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Intel Open Sources Graphics Drivers

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the running-scared-from-amd-ati dept.

PeterBrett writes "Intel's Keith Packard announced earlier today that Intel was open sourcing graphics drivers for their new 965 Express Chipset family graphics controllers. From the announcement: 'Designed to support advanced rendering features in modern graphics APIs, this chipset family includes support for programmable vertex, geometry, and fragment shaders. By open sourcing the drivers for this new technology, Intel enables the open source community to experiment, develop, and contribute to the continuing advancement of open source 3D graphics.' The new drivers, available from the Linux Graphics Drivers from Intel website, are licensed under the GPL for Linux kernel drivers, and MIT license for XOrg 2D & 3D rendering subsystems."

3 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wow. by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, this isn't for discrete graphics cards, right - it's for the built-in graphics in the 965 family chipsets. That's my understanding, anyway.

    Still, a very nice move.

  2. Re:Happy now? by Ruie · · Score: 5, Informative
    I can't say I particularly care (not using any on-board graphics)

    One area where on-board graphics is important are notebooks - especially those thin and light ones. A choice of video card is rare, especially if one cares about battery life.

    Traditionally, Linux support of new notebook video chips was very uncertain, as it is not possible to get a new notebook with a 2 year old graphics controller. Thus the fact that all-Intel notebooks are a safe choice (with not only 2d, but also 3d and wireless working under Linux) is a truly wonderful news.

    Also, the new Xserver features have to be implemented on something before there are binary blobs that support them. So having an open code to experiment with, say, Render, impacts other graphics cards as well.

  3. Independent Nvidia open driver effort - Nouveau by Hobart · · Score: 5, Informative

    This seems like a good on-topic thread in which to mention the freedesktop.org (X.org folks) effort to write a 100% open source 3D driver for the NVidia cards -- nouveau

    http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/

    If you're an owner of an nVidia card, please do all you can to help contribute! They appear to be suprisingly far along.

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