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How To Request Better ATI Linux Support
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Larabel, the editor of Phoronix, has outlined some strategies for contacting ATI's customers (OEM/ODM/AIBs) to seek ATI Linux fglrx driver improvements. He opines that contacting ATI or AMD directly is the 'wrong approach.' He also states, 'I know for certain that at least one major OEM would like to see improved Linux support but is afraid that the Windows support would then be at risk.' Michael cites examples from the past where Lenovo had sought improved Linux display drivers, which resulted in several new features last year. He provides links to the feedback pages for a number of the vendors to whom ATI actually does listen."
Simple: If you buy a Linux desktop, take care that it has a graphic card from NVidia. These drivers may not be open source, however they are easy to install, work and have a decent performance.
Get yogether with your buddies and collect a pile of ATI and competitor proofs of purchase.
With the ATI ones say that you are a customer and would really like to see Linux support. With all the competitor ones, say that you would have bought ATI but for the driver issue. make sure you youtube it, blog it,...
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Is there an actuall graphics card out there that IS capable of doing the eyecandy stuff, it don't have to do games, that is fully opensource with absolutely no binary bits.
I used to think matrox cards were the way to go but even they have a binary HAL bit that you need if you want the more advanced features needed for xgl and the likes.
Anyway the matrox cards are not supported anyway, as they are listed as missing certain features that are required.
The only lists I ever find mention ONLY nVidia and Ati cards. Yet I have seen some references that Intel was working on opensource drivers for its cards or at least hired some developers to do so.
So, is there a graphics card out there that I can use that is simply fully opensource, no hidden tricks, that is capable enough to give me the candy?
Because that would I think send the strongest message of all, if everyone who runs linux just buys a fully opensource card the others would be sure to take notice.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Intels i810 and above are. Of course you can't get any graphics cards with them, since they're onboard solutions, so you're stuck with an Intel processor too. Which may or may not be a drawback.
at least one major OEM would like to see improved Linux support but is afraid that the Windows support would then be at risk.
Hmm, could it be Dell?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
The Intel onboard video cards are quite sufficient for modern Linux desktop.
They have completely and 100% open and free software drivers.
They are ahead of Nvidia when it comes to Linux desktop support. They will support sleep better, then will support hotplugging monitors better (when support for that sort of thing is added in X.org 7.3).
They supported technology like AIGLX before Nvidia.
They are quite fast enough for 3D desktop. The onboard GMA 950 can comfortably run either compiz or beryl 3d desktops with high efficiency.
As the display technology for Linux progresses the Intel onboard video cards will be the first.
Other advantages over Nvidia propriatory drivers include that they are much more inexpensive. The motherboards they come on have much better Linux support then the typical motherboards you find Nvidia onboard video drivers.
Laptops with Intel onboard video drivers will have advantages in price and battery life as well as stability when it comes to sleep and other advanced power management features.
The advantage that Nvidia video cards have over Intel is performance.
If you require performance for LInux desktop that goes beyond free software 3d games and good 3d desktop support and have requirements for newer video games or need 3d performance for your work then you have no choice but to buy nvidia.
There exists no open source 3d drivers that can support high end 3d performance nearly as well as what Nvidia provides.
But if your looking for cost effective and stable (much more stable then Nvidia) 2d/3d performance then Intel onboard video cards are the logical choice.
Plus they are open source.
Using Intel hardware I have absolutely no need for any propriatory software to drive my hardware. No SATA drivers, no video drivers, no wireless drivers, no nic card drivers, or no audio drivers need to be proprietory in any way.
(Intel is no freind of Free software, or realy even open source. They just see the financial advantage to supporting Linux properly.)
The current chipset for Linux to look for if you want as trouble free install as possible is the Intel 945g with the integrated GMA 950 video device. For non-bog-standard resolutions (ie widescreen) you will need to use the 915resolution hack for now, but this should go away in the future.
For special setups (for onboard devices) such as TV/componate/HD-out, DVI-out, and even dual DVI out you can purchase ADD2 cards for those features which plug into the PCI express port and interface the onboard intel cards. I don't know how well these work, but I am told by X.org folks that they _should_ work and will be _very_ interested if they don't.
I don't know if you can get Intel graphic cards for your desktop (I got one onboard on my laptop, the 915GM one), but it works like a charm, actually better on Linux (out of the box) than on Windows (I had to hunt the driver as I lost the drivers CD).
If you want Linux drivers, you have to let these companies know:
ASUS
Lenovo
HP
Power Color
HIS Tech
Sapphire
The suggested letter is:
Subject: Product Feedback
To whom it may concern,
I recently purchased one of your [graphics cards || notebooks || desktops] that had contained an ATI GPU. While I realize your products are catered toward Microsoft Windows users as they are your largest consumer base, I wish to use this product with Linux. I had used the [your model number for their product] with the ATI Linux drivers, and while they have improved a great deal recently, I still feel there is much room for improvement. The drivers in their current form run much slower under Linux than Windows, lack support for AIGLX (a visual desktop feature), and other features found within the Windows Catalyst drivers but not Linux.
I do realize you may not officially support Linux and that you have limited control over the development of these drivers, but I would kindly ask that you forward this comment to AMD and that you ask them to channel additional resources to the development of these drivers. In good time you should make Linux support from AMD a requirement. Another step that I would hope to see is including the ATI Linux display drivers on your support/driver CD. As the adoption of Linux on desktops continues to increase, I hope you are able to jointly improve your Linux presence with ATI/AMD.
[your name]
now who do we contact to get them to write good windows drivers?
IF ATI had open source drivers, even if they sucked as much as the current FLGLX drivers I would recommend them over Nvidia.
This is because if they did have open source drivers, they wouldn't remain bad for very long.
Currently all free softawre drivers for Nvidia and ATI (except for 'nv' driver) has to be reverse engineered from hardware that is purchased well after they are relased to the public.
therefore it's a miracle they work at all. But as it stands open source drivers exist for R200 up though the R480 video cards (the ATI 8700 thru ATI x800) and although those drivers are slow, they do offer good 3d desktop support and are more stable then ATI's propriatory stuff.
....You linux cocksuckers ain't worth shit. Got it? Hey! That was uncalled for. When it comes to linux people buying top end video cards we are talking maybe 10% of 10% of PC users. Now there's a market worth chasing! (figures made up, but that seems normal for /.)
Better yet, the hardware manufacturers should give thought to the large number of Linux systems out here, and provide drivers on that basis alone. They might be surprised to find that their sales increase!
It stands to reason that most people would rather buy the card with decent driver support, than the one without.
This one is obvious. I haven't bought an ATI card in years because their linux drivers suck. Whenever I bother to read about it, both Nvidia and ATI are on par as far as performance goes, and so why on earth would I buy a card from a company that gives me shitty drivers when I can buy from Nvidia, which treats linux users on the same level as Windows?
Here's an improvement -- open the source!! It lets others improve on the drivers, and Linux isn't the only operating system that could benefit from it!
How about requesting ATI/AMD to take care of the already existing free X11 drivers, by giving informations about newer cards and manpower to develop all features, so that we have something readable (and working), and fixable by the community ?
I doubt that it would work. As far as ATI is concerned, the market for people who are (A) building their computer from components, _and_ (B) run Linux on it, _and_ (C) didn't buy a cheap 9200 or 5200, is very very very small. Especially look at that last part. Keeping even 1000 people satisfied when they bought the cheapest chip and made you barely a couple of bucks each, hardly justifies the salaries of a driver team.
I know, we all like to think that the customer is king, and that just because you have a proof of purchase for an old $30 graphics card, it means that a major corporation must bend over backwards for you and catter to your every whim. They should instantly hire a big team to code whatever you fancy today, open-source all their programs... Why, they should even come over and do your laundry. Dream on.
When cattering to mass-markets, you have to think in terms of ROI. If it costs X dollars to do something, will you even get those X dollars back? Is it likely that you'll even make a profit? If not, it's actually smarter to ignore that market segment.
Drivers nowadays are complex and expensive things, and frankly the Linux hobbyist market is tiny. And then they're likely to buy the lowest end card, or not even that as they're busy bitching about how binary drivers are evil.
So, basically, fully expect someone at ATI to at most have a chuckle as they dump your letter into the garbage bin.
OEM's are a whole other affair, because they move millions of boxes. If one of those says "we need linux drivers", then:
A. they probably know what their many corporate customers want. Dunno, maybe some major corporation or government department decided to standardize their desktop on Linux and actually needs 3D accelerated drivers. Basically if a big OEM bitches, they probably aren't doing it out of zealotry and fanboyism, but they know something about demand that you don't. You listen and take notes when those guys speak. And,
B. even if not, you want to listen to those anyway, because they're the guys who make your money. They're the "R" in "ROI". The last thing you want is Dell or IBM (Lenovo) standardizing exclusively on nVidia cards because you told them to fuck off when they complained that lack of Linux drivers hamstrings their server sales. If that were to happen, you'll see a big dip on your income chart, and the mere rumour would make your shares dive and the shareholders demand blood and rolling heads.
Basically you'll have a chance with your proofs of purchase when you fit at least one of the two criteria, preferrably both.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Wow, an economical genius has spoken. An idiot like me could come to the conclusion that if there are two companies, which both almost hold 50% of the market, those few linux geeks might tip the balance in favour of those company, which might catch those additional 10% of PC users.
Especially since those linux geeks are no normal Joe Publics, which are content with the equipment they get at Wall-Mart and cannot even name the stuff they have in their machines.
Always a good idea to chase away potential information multiplicators.
Intel and XGI are both modern manufacturers who provide fully Open Source drivers. Older cards include S3 Savage, Matrox cards older than the G450 (The binary Matrox HAL was dropped some time ago) and 3Dfx Voodoo 3,4 and 5 cards.
The Intel and XGI cards are decent but not exactly power-houses in 3D performance, but they're perfectly usable for Beryl or Compiz and the odd OpenGL game on Linux. Don't expect them to beat even older ATI or nVidia cards, though.
As a footnote, I'd love to be able to recommend the newer S3 Deltachrome and Gammachrome cards, which actually have fairly decent 3D performance (Better than XGI and as good as equivalent ATI and nVidia cards in some benchmarks) but S3 refuse to provide any Linux support for these cards, open or otherwise. Even for 2D only. Go figure!
Read up the the The Open Graphics Project.u tOpenGraphics&PHPSESSID=8931c53691f903ace7137362ce 5b1df7 q uentlyAskedQuestions&PHPSESSID=8931c53691f903ace71 37362ce5b1df7 r aphics
http://wiki.duskglow.com//tiki-index.php?page=Abo
The FAQ
http://wiki.duskglow.com//tiki-index.php?page=Fre
Join the mailing list.
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And
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Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I owned an ATI video card, and I switched to a NVidia just after switching to Linux... :-)
At the momente I use official NVidia closed source drivers, but Nouveau is getting better everyday.
CTRL + F Funny ---> I had you!!!
Why should I have to prove to them that I want better support? They should prove to me that they are providing better support. Until then, I will only purchase Intel video.
The Intel 950 GMA is sweet compared to any of ATI's cards with shoddy support.
As someone already said Intel's onboard stuff is the best out there. Especially if you are building a new computer, which propably don't have anything but pci-e slots.
With older hardware there were more options. I have an old Ati Radeon 9200 in my closet, just in case I need AGP graphics card. It's the last Radeon that works completely with open source drivers. (also 7000 and 8500 and 9000 work).
So it doesn't look too good, does it..
Well there is hope. Intel is working on discrete graphics chips. read more here and here.
I believe Intel has no reason to change their Linux friendly policy. So I hope they come up with a decent discrete graphics card and release open source drivers with it.
Since Intel is such a big player it just might encourage others to do the same.
I tell you my experiances.
I am using Debian unstable, which currently uses the X.org 7.1 release.
The drivers that are supplied with that are not well optimized. They are good for compiz and can run Beryl very well, even with high amounts of eye candy except (almost everything turned on) for the one or two features that require special shading support. (basicly water effects).
It is capable of playing Quake2 and Quake3 well.
Return to Castle Wolfenstien is _very_ playable.
Enemy Territory is starting to push it and my currently favorite game, which is a full modification called True Combat: Elite is barely playable (it adds several more advanced features to the ET like HD lighting)
Nexuiz is not realy playable. Tremulous is fine, warsow is very playable. Cube/Cube2 is mostly playable except certain levels.
Benchmarks suggest that they offer decent enough performance for UT2k3 and UT2k4, but I don't know that for a fact.
If you use:
export INTEL_BATCH=1
and run 16bit RGB then everything is mostly playable. Also manually allocating memory to AGP and Texture stuff helps. And then allocating memory to a special buffer will enable HD-sized XV support. (see the 810 man file) A little tweaking is very helpfull. Expect a 75% boost in performance from that alone.
Now X.org, DRI, and Mesa folks (the DRI drivers are basicly made by taking Mesa and accelerating what they can), are working on efficient ways to manage video card memory, which is required for newer cards and usage patterns.
They are working on a special branch of DRI drivers called 915tex_dri.so (were the normal is just 915_dri.so). This adds lots of optimizations and efficient dynamic memory management and allocation. Using this you get quite a performance boost over the default drivers.
ET is very playable. As is True Combat: Elite and you rarely get framerates that drop below 20FPS. I keep my framerates limited at 70FPS and most of the time it's sitting at that limit.
If your using LCD display there is no point beyond having the limit set at 60 FPS. But you need to have good performance to keep it dropping down under 30FPS for good online play.
So the drivers are definately improving. I am expecting good things to happen with X.org 7.3. But due to the shared memory sceme and lack of accelerated texture and lighting effects these things will never be usefull for gaming, not like most 'gamers' expect.
Now with the GMA X3000 aviable with G965 video cards they will offer acceptable gaming performance once the drivers are optimized. They offer hardware acceleration for texture and lighting effects as well as shader support and other such things.
Technology-wise, at least on paper, they are on par with ATI's and Nvidia's entry-level video cards.
You can find benchmarks on Phoronix for the GMA 3000, which is from the Q965, which is a bit lower end then the X3000. It completely lacks T&L hardware acceleration and other such features. So it's sort of like a X3000 core, but with the GMA 950 features.
The X3000 should perform better then that, by quite a bit, but I don't think right now the drivers are realy all that optimized. Not until the memory management stuff gets worked out. Then it should meet the lower end requirements for Doom3 and Quake4 pretty well. At least enough to be playable.
But realy if your a 'gamer' that is more then casual then Nvidia is about it.
The nice thing about this is that you can get a 945G motherboard right now, get good 3d/2d support and if it doesn't work out for you then a Nvidia card is a easy add on.
Probably with Feisty the G965-based motherboards will probably be a good choice, but unfortunately I don't own one right now for personal testing. If Ubuntu was smart they'd be paying close attention to those chipsets, especially since they will be in the majority of next-generation laptops that people will be trying to use Ubuntu with.
Or you could write to your MP and ask them to push for a new law, obliging manufacturers to provide documentation that would enable the creation of drivers if they want to be allowed to sell their hardware at all.
.....) if they released their details and the competition didn't release theirs. If, however, it was a statutory requirement to provide this information, then nobody would get an unfair advantage.
If you don't get any harsher a punishment for selling heroin cut with brick dust than you do for selling pure heroin, then some drug dealers are going to cut it -- which means that if they want to stay in business, all dealers end up having to adulterate their product. The consumer doesn't know what they're buying; and the end result is often either poisoning from all the adulterants, or an overdose due to a batch of gear being stronger than they were expecting.
With graphics cards, the argument that manufacturers will use is that they might give away a competitive advantage (as though they weren't all reverse-engineering the living daylights out of one another's products anyway
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
It's who you ask, not how... although being nice always helps:
Dirk Meyer
His executive bio is here. Please ask him, nicely, to open the hardware documentation, and if he could provide some resources (people, money, hardware) to the X.org team so they can build drivers.
I gave up asking for and waiting for ATI to wake up to Linux. If they don't want to play on linux they don't play on my computer. When I buy computers I do make sure I at least mention to the sales staff that I want Nvidia or Intel because all other gfx cards have crappy Linux drivers, I hope I may be educating the salesperson so they know if someone else mentions running Linux they'll offer them a real gfx card. I don't buy from big names, because then I get big headaches, and bad support. So my hopes of my OEM somehow having any influence over ATI isn't going to happen.
The only thing that really is disappointing me about the ATI proprietary drivers is the lack of composite support! Even the open source drivers have this, hell my crappy work Matrox card can run AIGLX/beryl. The open source drivers are great but don't have enough functionality (or speed) for what I wanna do, the ATI ones do, but I cant use the nice desktop eye candy I'd like. I thought when they started to do monthly releases, this would be one of the first things they'd implement... I'm still waiting.
You hit the spot. At the end, that constant whining gets frustrating. Those stupid kids who does not get out of their mom basements think they are a majority... Of course this is slashdot and this is where all of them come to whine and cheer up each other. Groupthinking or Sheepthinking as I like to call it.
If these companies do not want or cant release they open source drivers then great, it is up to you to buy or not to buy their products, but whining is not going to solve anything.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I've never seen an Intel onboard video card on any AMD compatible motherboard...
Nothing to see here. Move along.
I use an ATI radeon 9000 64 Mb with the opensource drivers and it runs the eyecandy fine. Newer radeons are supported by the r300 driver. Not the latest, but newer than mine, up to 9800 or the x800 if I remember correctly.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Rumor has it (forum.thinkpads.com) that we'll see Lenovo Thinkpads move away from ATI in May.
Since you must know the details (else how do you make the assertion), please let us know WHO'S IP is in there?
NVidia used to say it was Sun. Sun was approached and said "there is nothing NVidia license from us that cannot be open sourced".
Now, maybe it is Sun technology but NVidia haven't licensed it, so they don't want Sun to know...
Bu in any case, who is it, what does it cover (I.e. what is missing if we don't have it: it may not be worth anything to us) and we'll ask them.
Unless you don't know and you're just making shit up.
I have put off buying ATi in favor of nVidia for years. nVidia used to have the hands down better hardware, and the drivers have been outstanding for years. ATi has gotten the slight upper hand on hardware for the price point now most of the time with slight model deviations between them and nvidia. However, what's the point of better hardware if you can't take advantage of it?
You're not right about this, as HAL is entirely optional. I run the Matrox G550 PCIe card *without HAL* (pure source-based Gentoo distro with the standard G550/mga kernel/X11 driver) and have all the fancy OpenGL eye-candy goodness.
But it gets even better than mere 2D eye candy. You can even run full 3D OpenGL games on this card perfectly happily and at decent frame rates, as long as the game is coded efficiently for the standard OpenGL pipeline and doesn't require programmable shaders. As an example, I run the old FPS game Cube on this card in a slowish P4, at a very acceptable 50 FPS, and it's extremely snappy like FPS games need to be.
So don't believe everything you hear. The pure open-source Matrox driver works just great, *without* HAL.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Dell seems big on ATI these days (I wanted a Dell core duo notebook with an nvidia card that wasnt too expensive and didnt find anything on there Canadian site) so maybe they could push for better drivers?
..at least you didn't purchase an sgi prism which probably cost us $15k+, has dual ati firegl's, uses the same shitty fglrx drivers, with all the same shitty problems found on ati's unofficial bugzilla.
If you require performance for LInux desktop that goes beyond free software 3d games and good 3d desktop support and have requirements for newer video games or need 3d performance for your work then you have no choice but to buy nvidia.
... cue car analogy...
There exists no open source 3d drivers that can support high end 3d performance nearly as well as what Nvidia provides.
But if your looking for cost effective and stable (much more stable then Nvidia) 2d/3d performance then Intel onboard video cards are the logical choice.
He concedes the performance point, but merely says Intel is fast enough for desktop use. I don't play doom, so I really could care less if my Intel video is fast enough to play it.
It is fast enough in the same way that my 92 Accord is fast enough to get me to work and back every day. It isn't as fast as a (insert high performance sports car here), but it gets me where I am going reliably and quickly enough (faster than one can legally go in my jurisdiction).
Seriously, I have installed ubuntu linux on 3 different laptops with ATI graphics and several desktops also with ATI graphics boards - all of them newer than radeon 9500. I just followed the guide for ATI boards on ubuntu wiki and all worked like expected.
Could we please do away with the ATI drivers doesn't work on linux mantra?
Yes you WILL have problems with the fglrx drivers and older boards, but so fucking what? Those boards are 4+ years old, buy a new one!
Aren't these SGI drivers redeveloped by SGI. If SGI can't make them work, then how can the OSS crowd make them work.
If one is only interested in a free (libre) graphic driver for Linux, one could check the the status of hardware accelerated 3D support on the Direct Rendering Infrastructure project wiki.
Here is, more or less, the lay of the land as of today:
Intel: i810 and newer are officially supported by Intel
ATI: Radeon 7000 up to X850 offer 3D support through a reverse engineered driver. Generally better performing than Intel although not quite as stable.
VIA: On-board Unichrome video has a free driver included with X. Not sure if VIA has helped with development or not but I had working 3D out-of-the-box running Ubuntu on a VIA EPIA motherboard that I purchased recently.
Matrox: G200, G400, G450 and G550 have accelerated 3D support with X driver. Not sure if Matrox had any hand in this.
nVIDIA: There is currently NO hardware accelerated 3D with a free driver for any nVIDIA chipset. This may change in the future due to efforts by the Nouveau project but nVIDIA is definitely not helping the situation.
So if you want to reward a vendor for Linux support, buy Intel. If you want higher performance and a free driver, buy ATI. If you already own nVIDIA, help the Nouveau project.
And ATI may have learned from NVidia's mistake and haven't said whose IP.
ATI can be making it up and there is no proof that there IS. NVidia's past claims show that mere assertion doesn't mean anything. So why did this guy say that ATI *and* NVidia have secret IP in their things if all he had to go on was "ATI said they did"? Surely he should have said "ATI say they have other people's licensed IP" and then I'd have said that ATI should tell us who.
But then again, he wouldn't have been able to say that we should have gone to this nebulous "third party" and tell them to open up the specs, would he, cos he and we don't know, ATI doesn't say and if he is just going from ATI's statement, he knows this.
So is the secret IP sooooo secret not even the owner of this IP can be mentioned?
Is this like the secret laws you have in the states that are so secret you can be told you're breaking the law but not what law it is you broke...?
I'll bet there's an interesting political battle going on inside Intel over the release of discrete graphics chips.
On the one hand, it's probably clear that the CPU groups of both Intel and AMD understand Linux, Open Source, and have enough of the "got religion" involved to behave in the right way. Since the graphics group is growing up inside a CPU company, the don't have the ATI/nVidia "closed religion," or at least not in a big enough way to wag the CPU-oriented dog. In this light, it's pretty obvious that SOMEONE inside Intel knows that if/when they bring out a decent open-source capable graphics card, it's going to sweep its way through Linux purchases. I for one would be ready to put my money where my mouth is, though it all depends on my purchasing schedule.
On the other hand, even recognizing the value of an open source graphics solution and its appeal to the Linux crowd, there are no doubt forces inside Intel that would like to see it kept tied to Intel CPUs and chipsets.
The real question is whether Intel would rather see an Intel graphics solution working with an AMD CPU, or gamble that they can grab the whole kit'n'kaboodle by keeping things tied.
As an aside, it's also pretty clear that though AMD may understand Open Source on the CPU side, that understanding hasn't jumped the fence to the ATI side, yet.
*********************
The strongest message we can send is to buy discrete Intel graphics cards with Open Source drivers, if/when they become available. Buy them discretely or buy them in whatever systems we buy. Vote with our $$$.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I'm using a Radeon 9250 with open source drivers as well which runs beryl just fine. The only problem is I have to unplug my second monitor to do it. Apparently there is a limitation with the driver that it can't handle textures bigger than 2048x2048, and Beryl needs to put one big texture in videoram that spans the entire desktop or something like that. For whatever reason though if I try to run Beryl with multiple monitors it breaks very badly.
Oh well. Maybe next year.
The best way to get get better Linux support from ATI is to ignore them entirely. Even NVidia support is flakey, and rather insulting if you're trying to switch away from Windows. It's so bad that I find myself wishing I had a piece of shite GMA950 onboard vga, instead of my high-end Radeons and GeForces... I really miss the good old days of 3Dfx, with the elegantly svelte Glide API. All it did was triangles and textures, and it did them well! Really when it comes to graphics acceleration, if the big two could just quit their "trade secret" driver bullshit and give us programming specs.. nevermind the crappy ass binary drivers, just tell me how to shove my triangle strips down the GPU's throat and we'll make our own damned drivers. malloc() this, mmap() that.. bada bing!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
With apologies to the original author, something like:
Subject: Product Feedback
Dear[name of important person at AMD],
I recently purchased a [graphics cards || notebooks || desktops] that did not contain an ATI GPU. I learned these products cater to Microsoft Windows users as they are the largest consumer base and I wish to use this product with Linux. Frankly, I haven't purchased an ATI since 19?? because I have learned that if the drivers are not available TODAY it is foolish to expect them in the future. The ATI drivers in their current form run much slower under Linux than Windows, lack support for AIGLX (a visual desktop feature), and other features found within the Windows Catalyst drivers but not the Linux version.
I would kindly ask that you forward this comment to AMD and that you ask them to channel additional resources to the development of these drivers. As the adoption of Linux on desktops continues to increase, I hope you are able to jointly improve the AMD/ATI Linux presence.
[your name]
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
Dammit, the DRI wiki link should point here. That's what I get for rushing.
As a longtime AMD user I think contacting AMD should yield results.
AMD will soon be bundling chipsets and CPU's. Linux users are not huge by volume, but they are a good part of the "technical group" that influence others. Forcing those people to become Intel adherents(the only open source alternative) is not a good business move for AMD.
Actually, I'd have agree here. For your normal desktop stuff, the i915 is pretty darn good.
In linux anyhow (in windows the freakin thing won't even show my accelerated RSS screensavers properly) it actually behaved better than a supposedly higher-end ATI card when using Beryl, and was in fact a fair bit more convenient to setup than even my NVidia card.
As mentioned in an earlier post, I've found the Intel i915 series open-source drivers to be very nice. When setting then up with Beryl on my co-workers computer, I expected them to be laughable, but they turned out to be quite impressive indeed.
I'd guess that they still aren't great for the current generation of games etc, but for desktop acceleration, and some old games, Intel's commitment to Open-Source has been quite impressive. Of all the companies out there, I've found that they're the most FOSS-friendly, with OSS drivers for almost all their Soundcards, NIC's, Wireless NIC's, and Graphics cards.
Seriously, fuck 'em. If they will not provide Linux support, I will not buy their hardware nor recommend them to any of the numerous people who ask me for advice. Sure, they do not care that they lost several sales... but then, I don't care that some manufacturers are moronic. *shrug*
especially since being bought out by AMD. A while back I stopping playing games on the PC, and I wanted good tv out since I use my computer for a home entertainment system, so I switched to ATI, figuring I'd have nothing but trouble with games but at least I'd get decent tv out ( Nvidia's tv out, at least on their cards from the TI 4600 line and back, suck). Anyway, I've been pleasantly surprised. It's played everything I've thrown at it out of my older games, and plenty of newer games just fine, and I haven't had a driver crash yet. Yeah, I've got a 9600, which is older and probably more stable, but I've heard good things about the x1300 and x1600 line too. Frankly, if I were Nvidia, I'd be worried.
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If you own stocks, and if your friends also owns stocks, and a whole lotta nerdy little Linux users owns stocks, they can make demands. Isn't stranger than that :)
R300 cards work in open source now. They had to be reverse engineered though.
Yeah we are a small group us Linux nerds but an influential small group when it comes to tech so just stop buying ATI and recommend Nvidia to anyone who asks. And watch how fast things get better.
Well there is hope. Intel is working on discrete graphics chips. read more here and here.
I believe Intel has no reason to change their Linux friendly policy. So I hope they come up with a decent discrete graphics card and release open source drivers with it.
Since Intel is such a big player it just might encourage others to do the same.
Perhaps, perhaps not. There are certainly those that argue that in order to produce a high-performance 3D card, Intel will have to license certain technologies that don't allow open-source implementations. If they can make it happen great, but I wouldn't count on it...
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I've simply never understood why they don't just release the source for their Linux drivers under a GPL compatible licence. I think ATI and NVidia both need to come to terms with the fact that they are HARDWARE manufacturers and should eliminate as many barriers to usage as possible. If they were to release the drivers as GPL, then the Xorg/DRI people could commit the drivers to the respective trees and would save a great deal of maintenance efforts on the part of these companies. It just boggles my mind that hardware companies don't "get over themselves" when it comes to the amount of restriction they place on their drivers. I realize I'm just restating the obvious here, but while ATI's fglrx drivers may not be the best offering from the company, it'd be a *great* starting point and would eliminated a great deal of work that is now being duplicated to create free DRI drivers for their later card models.
I'm running Fiesty with xorg7.2 and aixgl on the open source radeon driver with no problems. My card is a 9800pro (not brand new I know but it'l run half life2), games (warsow etc) and beryl run great. :). What's everyone complaining about. I though linux was for serious business and not games anyway?
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A lot of large companies are now buying equipment at a yearly basis, hoping for the best standard equipment for their organization. Although their number of Linux computers are low, they still need to take care of this minority when selecting the future systems-of-choice. Thus if they have troubles running Linux on ATI, they will go for nVidia as standard, as they know it make little difference for Windows.
Reading the news archive of slashdot might make you think that Germany is a pro-Linux country makes it hard to believe the facts that we've seen more and more: AMD and Fujitsu-Siemens doesn't really care about Linux and do not hire people for Linux-support etc.
It is sad NVidia guys wont release their drivers as open source yet, but i can do with it. I stuck with NVidia, always worked well from 1st time for me since Millenium Edition and Linux RH 9 (or 8?) days. And still do with XP. So, up to know, i give a sh** if the drivers are not OS, as long as it is: $0, works fine, get support and newer releases pretty often. But, yes, better if the drivers are OS! So why change to a unrealiable manufacturer? e.g. ATI
- This can't be... - Be what? Be real?
Ask them to stop partnering with Microsoft's console division
Pressuring a peripheral company to make drivers for Linux is best done by the people they get their money directly from - not the end users.
I've said all along that IBM, HP and other companies making money off Linux should be supporting - and even financing - driver development by peripheral companies.
And when corporations finally get fed up with Microsoft and start seriously moving to Linux, we will see the peripheral manufacturers tune change dramatically as Dell and the others decide to start selling fully certified Linux machines to those corporations. It will be Dell, HP, IBM and others who force the peripheral manufacturers to produce drivers, not end users or even Linux distros like Red Hat.
HP is already selling large scale desktop Linux deployments. This situation will increase and force the major retailers to demand Linux drivers of their peripheral suppliers.
The end users really don't need to do anything but wait until clueless corporate management finally learns that Microsoft is to damn expensive (when all costs are taken into account) to support any more.
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Completly false.
No data went between the Voodoo and the grafic card (proof is : if you didn't use special software that was aware of the Voodoo, when taking screenshots by dumping the VGA memory you got plain gray screens).
If it worked like you suggest (transfering the data and displaying them from the VGA board) it would be a waste of bandwitdh and you wouldn't have to connect the Voodoo in serie between the VGA and the monitor.
The rare circumstance where you can see data exchange between the VGA and the voodoo is with some software hacks that enables 3D-in-a-window (in this case the Voodoo renders the whole screen, but instead of sending the result to the monitor, the result is sent to a special buffer in the VGA board which in turn displays it inside an overlay window - like video : except that instead of decoding frames in software or with MPEG accelerator, you render 3D frames in hardware and give them to the overlay).
Voodoo I & II had complete polygon engine with 1 or 2 texturing chip(s) respectively (out of a supported maximum of 2, resp. 3).
It can completly function by itself, and on linux, you can find drivers to use them alone - X server running on Voodoo.
The reason you had to couple them with regular video cards was :
- They lacked basic VGA function (text modes, paletted modes, emulation of legac CGA/EGA hardware, etc.)
- Some 2D functions missing (no overlays for video, much less hardware scrolling and screen splitting than VGA)
- Other 2D functions not as good (2D blitting is very limited).
- no port-level compatibility with VGA (dos software can't run unmodified on Voodoo boards)
- No BIOS : PC can't boot on Voodoo boards (either the mother board has to be set to ignore missing video cards, or has to be set to use serial-port terminal as console. No way to use console on Voodoo)
For all these reasons you had to combine a VGA with your Voodoo board.
But the Voodoo board it-self is a complete (3D only) video card with all necessary hardware to render polygons. What it lacks compared to modern 3D card is geometric hardware (T&L), but has everything needed to render polygons and display them.
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No, it isn't. If it was, it would mean that everything else would be done in software and all 3d graphics will run slow. At "slide-show" speeds. Which isn't the case.
3D acceleration is a complex task. On one hand you have hardware that is pretty low level (can draw polygons given that you give on-screen coordinate, pointer in memor for texture etc.). On other hand you have APIs that are more high level like OpenGL (here is a scene composed of polygons, render them).
You always need some kind of middle-ware between them that will get high level command from the API and translate them into a series of parameters to render each triangle, replacing "material id" with pointer indicating position in video memory where texture have been previously loaded, etc.
MESA is, in the beginning a complete OpenGL software implementation. Mesa Drivers are, special version of Mesa where everything possible has been replaced with hardware equivalent : ie. instead of drawing polygons in software, a 915 Mesa drivers will produce sequences of instruction to make the 915 render them. On some architecture that supports them, 3D geometry calculation will be offloaded to specialised hardware like T&L units or Vertex Shaders (some onboard GFX controllers and some older GFX cards lack them, in which case the Mesa driver is based on original Mesa code and geometry is offloaded to coprocessors like 3DMax or SSE, or done in software).
So of course, everything on linux uses Mesa. But that doesn't mean that everything on linux is done in software. That just means that Mesa does the front-end core work to give a standart OpenGL API, and the rendering of the triangles themselves is done by the hardware.
What Intel have done is the exact contrary to what you said : they have provided a 2D driver, and just bare bone 3D informations / code, that can draw triangles in hardware. Mesa is the glue in the middle that translate hi level OpenGL api to triangle rendering instructions for the 3D driver.
In case of Nvidia : 3D code *is striped*. all you have that remains is a pure 2D opensource "nv" driver. If you want to do free 3D with an nvidia board, you can only do it by letting Mesa do the whole legwork. Everything. Ie: even the polygons are done in software by the "full" mesa. No mesa drivers with specific code to do polygons/geometry in hardware.
As anybody else, they have to use a middleware between the API and the hardware. Their problem is, this is a huge monolithic pile of entangled code that includes lot of code that they didn't wrote themselves, but bought from other companies. It's either no 3D (current open-source variants) or a huge mass that contains all the hck they imported from 3rd parties to make 3D work faster. They can't open source that. That's understandable.
BUT :
- They refuse to go the Intel way and give just a small piece of code that does only the talking with the hardware, so that a Mesa driver can be written.
- They even refuse to release documentation about their hardware so a driver can be written from scratch.
The only way to get open-source drivers, is by reverse engineering, and writing a driver only using guess work and experimentation : the "nouveau" project. It's not necessarily impossible, in fact the "r300" project has done the same for Radeon 9500 to X850 cards. But ATI and nVidia aren't helping a lot. And that's inacceptable.
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No, opensource drivers for ATI *already* exist.
To build drivers for Linux, you don't need the complete driver stack from ATI - You don't need their Direct3D driver nor their complete OpenGL implementation. All you need is just enough information to tell the hardware to draw a polygon on the screen. For the rest you can substitute parts of Mesa - so they don't have to reveal all secrets that their drivers do to increase speed.
In fact this has already happened.
Up to R200 (until Radeon 9250), documentation was available from ATI. They didn't reveal what their drivers did do under the hood. They only gave enough information about the hardware so you can instruct it to draw polygons. For the rest, code from Mesa was used.
Then the situation degraded : ATI stopped providing information.
For the R300 (Radeon 9500 to X850) reverse engineering has been done to understand how to make the hardware draw. Once again Mesa glued the rest together.
To have an open-source driver under Linux, ATI doesn't have to reveal the code they have licensed. They don't have to reveal any code. Everything the need to give is just enough information about how to use the hardware to draw stuff.
If they don't provide that, programmers have to reverse engineer : like "nouveau" project is doing for nVidia or "r300" did for previous generation ATI.
Gaming isn't the only application of 3D. There are people doing research in many fields such as medical imaging as an exemple. They need 3D too. And they need to do 3D on hardware that isn't necessarily supported by the official hardware makers. To run 3D on exotic hardware, they need open-source, so code can be ported or adapted to their needs. ATI is only interested in supporting their main market : Kids like you running games on Windows or Linux on a x86 platform. It's not economically feasible for them to support any possible hardware. So people must be able to adapt drivers them self, but without source this is impossible.
Sorry, but there are pretty good reasons to have open source drivers :
- Portability. As I said before, if you want to use hardware on non vendor-approved platform you need opensource. In fact, the r300 project started because Apple laptops where using Radeon 9600 board, but ATI supported only Intel x86 hardware. No way to get 3D acceleration on PowerPC (or back then, neither X86-64 for that matters). To be able to adapt drivers for PowerPC, you need access to the source, which wasn't available, so they built their drivers from scratch.
- Security/Stability. Part of the drivers runs in kernel mode. Which is dangerously high access. The rest of the opensource world (Linux kernel, OpenBSD, etc.) counts on source availability and public scrutinity to find and correct bugs (the "given enough eyes, all bugs get shallow" linus law). But with BLOBs, you can't control the quality of the code. You're left to hope that the card makers pay enough attention (which isn't necessarily the case, as their main and most lucrative market are the Windows users). Such critical bugs have already be found in some wireless cards' drivers.
- Support. As hardware gets older, company tends to abandon su
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I work in the defense-industrial complex, and I'm seeing a lot of expensive UNIX systems being replaced with high-end PCs running NVidia cards. OpenGL simulations and applications that used to run on large SGIs, HPUX, and Solaris boxes that cost $100s of thousands have been ported to $5000 Linux boxes.
This market is especially lucrative because oftentimes the company usually wants to spend at least $5k on each computer so it counts as a capital investment instead of an expense for the bean counters. So they do everything they can to load up a base PC with extra hard drives and premium GPUs (the NVidia Quadro line is milking this pretty well with CAD/CAM workstation GPUs that cost 10x as much as the equivalent consumer-grade Geforce chips they're based on) just to drag their basic $2k PC up into capital territory. And it's getting harder all of the time since the base PC components keep dropping in price so fast. But these people can afford it and even say they're saving so much money because it's still orders of magnitude cheaper than their old big iron platforms.
Sheesh, imagine having a $5k budget to build a PC.
Anyway, making a decent (and fun, for me at least) living compiling binary modules and hand-tuning nVidia xorg.conf files for various multi-screen sim visualization configurations, among other things.
There is a comparision of opensource 3D performance of different cards at http://free3d.org/
In top of that list you will find ATI cards using the reverse engineered r300 driver. These cards are not on top of the list thanks to ATI which hasn't been helpful with the r300 driver.
Next below those cards, with about half the performance, you once again will find ATI cards. They use the r200 driver. That opensource driver was created with the help of ATI.
With about half the speed of the r200 cards comes the first non-ATI card, an intel one.
Matrox comes in at about half the speed of intel and at the end of the list comes nVidia. The reason that nVidia comes last is that the used nv driver does all 3D in software.
I think this list is very interesting. It tells Linux users which cards to buy and it is friendly competition for driver and card makers. I hope that some good results from the nouveau driver one day will make it to the list. I also hope that other card makers like intel will make faster cards to climb on the list. I also hope that new ATI cards will get supported by opensource drivers to get into good positions on the list.