ATI Releases Drivers for XFree 4.3.0

closed source != bad always by grennis · 2004-03-06 04:45 · Score: 3, Interesting

Unfortunately, ATI still insists on using RPM exclusively and keeping the drivers closed source

So what if the drivers are closed source? ATI cant and wont expose the low level details of their hardware's functionality to competitors. Whats the difference anyway? It is naive to think that you could even understand, let alone improve, what the engineers - who know the hardware intimately - have written? And by the way, Nvidia does not publish its source either...

Re:closed source != bad always by xSauronx · 2004-03-06 04:47 · Score: 2, Interesting

can someone comment on how these perform? im heavily considering putting linux back on my box, but ive gotta be able to game...are these new ATI drivers anywhere near as good as nVidias as far as performance is concerned in relation to the performance in windows?

--
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Re:closed source != bad always by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-06 04:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yeah, it's really naive to think that someone else might be able to spot the deadlocks I seem to get from my ATI drivers. Especially since it's a software problem, not a hardware one.

Clearly software engineers would not be able to help this at all and you're definately not trolling. I mean, duh!
Re:closed source != bad always by BoomerSooner · 2004-03-06 04:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

Oh bullshit. You're telling me that nVidia cannot reverse engineer the binary?

It's about control, nothing more, nothing less.
Re:closed source != bad always by lubricated · 2004-03-06 04:54 · Score: 5, Informative

> So what if the drivers are closed source?

No porting to ppc. No fixing minor bugs if they come up. No customizing the drivers to a particular application. No tinkering. No learning.

> ATI cant and wont expose the low level details of their hardware's functionality to competitors.

They can but they won't. Their competitors have competent engineers that can reverse engineer the stuff if needed. It's all in software anyway.

> Whats the difference anyway?

see above.

> It is naive to think that you could even understand, let alone improve, what the engineers - who know the hardware intimately - have written?

I think you are naive. There are plenty of smart people that do alot of linux work. Surely they know linux better than ATI, and thus they may be able to improve the drivers since it's not just the hardware that these drivers are specific too. Also they may be able to port the drivers to PPC or BSD.

> And by the way, Nvidia does not publish its source either...

What's your point? It would be better if they did.

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It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Re:closed source != bad always by fedork · 2004-03-06 04:54 · Score: 3, Interesting

I doubt competitors can benefit by using info from driver sources. And you also seem to be contradicting yourself - on one hand can improve it but the engineers, on the other hand competitors can abuse it somehow... This really does not add up. I beleive the real reason is plain old beaurocracy.

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...remember good 'ol times when IP used to mean Internet Protocol....
Re:closed source != bad always by wehe · 2004-03-06 04:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

So why are other companies able to provide their drivers as Open Source? Do you think the developers of for example XFree86 were not capable to do a good job?

Anyway I like Open Source drivers. BTW: Don't forget to sign the Intel Support of Centrino Under Linux Petition. See more details about Linux on Centrino laptops.
Re:closed source != bad always by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-06 04:56 · Score: 5, Funny

So what if the drivers are closed source? ATI cant and wont expose the low level details of their hardware's functionality to competitors. Whats the difference anyway?

The difference is that this is Slashdot where the cranks di tutti cranks hang out. ATI could give away free video cards, open source all their drivers, and hire a bunch of strippers to come to your house and make you birthday cake... and the Slashdot crowd would still piss and moan.
Re:closed source != bad always by wfberg · 2004-03-06 04:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

So what if the drivers are closed source? ATI cant and wont expose the low level details of their hardware's functionality to competitors. Whats the difference anyway? It is naive to think that you could even understand, let alone improve, what the engineers - who know the hardware intimately - have written? And by the way, Nvidia does not publish its source either...

It's naive to think ATI's competitors don't have a much better understanding of their hardware than whatever can be gleaned from their drivers' sources, especially if you consider that they can already reverse-engineer the binaries better than any random Joe, seeing as they have actual money to sink into it. And there's the thing about them making the same sort of hardware.

Having the source would greatly benefit the little people though. These cards will sometime go End-Of-Live, and the manufacturer won't support them.

Perhaps the source won't be released to hide the fact these "engineers - who know the hardware intimately" make code that is in fact cruddy at times, and that it contains bugs than random Open Source jockeys can fix.

Though it's likelier that the drivers simply contain patented/copyrighted stuff they sublicensed from third-parties that are paranoid about anyone seeing it.

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SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Re:closed source != bad always by zzabur · 2004-03-06 04:56 · Score: 5, Insightful
Whats the difference anyway?
Even if we don't count idiological issues, closed source drivers mean numerous annoyances to the users.

For example:
- Drivers can be buggy, and there is no way to fix it. (NVidia drivers are hang my system all the time.)
- Closed source drivers need additional EULAs and thus often cannot easily be distiributed with Linux distributions.
- Drivers need to be installed separately, which is annying, sometimes difficult and may break your system. (this is also true for Windows)
- When some new soft/hardware appears (like AMD64, 2.6 kernel), one has usually wait for months for drivers to be updated.
- Source-based distributions like Gentoo cannot compile new, performance optimized version, if driver is distributed as a binary.
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Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Re:closed source != bad always by y0bhgu0d · 2004-03-06 05:03 · Score: 2, Informative

ati just released an XF86 driver, not a kernel driver. only part of nvidia's kernel driver is compiled, and the xf86 driver most definantly isnt compiled.
Re:closed source != bad always by Endive4Ever · 2004-03-06 05:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

These cards will sometime go End-Of-Live, and the manufacturer won't support them.

Graphics cards that have gone 'end-of-life' in the past have been dropped by the XFree86 team themselves. An example is the S3 Trio chipset cards. Sure, an ambitious hacker could forward-port support themselves. However, this points out that 'free software' people abandon hardware as well, rendering it worthless to anybody but the most diligent.

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Re:closed source != bad always by Paleomacus · 2004-03-06 05:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

Because when nVidia wants to know something about ATI drivers it's only slightly less trivial to get the information when the driver source is closed than open.
Re:closed source != bad always by bl8n8r · 2004-03-06 05:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

> It is naive to think that you could even
> understand, let alone improve,

I get to stare at "professional" code every day. It is nothing like what was in the textbooks. There is acres of room for improvement. silly little things like something called a buffer overflow are present in many of the implementations. I cannont believe my eyes somedays, and it's a wonder that the product that this certain company puts out, functions at all. It is under the cover of closed-source that these things are allowed to persist, and will probably never change. The company just keeps issuing patches and revisions and fixes what is terminally broken. Futhermore, the only reason these "bugs" exist is simply do to human laziness; something that could be overcome by another simple human, with the right principles, without an "intimate knowlege" of the hardware.

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Re:closed source != bad always by pe1rxq · 2004-03-06 05:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

PPC is more than just Apple....
But you could replace PPC with any non ati supported platform: AMD64, MIPS, ALPHA, SPARC, whatever-commes-next-week.

Jeroen

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Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Re:closed source != bad always by Jeffrey+Baker · 2004-03-06 05:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

The 3.7.0 drivers (which, btw, have been out for over a month before this Slashdot headline) are absolutely terrible. I was getting 10-15fps in UT2004 at any resolution on a Radeon 9700. I reverted to the previous release.
Re:closed source != bad always by HiThere · 2004-03-06 05:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

One effect of the drivers being closed source is that new kernels must wait on the convenience of the manufacturer for support. Another effect of the drivers being closed source is that when a model is discontinued, support can go away, and your card becomes worthless. (The second argument is really a part of the first argument.)

There may be others, but those are sufficient for me. I won't be paying for high end cards. I've had too much experience with closed source applications breaking with system patches & upgrades. If that's likely to happen, I'm no longer willing to fork out a wad of cash.

--

I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Re:closed source != bad always by Nurf · 2004-03-06 05:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

So what if the drivers are closed source? ATI cant and wont expose the low level details of their hardware's functionality to competitors. Whats the difference anyway? It is naive to think that you could even understand, let alone improve, what the engineers - who know the hardware intimately - have written? And by the way, Nvidia does not publish its source either...

I design hardware for a living, and you are wrong. There is no real benefit to hiding your hardware internals from the rest of the world. It's a knee-jerk PHB thing. It has no bearing on reality.

If you are scared of your competitors, then hiding your hardware internals costs them maybe a week, because:

1) They know how to do everything you do, anyway.
2) What they don't know they can figure out in under a week, if they put an engineer or two on it. The delta between what they do and what you do is minimal, and anything they want to know is trivial to reverse engineer.

There might be "IP" issues, which usually means there is stuff in there protected by a stupidly restrictive license with another company. In my experience, the IP usually isn't worth the bother, or if it is, the license is only restrictive because lawyers simply assume it has to be. They come from a zero sum world, and never think of any other possibilities unless you start witholding cookies.

Usually, being closed will cost your partners much more than a week - they don't just want to learn what you did, they need to interface to it, and that is _hard_. It requires much better information than simply figuring out a trick your competitor used.

I will say it again: It is very rare and unlikely that closing your software helps in a situation like this.

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Re:closed source != bad always by dinivin · 2004-03-06 05:30 · Score: 2, Informative

That's ood, I'm happily using the drivers on two Debian systems.

OF course, I would be happier if they drivers were open source, but not because they're simply packaged as RPMs.

Dinivin
Re:closed source != bad always by timeOday · 2004-03-06 05:31 · Score: 4, Interesting

So what if the drivers are closed source? ATI cant and wont expose the low level details of their hardware's functionality to competitors. Whats the difference anyway?
In my case it makes the drivers unusable.
I wanted to plug my laptop into a 1600x1200 LCD using DVI. If you select "linux laptop driver download" at the ATI site, it says "go ask the manufacturer." Oh, goody, corporate marketing BS fingerpointing.
But IBM doesn't support 1600x1200 over DVI on my laptop. Why? Who knows. Supposedly under Windows you can get it by hacking the registry. But IBM doesn't feel like supporting it. More corporate BS.
So you go back to the ATI site and download the Mobile FireGL driver, if you're persistent enough to think of trying it on the M9 Radeon chip. Turns out it does work, but they won't tell you that due to even more corporate marketing BS.
You find that it almost works, but makes a sparkling or shimmering effect from random bit errors at 1600x1200. From the open source radeon driver mailing list, it appears that the fix is very simple. But ATI got it wrong and of course a closed source driver can't be fixed. Of course you could try to contact the ATI engineers, tell them the solution, and maybe they'll send you a fix. In your dreams.
Meanwhile the open source radeon driver runs 1600x1200 over DVI just fine. Some versions did create the shimmering effect, so somebody posted to a mailing list and helped the developer figure out what was wrong and it got fixed.
So yeah, closed source is different.
Re:closed source != bad always by tjrw · 2004-03-06 05:39 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'm not sure I see your point. Of course people aren't going to continue to work on an support a driver for hardware that no longer exists except in a museum. That would be crazy. The point is that if the source to an older driver is available, and it is somehow vitally important to you that you keep your ancient hardware yet need to update Xfree (not clear why this would be anyway), you always have that option. You can hack on it yourself if you're sufficiently talented or you can pay someone if you're not.

Or you can continue to use the older driver and software. People who are using a machine in production as opposed to a toy have few compelling reasons to "upgrade" bugfixes notwithstanding, if their current platform is doing its job.

So, yes, open-source developers "abandon hardware" too, but that doesn't leave the hardware owner stranded which is not the case for hardware that only has closed source drivers.
Re:closed source != bad always by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-06 05:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

I disagree.

First of all, the ideas and low level details of the hardware's functionality should be available to those who pay money for the card. If those ideas are advances in human knowledge, they can be patented and then the competitors can't copy them. If they aren't, then why should we give up access to them ? We aren't getting new research in return. Keeping these things secrete is giving up something (access and control) with out getting anything (investment in new research and technology) in return. I find it saddening that someone can post a knee-jerk defence of secrecy, invoking only "competitors" as a reason, and get modded up. Slashdot should have moved beyond this by now.

I stopped buying NVidia chips precisely because of their closed source drivers. You see, the reason why NVidia and now ATI go closed source is that much of their work is actually software, not hardware, work. The implementation of the functionality which is NOT on the card, but in the driver, matters a lot. NVidia was well known far having good cards simply because the software implementation of certain OpenGL fucntions was excellent. If they released the source, those would be copied by all other graphics drivers -- and then NVidia would have to compete on the quality of their hardware, which is exactly what they don't want to have to do and what is in our best interest for them to do.

By allowing more and more functionality in secrete non-Free drivers, you are essentially allowing your system to gradually become a proprietary OS with a bunch of cheap hardware dongles hanging on it. This is what Apple does.

You say "It is naive to think that you could even understand, let alone improve, what the engineers - who know the hardware intimately - have written?" Apart from the fact that your question mark is on a sentence that is not a queston, this shows a naive and uninformed view of technical history. It shows you are the kind of person who looks at computing as a matter of reading Tom's Hardware and applying your "informed" reasoning to picking components off a shelf and plugging them together.

Perhaps you would be happier with a Mac. Then you could have a unix-like operating system, with about as much freedom as you care about, and an ATI card to boot.
Re:closed source != bad always by Richard_at_work · 2004-03-06 05:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

If Nvidia can, why cant whoever wants to produce an opensource driver? Learn to live with what you are given, if you continue to dislike someone because they do not share your beleifs then you are going to be very dissappointed with life.
Re:closed source != bad always by lubricated · 2004-03-06 05:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

What is illogical about using linux on an ibook?

Just because the software is free doesn't mean it's worse. Plenty of us, myself included prefer it over OSX which is just a resource intensive pig with a poor UI, bad cli, and missing key parts of the unix system.

--
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Re:closed source != bad always by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-06 05:52 · Score: 3, Insightful

PPC? Using "free software" on a MORE EXPENSIVE hardware platform is highly illogical.

Well, let's use the term "open source" here so that you can't play ignorant about the two totally different meanings of "free" anymore.

Apple hardware is generally pretty high-quality (and especially the laptops' quality/price ratio is quite good). There are people who both appreciate Apple hardware and don't want to use any proprietary software.

And as someone pointed out earlier, PPC is not the only platform left out.
Re:closed source != bad always by lubricated · 2004-03-06 05:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

blender comes to mind. Furthermore there is the chicken and the egg problem. No 3d drivers untill the applications come. No applications untill 3d comes.

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It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
Re:closed source != bad always by Usquebaugh · 2004-03-06 05:54 · Score: 3, Insightful

It's very doubtful that either Nvida or ATI do not know what is in each others past, current and future cards. The driver would not expose anything that is not already known.

The improvement is not what most people want, they want the ability to easily support their graphics card. When Nvidia/ATI moves on to the next release of hardware do you think they are going to want to support the current stuff?
Re:closed source != bad always by Heretik · 2004-03-06 06:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

Troll. You know exactly why people get angry when things like this are made proprietary.

GNU/Linux is about 'open source', deal with it. If you don't care, go use Windows (or OSX, or Solaris, or ....)
Re:closed source != bad always by be-fan · 2004-03-06 06:52 · Score: 3, Interesting

If their binary is anything like NVIDIA's driver, that'd be a dozen megabytes of code to reverse engineer! Remember, a graphics driver is *not* a simple register-banger. Its an entire implementation of OpenGL. Much of that code is more or less hardware-independent, and has to do with optimizing display lists and whatnot. Reverse engineering the driver would be extremely difficult.

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A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:closed source != bad always by be-fan · 2004-03-06 07:01 · Score: 2, Interesting

1) Because most other drivers are an order of magnitude simpler. Your modem driver, for example, does not need to do complex reordering of display lists to optimize performance. Also, OpenGL drivers are an entire OpenGL implementation. So its like open-sourcing not just your modem driver, but your whole IP stack.

2) No slight to the XFree86 developers, but:

a) Many of the XFree86 drivers (eg: nv) are significantly slower than their proprietory counterparts and in any case 2D is much easier to do drivers for than 3D,

b) The DRI project has not released any drivers that take full-advantage of the hardware. NVIDIA's binary driver will get you exact same performance and the exact same features the Windows driver has. The DRI drivers for Radeons are not only *much* slower, but don't even support basic features like vertex/pixel shaders!

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A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:closed source != bad always by blixel · 2004-03-06 07:47 · Score: 4, Interesting

I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB. I have been playing with UT2K4 for the last couple of weeks since it was released for Linux. I thought it was running pretty well on my system ... until I booted over to Windows and gave it a try. What a disappointment. Under Windows my frame rate is - *at the very least* - more than twice as high (which gives me significantly smoother play - I never thought it was jerky or anything under Linux, but it's **WAY** smoother under Windows). And visually, just about everything looks at least a little bit better, and in some cases, a LOT better. Lighting effects, wall textures, fog/smoke, and especially the flags on the walls in CTF. They look silky smooth in Windows and wave in the wind ... under Linux they are much morer flat looking and almost pixelated. I guess it's the difference between OpenGL and DirectX? And the sound quality under Windows is also signifcantly better. Reverb, echo, stadium sound, whatever it is... it sounds great in Windows.

I'm pretty bummed out about it actually because I don't feel like there's anything I can do to make it better under Linux. (Updating to the 2.6 kernel didn't help. I'm running the latest drivers for my video card and I've downloaded the nForce2 Linux drivers from nvidia for my motherboard's integrated sound. (ASUS A7N8X Deluxe, rev. 2.0)

I still prefer Linux ... games just are a significant factor for me... but it was still a real let down.
Re:closed source != bad always by gaj · 2004-03-06 08:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

You are either ignorant, stupid or a troll.
I'll assume the first, and attempt to educate you. I've already pissed off a bunch of people who instead provided the usual whiny /. repsonse to your (possibly unintiontional) troll, so I figure I better piss off the rest. wheee!
So what if the drivers are closed source?
I value my time far to much to fully answer this one, but there are many reasons for preferring open source: philosophy, practicality, curiosity and quality are four of the biggest.
ATI cant [sic] and wont [sic] expose the low level details of their hardware's functionality to competitors.
This is, frankly, mostly an argument made by marketing and PHBs (and people who just plain don't know any better, but I repeat myself). The fact is, they can and they will. They have no choice if they want to ship a product. Rest assured that, to the extent that they care to, NVIDIA knows lots about the low level details of the ATI designs. Having the source to the drivers would be a small bit of help, but, frankly, things move so fast that by the time a competitor could reverse engineer ATI's current feature set and figure out a way to integrate sait technology into their own, ATI would have rolled on to the next level. The architectures of the leading solutions are sufficiently different that reverse engineering the competitor is of primarily academic value (and perhaps a bit of marketing). Both ATI and NVIDIA have some of the best engineers in the world on their teams ... I assure you, we engineers would much rather design new stuff the copy someone else's stuff. Hell, more often than not developers will reinvent the f'ing wheel rather than use something NIH.
Whats the difference anyway? It is naive to think that you could even understand, let alone improve, what the engineers - who know the hardware intimately - have written?
You must be kidding, right? Not only are there plenty of engineers reading /., but, frankly, if the code is so poorly written that a reasonably smart person who knows C can't figure it out given specs and time, it probably sucks ass and I probably don't want to be running it anyway. The lowest levels of driver code can indeed be twisty, but much of this stuff is code to present an interface to client code. Also, while Joe User may well not be able to understand the code, a) the XFree86 folks sure as hell can and b) if it mattered enough he could hire someone who does understand it. One of the beauties of open source, BTW.
And by the way, Nvidia does not publish its source either...
You f'ed up, man. You got one accurate (if obvious) point into your message. Bad troll ... no cookie.
HTH HAND
or not
Re:closed source != bad always by be-fan · 2004-03-06 09:30 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'd rather have a slightly slower driver than a fast clsoed source one

At least frame it correctly. Its not "slightly slower." Its much slower, sometimes by several times. The trade-off is not a little bit of speed for a lot of freedom. Its turning your $300 graphics card into a $75 card, for a very little bit of extra freedom. Unlike an OS, or major software app, you're not tied into drivers. If the constraints of a closed-source driver become too much, I can switch out my card and its drivers in a matter of hours.

As far as I'm concerned, begging manufacturers to open source their drivers is whining. I don't think the OSS spirit is about forcing people to open their code. If they choose to, great. If they don't, well, we can just code something better. That's precisely what GNU did to UNIX. Now the issue at hand is that the OSS community has *not* been able to produce something that can replace this proprietory code. Until that happens, they really don't have a solid bargaining position.

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A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:closed source != bad always by John+Hurliman · 2004-03-06 09:33 · Score: 4, Interesting

There IS a solution... buy an Nvidia card. I remember when ATI cards were considered junk, the only decent thing they had was the All-In-Wonder and the drivers were terrible. Then ATI decides to get competitive and release a GPU that performs marginally better than Nvidia's latest offering in benchmarks, now all the gaming fanboys are raving over ATI. Problem is they STILL don't know how to write proper drivers. Nvidia drivers have always been on top of the game, supporting extensions like XvMC before 90% of the open source drivers were even thinking about it. I'm not getting paid to plug Nvidia, in fact I'd say buy a Matrox G400 (top notch dual-head and 2d acceleration, possibly the most solidly designed video card ever, full open source drivers that do everything and the kitchen sink), but people like 3d acceleration.
Re:closed source != bad always by timeOday · 2004-03-06 09:34 · Score: 2, Interesting

A single cable doesn't have enough bandwidth to manage 1600x1200 at more than 60Hz refresh. (go check the DVI spec)
I did mention it's an LCD panel, and 60Hz is perfect for an LCD panel. And let me tell you my 1600x1200 21" LCD2180UX looks awesome hooked up to the T40 through DVI using the open source driver. People accpting IBM's phony limitation at face value are missing out, and witholding useful information from customers because it just might lead to a bit of hassle is a perfect example of "corporate BS."
Re:closed source != bad always by noda132 · 2004-03-06 09:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

Because when nVidia wants to know something about ATI drivers it's only slightly less trivial to get the information when the driver source is closed than open.

The GNU GPL is about 15 years old now. That's precisely the kind of software abuse it's made for. If ATI released its drivers under the GPL, nVidia would have to do the same to copy any code from the ATI drivers.

Drivers aren't (supposed to be) what you pay for when you buy a piece of hardware; you pay for the hardware. The common excuse to keep drivers closed-source isn't the one quoted above; the concern is (supposedly) that ATI is afraid nVidia will notice architectural advantages of the Radeon series and integrate those into its hardware.

But what's the big deal? From drawing board to mass production is a matter of years; by the time a driver is released it's too late for the competition to integrate design ideas into its current product line.

What would open-source drivers bring, then? They'd bring the competition back to where it belongs: the hardware. Is GeForce or Radeon design better for most games? Nobody knows -- the driver hides how good the chips themselves are. (Personally, I'm under the impression ATI's chips are more powerful and their drivers are garbage.) Open-source drivers and open specs would benefit any company that released them; they'd also benefit the customer. And what if all hardware companies saw the light and released open-source drivers and open specs? Then they'd still compete much as they do today, and their customers would be better off.

ATI was waiting for debian by Rushuru · 2004-03-06 04:47 · Score: 5, Funny

ATI was just waiting for xfree 4.3.0 to eventually enter debian

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Re:ATI was waiting for debian by Too+Much+Noise · 2004-03-06 05:40 · Score: 2, Funny

Then this release is early - they were supposed to wait until Debian finally moved to rpm!!!!

XFree86 4.3 support is not new. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-06 04:48 · Score: 3, Informative

ATI has been offering drivers for XFree86 4.3 since some time late last year.

What's new is that there are new Linux drivers. No mention of whether they support GLX 1.3.

Re:XFree86 4.3 support is not new. by Kyouryuu · 2004-03-06 06:06 · Score: 2, Informative

The drivers were new to me and I suspected they were new for others as well. Either way, I don't recall any stories about it - old news or not. It should be easy to understand that after a half-year of waiting, I convinced myself that ATI just wasn't going to support its official packages anymore and so stuck with the Schneider Digital packages instead.
When by chance I went to ATI's site yesterday and saw that there was an XFree86 version, dated 3-2-2004, I thought it was a new thing and worth mentioning.
I accept the criticism for pointing out what is apparently an old story, but clearly it's new to some people. :)

Not just RPM... by OrangeHairMan · 2004-03-06 04:49 · Score: 5, Informative

from the readme:

Some notes for debian users:

The debian Linux distribution in most cases does not come with the
ability to handle rpm packages with the rpm tool. But there is a
tool called "alien" which allows you to convert rpm files into the
debian supported *.deb package format. Please consult your debian
documentation on how to operate this tool.

A typcial debian installation commandline will look like this:

dpkg -i <ati_package_name>.deb

In order to override complaints (which might be caused by an already
installed package "xlibmesa3" that also provides the file libGL.so.1.2)
please use this installation command line:

dpkg -i --force-overwrite <ati_package_name>.deb

Hopefully this helps!

Re:Not just RPM... by AntiOrganic · 2004-03-06 04:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

I can run a disassembler on the code and claim they released the source in 100% pure assembly as well, but that doesn't really make it so.
Re:Not just RPM... by Erratio · 2004-03-06 05:04 · Score: 4, Informative

There's support issues, once they release those packages they are responsible for them.

I'm running a computer with an ATI without a package management system but I installed RPM and forced an install of the package and it works fine. I think the RPM in this case is mostly just a way to archive the different parts of the driver (kernel module, X module, doc) without actually being too system specific, and considering it worked on my computer which is running all the latest, non-standard libraries, I'd guess that the only real variable to watch for is the X version which is the one they release different versions for. I did need to hack the driver in previous versions to get direct rendering to work though (I'll find out about the new one shortly).

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I don't try to be right, I just try to make people think
Re:Not just RPM... by Jeffrey+Baker · 2004-03-06 05:31 · Score: 4, Informative

ATI doesn't support their driver on Linux, so there are no "support" issues at all.
I have ATI hardware but I'm considering switching to nvidia. They very frequently release drivers, their drivers actually work correctly, and their drivers are available for Opteron and even Itanium.
Re:Not just RPM... by asciono · 2004-03-06 05:38 · Score: 4, Informative

This package is worth checking out if you use Debian
and want to use ATI's own drivers:
ATI Linux drivers packaged for Debian

Hm, anyone actually know what the big difference
between using ATI's closed source drivers or the
open sourced DRI-ones? (except not poluting your
karma ;>)
DRI (debs)
Re:Not just RPM... by joib · 2004-03-06 21:02 · Score: 2, Informative

The DRI drivers only support 3d acceleration with <= 9200 cards. If you want 3d acceleration with the newer cards you have to use the closed source driver.

Personally, I have a radeon 9200 and I use the DRI drivers. Works just fine for me.

Well by Bishop,+Martin · 2004-03-06 04:51 · Score: 5, Informative

There is always rpm2tgz

--
Setec Astronomy

However, open source == better bug finding/fixing by betelgeuse-4 · 2004-03-06 04:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

Remember the Win2000 source leak. Someone noticed a fairly simple programming error (signed instead of unsigned variable IIRC). That person didn't have an initimate knowledge of Windows 2000, but they still found a bug. This is the type of situation where more eyes make for better code.

--
Decode these

two points by Lucretian · 2004-03-06 04:52 · Score: 5, Informative

1. ATI has offered drivers since last year.

2. the RPM has nothing to do with being closed source. It has a binary "IP" library that gets linked in when you compile it... if you want to install on a non-rpm system use alien or some other method of unrpming it, then compile and install. Yes, it's still closed source, but rpm the reason for this.

What I'm upset about is that they have all the hooks for 64bit amd support in the wrapper code, but the binary IP driver is not released for x86_64.

well... by temojen · 2004-03-06 04:55 · Score: 3, Insightful

1) I have a Radeon card in a Gentoo system. Gentoo doesn't use RPMs.

2) What if ATI has linked it against the wrong library version?

3) What if I get an Opteron?

Re:well... by kinzillah · 2004-03-06 05:05 · Score: 5, Informative

Portage downloads the rpm, pulls the content out and puts the pieces where they need to go.

--
Douglas P. Price
Re:well... by gaj · 2004-03-06 05:45 · Score: 4, Informative
1. Quitcherbitchin. Gentoo can use RPMs just fine ... install RPM. Or is that too hard for an 3L337 63|\|700 |-|4x0r?
2. They link against glibc 2.2, so it works great with either 2.2 or 2.3 installations. I'm running it on a 2.3.2 system right now. This could become an issue ... but it is not at this time.
3. Then you should, at this time, get a damn NVIDIA card. This does suck a bit, and is a perfect example of where having competition is a good thing. OTOH, you could also use a 9100 or earlier Radeon and use the open-source drivers, or do withought 3D acceleration. You have options.
Sheesh. No one is holding a gun to your head saying "Buy an ATI video card or die!". If you don't like 'em, don't buy 'em.
Would it be better if both ATI and NVIDIA released their X servers as open-source? Hell yeah! OTOH, it is a very good thing that they are supporting Linux with current cards. The rest, we can work on with time.
Re:well... by MoronGames · 2004-03-06 06:36 · Score: 3, Informative

You use gentoo? Try this:

emerge ati-drivers
fglrxconfig

You now have ATi drivers installed on your gentoo box and you're setting up the configuration file for them! Congratulations!

--
hey!

Several? by ghostis · 2004-03-06 04:56 · Score: 4, Funny

several months after the originally proposed release date of April last year.

for large values of several apparently...

--

Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?

Whay has RPM got to do with anything? by X-Nc · 2004-03-06 04:57 · Score: 4, Interesting

Closed source is bad, there's no question about that. But what's the big deal about the release being in RPM format? Any competent Debian (or derivitive) user will easily be able to install it using alien and as for tgz binary distros, again, alien will convert.

RPM -> Good!
Closed source -> Bad!

--
-- If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.

Re:Whay has RPM got to do with anything? by NineNine · 2004-03-06 06:05 · Score: 2, Insightful

RPM -> Good!
Closed source -> Bad!

You're young, aren't you? Aaah, I remember being young and naive, when everything was simple and was black and white.

And how, exactly, are people supposed to know what in the hell "alien" is, that is exists, and how to use it?
Re:Whay has RPM got to do with anything? by void+warranty() · 2004-03-06 10:45 · Score: 2, Informative

http://www.google.com/search?q=install+rpm+debian

Re:This isn't a news by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-06 04:59 · Score: 2, Informative

3.7.1 has been pulled because it doesn't work. Unresolved symbols in fglrx_drv.o prevent X from loading, so it's back to 3.7.0 but with a much more recent release date, giving the impression that it was just released, if you weren't paying attention :-)

How about AMD64 support? by johannesg · 2004-03-06 05:06 · Score: 4, Informative

I checked out the site and cannot find anything regarding AMD64 support. Is it there?

Re:How about AMD64 support? by The+Analog+Kid · 2004-03-06 05:15 · Score: 3, Informative

No, but nVidia does provide AMD64 support, so if you planning on building a Linux machine with an AMD64 CPU inside, I'd go with nVidia. Actually for Linux I would always go with nVidia, for right now anyway until ATI can pick up the pace, because a Radeon 9700 spits out FPS in GLX gears that is less than a GeForce 5200.

Re:Why ATI? by ptr2void · 2004-03-06 05:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

Now that sound interesting. Which company makes 3D cards akin to nVidia and ATI technology and provides open source drivers? I'd like to get one, please tell me!

No suprise here by theatre_freak · 2004-03-06 05:16 · Score: 3, Insightful

I can't say I'm suprised by ATI's move to stay closed source. I've never been happy with anything ATI and most likely won't buy anything ATI. I've had a very bad experience with my ATI TV Wonder - sure they've updated their WinXP drivers, but the new drivers are a 2MB download, Multimedia Center (of which I only want the TV) is a 24MB download, and on top of that, you need Microsoft's Data Access Objects (a 17MB download) to make the parts of MMC that I don't even want to work. I've never gotten this combination to work, so I'm using the new drivers with an old version of MMC which mostly works, but doesn't respond well to Right-Clicks on the display area of the TV. I don't even dare to request tech support because they'll tell me to download the newest software and will be little help beyond that (which was the run-around I got when I was trying to make the card work in Win2k). Simply put, I love ATI's hardware, but their drivers are simply awful and for those of us who don't want the fluff, we still have to download the whole package and try to figure out how to install just what we want and still have everything work.

no Linux PPC support? by Chuck+Bucket · 2004-03-06 05:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

I still see no support for Linux PPC, so the correct title for this article is: "ATI Releases Drivers for XFree 4.3.0 for x86 based systems only"

Thanks.

CBV

--
free ipod and free gmail!

I think some Nvidia users are out to get ATI .... by phoxix · 2004-03-06 05:18 · Score: 3, Informative

Why do I say this ?

Because this story is pretty much misinformed. Support for XFree86 4.3.0 is nothing new at all. It has been for quite sometime.

Additionally the previous article about ATI's support for linux/XFree86 has also been totally wrong as well.

And apparently there is a port of the driver to FreeBSD going under way .... (check out #ati on Freenode for more )

Sunny Dubey

umm, theese are old. by noyren · 2004-03-06 05:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

The news should be ati pulls the 3.7.1 drivers because.. well, they sucked (no offence ati, but I guess you know, since you pulled em). Theese drivers are two months old..

The real question is: by Qbertino · 2004-03-06 05:20 · Score: 3, Insightful

Will they finally stop sucking?

To be honest, I don't give a damn if drivers are closed, open or whatnot, as long as they actually work and properly use the cards features.
That the Nvidia drivers are tied to the kernel is anoying, but bearable since they actually do work. Nvidias Linux support has been next to none - they've got high karma with me.
From ATI though, I've heard only negative stuff. Same from Matrox, whos Linux support seems to be an utter joke.
Can anybody confirm or debunk this about the new ATI drivers?

--
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca

Re:The real question is: by Jagasian · 2004-03-06 05:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

What would be the point of Linux if it was all closed source? For many people, "open" is why they use software like Linux, and they want to minimize the amount of closed technology they use.
Re:The real question is: by bolverk · 2004-03-06 08:30 · Score: 3, Interesting

Same from Matrox, whos Linux support seems to be an utter joke.

OK, so not only do they provide drivers, but they provide *source* code under a license that allows much of it to be incorporated directly into XFree86 and you call that an utter joke?

Damn, man, what will you accept?

ftp://ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/archive/linux/2003/ mg adrivers-3.0-src.tgz

I run OpenBSD on non-i386 hardware. It's support like this that makes Matrox the only real option for me. I mean, try to get the nVidia Linux kernel module and binary XFree86 module running on OpenBSD/alpha.

Re:However, open source == better bug finding/fixi by Stevyn · 2004-03-06 05:23 · Score: 2

So you're saying that because someone found a bug in windows (surprise fucking surprise), then everything should be open?

I agree with the parent, graphics drivers do a lot more than say modem drivers and probably have a lot of secrets that ati would not want to get out into the open, pun intended. ATI sells hardware, not software. But the software is what makes the hardware run so well and therefore is just as important to them as the hardware. If ATI spends a couple million on research only to have nvidia steal it, it's bad for ATI. Doing this keeps the competition no matter what you communists believe (not you necessarily, but you know what I mean).

It's still an improvement by Gary+Destruction · 2004-03-06 05:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

Did you see ATI or nVidia providing drivers for Linux years ago? Linux's acceptance has earned it the recognition it needs from big time hardware manufacturers. Sure the drivers might not be open source, but at least they exist. And companies like IBM embracing Linux could act as a catalyst for future hardware support.

Re:No. by dinivin · 2004-03-06 05:25 · Score: 2, Informative

Why do people keep spouting this BS? It took nVidia a full two years to incorporate 3Dfx technology into their own products when they bought all the 3Dfx IP. By this time, the entire industry had moved on.

Maybe you should actually research these things before you spout out crap, you pretentious fucking idiot.

Dinivin

RPM2targz by cuban321 · 2004-03-06 05:27 · Score: 3, Informative

One suggested way to compile and install the ATI drivers is to use a package called rpm2targz.

Just run it on the rpm
untar the tar.gz to /
cd lib/modules/fglrx
cd build_mod
./make.sh
cd ..
./make_install.sh
Modify your XF86Config-4 or run fglrxconfig

That should be it. If you have AGP 8x you really should use Kernel 2.6.X. You can get it to work with 2.4.X but it's a pain. Search google for 2.4.X.

Daniel

Consider using DRI driver. by Jacek+Poplawski · 2004-03-06 05:29 · Score: 3, Informative

ATI driver is closed source. It means that after installing you will have one piece of system (kernel module!) without source available. It makes your system not 100% free. It is almost same situation like with nVidia. Almost, because ATI driver it's little different - without all win32 shit inside.

I am pro-Radeon, because ATI released almost-complete (without HyperZ!) specification for older Radeons (r100 and r200), but I am not going to buy their new cards (with r300). If you have old one - I recommend using open source DRI drivers.

Why buy Ati? by mao+che+minh · 2004-03-06 05:35 · Score: 2, Insightful

Because Ati cards are better and cheaper than nVidia.

You see, a vast majority of people buy better graphic cards in order to make video games running on the Windows operating system run better. Whether or not the drivers are open source does not matter to this vast majority. What matters is price and performance.

You can get a Radeon 9600XT 256MB for roughly $170. This card performs as well as a $300 nVidia card. Other Radeon cards, such as the 9700, perform better than their $50-$75 more expensive nVidia counterparts.

I am an open source proponent. I push Linux at work and at play. But, I know that open source has its place, and frankly, it shouldn't matter to anyone if a graphics card manufacturer opens up their drivers or not. If that irrelevant fact actually bothers you, than the issue lies within you, not the company.

Re:Why ATI? by furballphat · 2004-03-06 05:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

Will you people please stop your whining and bitching? They are giving away drivers for Linux, that is sympathising with open source. When someone gives you something, it is courteous to say thank you, not complain that they didn't violate countless agreements and give away trade secrets just so you stupid Stalmanites can sleep slightly easier at night.

confusing the meaning of free again? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-06 05:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

Think free-as-in-speech.

That's relevent regardless of the price of either
software or hardware.

Cost-as-in-money is not everything.

Curious by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-06 05:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

This is not a troll. I'm new to Linux, and one of the things that surprised me about it was the fact that the graphics drivers are dependent on the window system. Isn't this bass ackward? I would think that the drivers would be dependent on the hardware only, and that the window system would be a layer above the drivers.

Re:Curious by gnuman99 · 2004-03-06 06:47 · Score: 2, Informative

This is the way that nVidia writes their drivers. The part of the driver that they distribute in source form is the *glue* between Linux hardware API and the driver.

The 2D drivers for X and Windows glue is not nearly as difficult to write as the actual drivers which are device (video card) dependant.

Too bad they lost me as a customer long ago by xutopia · 2004-03-06 05:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

cause NVIDIA was the first to release drivers for XFree and I have gotten used to NVIDIA line of products as a result.

Not new by ebeneazer · 2004-03-06 05:58 · Score: 2, Informative

This is news? I downloaded those exact drivers from the ATI site 2 months ago (exact same driver version for XFree 4.3). No telling how long they were there before I got them. In fairness to ATI at least get the release date information correct before implying that they have been taking forever to respond. The poster should say, I just discovered that these drivers were released, not say they were released today. They weren't. Not news, no definitely not.

OpenGL is used for more than games! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-06 06:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's used for 3D modelling, for which there are a few open source applications now. It can be used for some extreme 2D accelleration, too.

Displaying HD video will make many a XVideo overlay driver puke. Using OpenGL instead may work, and in some cases work faster.

Do I here someone saying "No one uses Linux for video, and certainly not HD"? You're wrong. Of course, the kind of shit we have to put up with from NVidia and ATI (and Matrox, too, I think) makes Linux a marginal choice for such applications.

The apologists are just too willing to defend the hardware manufacturers because they provided drivers for their platform. Anybody using another platform must be weird, eh? Anybody using hw-accelerated GL for something else than gaming is weird, too, of course.

Empathising with weird* people is hard, I know. But it won't hurt if you try.

* People with other interests than you

Re:No. by iminplaya · 2004-03-06 06:25 · Score: 3, Funny

My, my...I didn't know that throwing around insults like that could garner so many points. Let me see if I can do it...Ummm...Errr..."You fart sucking, blithering idiot, I hope all your teeth fall out, except one...so you get a tooth ache!! How's that? Will it get me at least a three?

Now for something completely different...How 'bout them Cubs?...No, seriously, Everybody knows deep inside that open is better than closed, and cooperation is better than competition. It allows ideas to be built on other ideas to make it all better. You money grubbing corporate bastards :-)

--
What?

Re:However, open source == better bug finding/fixi by canajin56 · 2004-03-06 06:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's not even a question of what they WANT. If they are anything like nVidia, they CAN'T open them up because they licence technology from other firms, and can't publish their licenced code.

--
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI

Not about stealing the technology by AllenChristopher · 2004-03-06 06:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

It isn't just about stelaing the technology. ATI and nVidia both have support for future features in their drivers. For example, nVidia just added PCIX support to their detonator drivers, even without any available cards on the market which need it.

Imagine actually looking at the comments of code that's designed for internal use at ATI... this goes way beyond reverse engineering. I'm sure the code for the drivers says all sorts of helpful things like "we use a 24-bit number here because we've committed to 24-bit floating point for the R-V4xx line in the forseeable future..."

That's a naive and simple example, but it demonstrates the concept. There's way more in that code than just the variables and algorithms you get from reverse-engineering. Stripping out all sensitive comments to open-source the drivers is an insane amount of work.

Once you have that information, sure, it's too late to incorporate it into your cards. nVidia isn't going to say "cancel the tape-out! we just read the comments in the new open-source driver!" But it might give their marketing people a lead on how to spin things. Open-source mean openness in more than source, and I can understand any conventional company being loathe to give in to that.

FireGL?!?! by HeX86 · 2004-03-06 06:56 · Score: 2, Interesting

FireGL drivers are optimized for cad or 3d modeling applications which primarily push polygons.

Add textures and FireGL sucks. I beleive there's win32 firegl drivers too.

ATI needs to make Catalyst drivers for linux. Until then, the high end ATI cards will never perform well.

Non-OSS arguments don't hold water by BigBuckHunter · 2004-03-06 07:01 · Score: 4, Interesting

I am trying to grasp why manufacturers don't open source their drivers, or in the case of NVidia, the hardware specs to their GPUs. The hear the same feedback from the SD community all the time, and it appears that there are two main arguments.

1: They can't OSS the driver cause there is propritary info (patented S3TC and such)

2: They can OSS and release their specs to projects like DRI as it would reveal stuff to the competition.

I say nonsense. These two arguments seem to equate OSS to GPL.

1: NV and ATI could make up their own OSS license. Lets call it the "We Need To Hide Stuff" license. They take their existing codebase and print it out. They then take a black magic marker to the printout and cross off all of the IP related stuff. They then scan the documents into Acrobat distiller and release it as a PDF. Add a statement that the code is their property under the WNTHS license and cannot be used by others, and all changes should be sent to NVidia. Problem solved. It's OSS.

2: I have never seen a processor designer "hide" their chip specs. Intel doesn't. AMD doesn't. What makes NV different? Unless they have unlicensed hardware in their product, there is no reason for them to hide what they have.

Are there any other reasons that I am missing?

Thank you for your time,
BBH

Re:Non-OSS arguments don't hold water by DeathPenguin · 2004-03-06 07:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

This guy seems to have it right:

"Suppose you create and design feature X into your chipset. You might find, via a lawsuit, that feature X is patented by company Y. I've talked to vendors who would like to open their hardware but are scared to do so for this very reason -- they might have designed a patented feature into their hardware without realizing it."
Re:Non-OSS arguments don't hold water by LordHunter317 · 2004-03-06 08:40 · Score: 2

1: NV and ATI could make up their own OSS license. Lets call it the "We Need To Hide Stuff" license. They take their existing codebase and print it out. They then take a black magic marker to the printout and cross off all of the IP related stuff. They then scan the documents into Acrobat distiller and release it as a PDF. Add a statement that the code is their property under the WNTHS license and cannot be used by others, and all changes should be sent to NVidia. Problem solved. It's OSS.
This isn't open source. This is you can look at our code, but you can't do shit with it source. Its not even compilable without those confidental components. You fail to show what this gains us. People clamoring for open source drivers need the whoel source, and in a form you can build in. What does this give you?
2: I have never seen a processor designer "hide" their chip specs. Intel doesn't. AMD doesn't. What makes NV different? Unless they have unlicensed hardware in their product, there is no reason for them to hide what they have.
WTF are you talking about? The inner workings of AMD and Intel's chips are very much far away from the public eye. The public porition is the ABI and API to use the processor, which has to be made public -- otherwise no one would be able to use the processor.

This should have been about v3.7.1 drivers, but... by antdude · 2004-03-06 07:24 · Score: 3, Informative

v3.7.1 driver was PULLED a few days ago due to many complaints. See this ATI Linux driver forum for the complaints. I had issues with both v3.7.0 (Xscreensaver's OpenGL didn't work) and v3.7.1 (X server didn't start at all) drivers on my old Red Hat Linux 7.2 box.

--
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).

Bullshit by niko9 · 2004-03-06 07:45 · Score: 4, Informative

...writes "ATI has finally released official drivers for XFree 4.3.0 and updated their Linux drivers to 3.7.0 for supported XFree versions,

They have had support for 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3 for the last six to eight months at least.

...users who have ATI Radeon cards can now benefit from an official release.

If you read the README these are all "officially unsuopported"

Unfortunately, ATI still insists on using RPM exclusively...

Again, if anybody cared to read their instructions, there are specific details on how to get these RPM's converted to debs via alien.

The only real news concerning ATI and Linux drivers isn't even mentioned here. I wonder how this passed as news, since these unofficial drivers have been out for the longest.

The real news is that ATI released 3.7.1 on the fourth. There was only one sentence in the changlelog: "Support added for the Radeon 9800XT"

Of course this, and the fact that that the new driver trashed alot of X servers, sent the Rage3d crown into a flame frenzy. ATI promised linux driver updates every two months, and after waiting and waiting (with numerous issued datailed here)
they added one ChipID for the 9800XT which results in some unstable X servers for people who don;t even have 9800XTs?

As a result the 3.7.1 drivers were pulled several hours after being released with no explanation given.

I'm happy they are making an effort, but their enthusiasm seems misguided at best. After declaring that they re writing the ATI drivers from scratch (as oppesed from upgrading the Schneider drivers) they rename them from 3.2 to 3.7? What? Shoudn't the rewritten drivers from scratch be labeled a alpha or beta release at best?

I currently have two radeon cards, and have gone back using the open source Xfree 2d driver and dual booting into windows for playing games until this mess gets sorted out.

Proprietary and quality are two different things. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-06 08:15 · Score: 2, Interesting

I see a lot of people here are assuming that just because something is proprietary and/or comes from the same company that does the hardware it is assumed to be of higher quality than if it was done by someone else or in an open fasion.

As a person whom is working for one of the biggest hw/sw companies in the world and has been contributing code to some of our products, I'd say that we do things a bit different at times.
For one thing, QA and legal processes are much different than in the OSS world. The QA is extensive and a scheduled activity in a project instead of letting the users (alpha or beta teams ) find most bugs. This is just one way to do QA which might be considered a legacy of *old school* corporate development and will probably continue for quite a while longer due to many reasons.

As for the quality of code... We more or less come from the same background as most *hackers*, meaning we attended the same classes in school, read the same books on patterns, languages, design etc. as most other people in the field. We also are just human incapable of perfection and do not envision ourselves as incapable of error, error which could be spotted by peer review.

Unfortunately, peer review is still just in it's infancy at many places in the corporate landscape and there are a lot of prejudice to cope with before that process can be adopted (reasons which I believe a lot of you can imagine.. See Dilbert :-).

It's true however that we have a slight advantage like sometimes being able to talk directly to the person who did stuff X which we happen to depend on and/or are tasked with wrapping in a software layer. However, most often we just design according to specs without contact with other HW/SW teams unless QA or unit testing reveals that the implementation is not in line with the specs, in which case we need to join forces with the people who did component X.

I for one would welcome a more open approach and it seems one of our directors of technology also understands the gain in peer review and having the code available to a larger audience. The result thus far has been that a few products have been moved to an internal sourceforge-like system/repository, to which all employees can apply for access. As we have a lot of code-litterate people, opening up the code of these products will no-doubt spur a lot of innovation, extensions and a quicker "time to market" of functionality our customers or even our own people crave for.

Please, do not assume that just because something is close sourced it's of higher quality. It's just code written by people, people who are probably a lot like yourself...

Insults by Overly+Critical+Guy · 2004-03-06 08:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

Is it just me, or have Slashdot posters gotten generally more insulting lately? It's immature and anti-social. "You pretentious fucking idiot." Way to bolster your argument there, pal.

--
"Sufferin' succotash."

As a matter of fact... by rsilvergun · 2004-03-06 09:28 · Score: 3, Funny

someone is holding a gun to my head and saying "Buy an ATI video card or die!" Send help now.

--
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/

Re:So, what IS the best graphics card for gnu/linu by niko9 · 2004-03-06 10:56 · Score: 2, Informative

IS there a decent card for gnu/linux with:

* hardware acceleration
* decent performance
* support for multiple simultaneous X displays
* open source drivers

Check out the DRI page. Seems ATi has reelased the specs to their older Radeon cards; you can get hardware 3D with Radeons upto a 9200 series. Not to mention fixed Xvideo support.

You can get a 9200 with 128MB of RAM and DVI for 44 bucks on Pricewatch. Another bonus is that their fanless; that's if a 6000rpm fan bothers you.

Re:Just because you support an open source OS... by Grievre · 2004-03-06 16:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

You can't support an open source operating system with non-Free code. When you're writing a binary driver for Linux and X, you are not in fact supporting it.

Slashdot Mirror

ATI Releases Drivers for XFree 4.3.0

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