers in rpm form, not even a .tgz

Does anyone have any ideas how I can get my 9800pro working in Debian unstable please? Changing distro is not an option! Ever!! :)

Re:Radeon 9800 Pro with Debian unstable?

[niko9]

I have a Radeon 8500 working with debian unstable right now.

I am in no way a Linux guru or even a programmer, but if you follow their directions, I got it working in 30 mins.

My distro was Debian testing, defore the Glib was upgraded, but I found out that when I apt-get'd to unstable, the drivers still worked fine.

Now your dilema is the glibc issue. What I would do in your shoes is, backup all your stuff, and install the current stable distro of Debian, which should have Glibc2.2. Add testing sources to your source list.

Apt get Xfree 4.2 (stable has 4.1 IIRC).
Build the ATI modules as per the instructions above.
Make sure Xfree is working, then you can apt get to Unstable.

Enjoy.
1. Use alien to convert the rpm.
2. Use dspk -i --force-overwrite to install the deb you just made.
3. Make sure you have your kenrel source.
4. You have to change the location of your kenel in the install script (so instead of /usr/src/linux like in redhat, it would be /usr/src/kernel-source-2.4.x) and save the file.
5.run the install script, it will make the modules for you.
6.use the ATI fglrconfig to make a XF86Config file for you.
7. startx

It worked the first time, once I realized it was looking for the the kernel source in the wrong place.

Americas Army never looked so good.

Re:Radeon 9800 Pro with Debian unstable?

[AsparagusChallenge]

...unstable comes with glibc2.3, and the binary ATI drivers are compiled against 2.2...

The blanket answer for that is "install the libc 2.2 compatibility library". It works for things like the old, binary only blender and some java plugins.

CAD? Please?

[Scott BaioWulf]

Now if there were just some nice 3D CAD programs for linux. I tried all the free options and they stink. This move by 3Dlabs suprises me because I wasn't aware there was even a single available high end (read: expensive) 3DCAD program for linux.
Anyone know of a good midrange option? I wouldn't mind paying a couple hundred bucks even.

You should stay in more

[DrSkwid]

then you'd know about the Open Source Bios along with CPUs, Motherboards and other support stuff

Re:CAD? Please?

[Scott BaioWulf]

Oh and a FEA tool would be sweet too!

Re:great news!

[nolife]

Not that this helps your situation any but, you really should search Google BEFORE you jump on any new purchase. More so for Linux compatibility but this applies to the more popular Windows world also.

I had the same concerns with ATA controller chipsets and Usenet searches before hand helped me get one that worked on my not so cutting edge kernel. YMMV

Savage driver with DRI, OpenGL, XvMC

[Pivot]

In a related note, S3 graphics has released open source drivers for the S3 Savage graphics family. See eg. here.

Re:Savage driver with DRI, OpenGL, XvMC

[sloanster]

Wow - now this is even more interesting than the 3Dlabs announcement - sounds very impressive indeed - more features, plus it's open source, so I don't need to worry about having to run a certain distro or kernel.

I will have to check this puppy out.

Re:Savage driver with DRI, OpenGL, XvMC

[RdsArts]

* Supports DRI and OpenGL

You mean I might actually get to use DRI and OpenGL on my Free BSD laptop.

This is great news!

Has anyone has any luck getting them to compile yet?

ATI drivers

[vivek7006]

I have been observing that most of the notebooks dont use Nvidia graphic cards. Instead they prefer using mobility Radeon or some cheaper on-board cards. This is problem for me, because I am looking to buy a notebook on which I will install linux. Nvidia has fantastic linux drivers, so I wont have to worry about hardware 3D acceleration, if I buy a notebook with Nvidia graphic card. But I just dont see any notebooks in the market with Nvidia graphic cards.

How does Radeon behave under linux in notebooks? . How is the 3D acceleration in mobile Radeon 8500+ ? Are the opensource drivers good for full screen DVD playbacks? (I usually test hardware acceleration by playing TuxRacer)

Re:ATI drivers

[CaptIronfist]

But I just dont see any notebooks in the market with Nvidia graphic cards

Look harder buddy:

Dell Inspiron 8500 ( Look in the list you can customize one with a GeForce 4 4200 Go )

Toshiba Satellite 5205 ( This one has the latest mobile Nvidia card. A little bit heavier than the Dell though and only supports 802.11b )

Enjoy!

Re:great news!

[ftobin]

ATI may not support your 9000 well, but the 8500 (and by implication, 9100 and above) is well supported in XFree86 4.3 and above. I should know; I have one. I actually specifically bought a Radeon 9100, replacing my GeForce2, so I wouldn't need to have a tained kernel to get direct rendering.

Additionally, for XFree85 4.2 and earlier, you might want to check the DRI project.

By the way, if you didn't know, the Radeon 9000 is well known to be a worse card than the 8500. The 9100 is actually the 8500 relabeled.

Re:hmf. kinda poor effort if you ask me. [ot]

[FroMan]

If you have the time/initiative look into gentoo.

Heck, during the install you have to even setup a syslog to run, or you won't even get that. Even after I emerge a new app (say samba) it doesn't default to it running at boot.

Even slackware doesn't compare to that. As slackware usaully has ssh, sendmail, and a couple others running. The sendmail thing really bugs me though, since sendmail definitely needs a little bit of configuration before it is run to do anything useful.

Engineers that never have never been a corp CTO

[silas_moeckel]

RedHat 7.3 is older yes but it's been around the corprate world and is about the current level of support. I work with a lot of comercial linux software and for most redhat 7.3 is the latest supported version. As for rehat in general lets face it support bugets are only so big so you pick one release of Linux and go with it why redhat? Well for starters thats the version thats officialy supported on IBM Big iron. They have the RHCE program so you can at least get a person with some paperwork behind them. And finialy they have there server version with a slowed down release cycle. One of Linux's major program with big corprate acceptance is it's quick release cycle remember in a big corp envirnement it may be 3 months of testing before a new release is certified as production. Thats a lot of man hours that they only want to expend every now and again not every 6 months on the upgrade tredmill.

Now it would be nice if they took Nvidia's approach a chell script that does all the heavy lifting including a custom compile.

Re:Too late for ATI. Already lost me.

[Mitchell Mebane]

Well, maybe if you use Linux.

All I can say is, I run an All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro under WinXP, and ATi has been really nice about support.

Re:great news!

[EzInKy]

These work for my 9200:

http://www.schneider-digital.de/html/download_at i. html

From the readme:

Graphics Accelerators:
ATI Radeon 8500, 9100, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800, M9, M9+, M10
ATI FireGL 8700, 8800, E1, X1, Z1
Video Driver for Linux:
Driver Version 4.1.0-2.9.13
Driver Version 4.2.0-2.9.13
Driver Version 4.3.0-2.9.13

Here's a discussion concerning your problem:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=24116&h ig hlight=ati+drivers+dual+display

How about...

[Knunov]

"How about "ajar"? At least "ajar" is a better, less ambiguous, description - to me it says "not 100 percent open, and not 100 pecent closed", which is what we're talking about."

Or better yet, how about "ajar-jar"? That way we can hook the Joe Sixpack crowd with the sheer cuteness of the term, along with the 3-6 year old user group.

Yeah, You're Right...

[Greyfox]

I suggest a new term: It'll give you "kernel herpes."

Now, what to do

[Ian-K]

Congratulations to 3Dlabs!

It's very important that people who use cards of this sort (or who plan to make the jump) email them and encourage them.

On reading this, I immediately sent them an email, congratulating them on their move to support linux.

I am an (otherwise happy) owner of an ATI FireGL 8800, but next card I'll be buying won't be an ATI, unless they change their linux policy. I'm not impressed by that they just list it (at the bottom of the list) as a priority, either. ATI, beware!

The only "affordable" workstation cards I know that have linux support are nVidia-based. (PNY Quadro FX series at www.schneider-digital.de)

3DLabs has a _very_ interesting VP range. I wish they 'bless' that series with linux drivers as well. Up till now they were out of the question *just because* of their (lack of) linux support.

Trian

ATI's job posting is 2D only

[rakarnik]

That is not a good sign, unless they are planning to release specs to the community for 3D driver development.

Re:CAD? Please?

[paradesign]

im thinking its for Maya, not cad but still just as intense 3D.

Re:Thanks for nothing

[cmdr_beeftaco]

Personally, I don't give a crap whether or not the drivers are closed-source. If I ever put the cash down on a 3DLabs card, i'd be a lot more interested in being able to use it

99.99% of the computer using public say the same things about OS's...

great...bastard

[CanadaDave]

Great, now everyone and their dog will be applying to ATI now that they have received free advertising on Slashdot. They are one of the few places that are hiring. I'll never get a job there now. Bastards.

Creative doing an IBM... now the good guys?

[Realistic_Dragon]

Recently Creative have done a fair bit of interest/benefit to the open source community, including:

Open sourcing their first stage OpenGL 2 compiler. (To drive adoption, this is good for us because OpenGL2 will work with Linux, DirectX doesnt.)

Providing information to develop open source drivers for Creative soundcards, including the info needed to develop the Audigy drivers and other associated kit - and hosting the development on their servers.

Releasing Linux drivers for their high end kit, showing their support publicly for the platform.

Sure, all this stuff benefits them too, but that's the point of Open Source stuff - scratch your own itch, and then let other people use it.

I know these latest drivers aren't open source, but that might change with time if they see a benefit from their other investments in the area.

Re:Make the darn drivers Open Source!

[runderwo]

One word: Bullshit. All R100 and R200 Radeon cards have open source drivers. There are, at most, about a dozen people who work on those drivers and the majority of them are paid to do so.

Yeah. Probably the same dozen people who have access to the documentation under NDA. You ever tried writing or improving a driver for undocumented hardware?

No more tainting

[quigonn]

http://synflood.at/tack/patches/linux/no-more-tain ting.patch

Redhat 9, XFree86 4.3, and ATI Radeon 9700 Pro?

[Fastball]

Anyone else out there have any experience with this combination? I recently upgraded from RH 8 to 9, and found that I would be lacking 3D acceleration. Anybody have any word on whether my 9700 Pro will ever run accelerated with RH 9 and XFree86 4.3?

Re:Redhat 9, XFree86 4.3, and ATI Radeon 9700 Pro?

[SuDZ]

Supposedly they are "looking into it" but nobody ever knows what that really means. Best bet is going back down to XFree 4.2 for now.

SuDZ

Re:Redhat 9, XFree86 4.3, and ATI Radeon 9700 Pro?

[sloanster]

It would doubtless be much much easier to go buy a $45 Geforce 2, pop it in there and install the nvidia drivers, than to muck about with trying to configure and install an old unsupported version of XFree just to use the ati card.

just a thought...

Power of the checkbook

[CaptainFrito]

Simply say "No" to any closed source driver dependent products. Message the hardware community that if they want the open source community's business they must be, well, open source. If ATI supports Linux with open code, then buy ATI. The ONLY weapon we have in this war is our checkbook.

Re:CAD? Please?

[steveg]

This move by 3Dlabs suprises me because I wasn't aware there was even a single available high end (read: expensive) 3DCAD program for linux.

There's more to high end graphics than just CAD.

Someone in my office just set up a machine with a Wildcat card for 3D visualization of oil and gas reservoirs. This fits in with the press release: 3Dlabs' Wildcat4 and Wildcat III customers in oil and gas research, life sciences and high-end Digital Content Creation (DCC) markets will now experience increased productivity, cutting-edge performance, and superb graphics quality on Red Hat® Linux® version 7.3.

He is new to Linux, so naturally went for the 'latest and greatest' Red Hat (9), which gave him all sorts of trouble (with the graphics.)

I gave him some help, and he dropped back to RH8. Last time I talked to him he said he had it working. Don't know if he got it going on RH8 or went back to RH7.3.

Re:CAD? Please?

[Scott BaioWulf]

There's more to high end graphics than just CAD.
Sure, and hopefully this will open up more of the high end graphics market to Linux including CAD.

One stress as a Linux user is the lack of 'real' programs. By real I mean professional stuff like Photoshop, Solidworks, etc. Stuff that really seems best suited to a robust system like Linux.

Re:Make the darn drivers Open Source!

[Abnormal Coward]

what closed source drivers for there motherboards are you refering too ?

I've got a nforce2 board (ASUS a7n8x deluxe) and the following hardware is all running using GPL'ed drivers:

* On board IDE (AMD74XX).
* Audio (nvaudio).
* SATA controller (siimage).Not part of the nforce2 chipset, but used on many nforce2 boards.
* Onobard 3com NIC (3c59x).
* Onboard sensors are supported by lm-sensors, currently only from CVS, and most likely be in the next release.

The only part of the nforce2 platform that I know off that isn't GPL'ed is the onboard nvidia NIC (uses a binary blob with wrapper around it).

Linux Videocard Archive

[rinkjustice]

There needs to be at least one online resource where I can find any and all videocard drivers in existance for Linux, including the ancient Diamond Monster Doodoo card I gots in my old box. It's depressing all these dead links and abandoned webpages that promise near-impossible-to-find drivers and then don't fullfill.

Gotta love hardware manufacturers these days..

[Trolling for Profit]

"It's faster than a speeding bullet! It will balance your checkbook! It slices and dices vegetables with perfect results!" and then it f^cks up and 1) stops reading discs 2) runs quake at crazy high fps rates but crashes the computer when displaying a webbrowser 3) locks up and requires a computer hard reset to reboot the crashed firmware.

Well, it's about F*CKING TIME!!!

[Qbertino]

3Labs have been bragging about being top-notch amongst the cream of the crop of 3D hardware since the begining of time. And while their Wildcat series often shure kicked FireGL and others up and down the street performance wise, it was *allways* "Windows only". And nothing *but* Windows only. In fact 3DLabs and their Wildcats are among the very *last* to join the *nix crowd in terms of driver support for professional 3D. The FireGLs have had drivers form ages (in the 3D world that is) and just plain *everybody* and his freakin* brother has ported their 3D apps to *nix years ago.

Gees, 3DLabs, we might even get to actually be able to see your oh so superb performance. But believe me, Nvidia and their Quadro and other pro series have major credit with the *nix folk. They will have to prove their serious before people will actually take the time to check out their stuff.

Personally I think this is a very good sign for Linux. 3Labs are one of the most conservative 3D hardware vendors and even them adding Linux to their list means really good news.

Re: Useless for me...

[benjamindees]

This makes them useless for *everyone*. Anyone who uses RH as a workstation is using 8.0 or 9. Does 7.3 even support the new KDE/Gnome/XF86?

I still use 7.3 on headless servers because it's stable as hell. What does Dell offer on their servers? RH 8.0 or 9. Doh!

I'm ecstatic that they're supporting Linux at all, but, seriously, a lot of these companies need to be hit with a clue stick.

Support?

[AvengerXP]

Who cares if they get drivers out or not. Isn't the whole goal of being a Linux geek to code everyhting yourself? Do you not drool to the thought of compiling your own Catalyst Drivers for Linux? Am i missing something here? I'm not trying to get people upset or anything, i'm just very very confused.

If there's something i've learned, it's that there's always someone to code for you before you even think about doing it. For example, 3DFX's Voodoo 3000 drivers are still available for XP by a 3rd party. Wonderful geeks i kiss you.

THANK YOU!

[Sevn]

I don't know what cave I was living in. I'm running
an emerge wine-cvs right now. Looks like on top of
about half the games I'd normally have to reboot
to run, I can also run the newest version of k-lite
with winex. :)

Re:THANK YOU!

[brsmith4]

You can run k-lite??? can you tell me how you did it? I am having problems with it.

Re:THANK YOU!

[Sevn]

http://frankscorner.org/

This site made life soooooooo much easier. I ended
up using winex for a bunch of my games including
halflife/counterstrike and max payne, then using
regular wine for kazzalite 2.10.

Re:THANK YOU!

[Sevn]

Quick Note:

I have a friend that could NOT get wine working
with k-lite on mandrake. Didn't know if you had
mandrake or not (I run Gentoo), but in case you
do, or you have problems with the link on franks, here are the instructions he used to
get k-lite working on his mandrake home system,
and a redhat laptop he has at work:

http://www.mail-archive.com/expert@linux-mandrak e. com/msg71788.html

Make sure to take out the freaking retarded space
in the URL that slashcode puts in cause it's GAY.

Illegal (layperson's opinion)

[Adam J. Richter]

I am not a lawyer, so do not rely on this as legal advice.

I believe that 3DLabs is committing contributory copyright infringement (in the United States) by distributing lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/char/drm/wildc at.o without providing freely redistributable source code to this file, because the only substantial use for some of the contents of this file is to produce a kernel in memory that is not permitted by the copyright permissions under which some parts of the Linux kernel included in that image are are distributed--i.e., the GNU General Public License.

I am aware of the additional permission that Linus Torvalds has given for linking proprietary modules, but he is only able to give such permission with respect to code for which he owns the copyright. I, for one, never granted such additional permissions.

To my knowledge, the proprietary XFree86 drivers are legal. I believe that 3DLabs only needs to release source code (under GPL-compatible terms) for their wildcat.o kernel module.

Apology

[Crazy Eight]

I didn't mean to hit a nerve. I only wanted to point out that I thought you were overreacting and couldn't help teasing a bit in the process. (Come on Ned! Lighten up!)

Certainly you have shown me that the word taint can have more malignant implications than I have given it in the past. I visited some quotation search engines to add to your entries above and found that it does in fact show up most often in a context of moral corruption, though in those cases it is often used in concert with a stronger pejorative and it does register in less grave circumstances (like wine spoiled by a bad cork). I stand corrected.

For the record I never claimed that "taint" means "to dye". I only pointed out its etymological undertone. Knowing such things can flesh out the more specific meaning of a word. I find that more usefull than thesaursus.com's suggested alternates such as dingy, slimy, or icky, though of course corrupted and impure come pretty close. "To dye" harmonizes a bit with the "something good gone bad 'cause something else got added to it" aspect of the word. Think "tainted meat". Hey, the meat started out good. It's the E. coli that ruined it for everyone.

I think the authors of the kernel and its support utilities chose taint because it indicates a fatal contamination. A drop of bleach in my Kettle Soda makes it undrinkable even though it's still mostly vodka and bubbly water. Dude, it's been tainted.

If you go here you'll find out why such indications are necessary. To the kernel maintainers, anything less than a fully open source kernel is just as bad as one that is mostly closed because they can't use a tainted kernel to fix bugs. Grep around in the source to modutils and you'll find you can taint your kernel with `insmod -f' too even if the module is GPL. The issue isn't OSS vs. Proprietary. It's "fixable" versus "useless kernel oops".

Even if this weren't the case I would still find "ajar" really awkward. Did you ever see The Simpson's episode where Bart cons his way into genius class? The teacher puts a math problem on the board and expects her students to "be pleasantly surprised". When everyone but Bart chuckles at the result (something like "R D R R") the teacher laughs and says, "Don't you get it Bart? 'R D R R'... Har Dee Har Har?!" Of course, what is funny about that scene is that the characters would find that funny, let alone "get it". I can't help but think ajar would strike people in an analogous way. Imagine it:

"Whoa, your kernel's ajar."

"What do you mean?"

"You know, ajar... half open, half closed?"

"Are you saying my kernel has a door in it... like a backdoor?"

"No. You know, partly open source, partly closed source..."