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AMD Promises Open Source Graphics Drivers
MoxFulder writes "Henri Richard, AMD's VP of sales, has promised to deliver open-source drivers for ATI graphics cards (recently acquired by AMD) at the recent Red Hat Summit. A series of good news for proponents of open-source device drivers. In the last year, Intel, the leading provider of integrated graphics cards, has opened their drivers as well. But ATI and NVidia, the only two players in the market for high-performance discrete graphics cards, have so far released only closed-source drivers for their cards. This has created numerous compatibility, stability, and ethical problems for users of Linux and other open source OSes, and prompted projects like Nouveau to try and reverse-engineer NVidia drivers. Hopefully AMD's decision will put pressure on NVidia to release open-source drivers as well!"
Well, if there is a good video card support on linux, linux gaming will just strengthen. It isn't a godgiven that you can play games only on Vista.
The problem is, most Linux desktop users use it to develop or manage it as a server. They won't pay for a game. They will not pay for anything at all, most of the time. The only companies paying for Linux are enterprises who need support and closed software. The rest are there for the free ride.
Sophisticated open source games basically can't happen, since you need a lot more than good developers to make a good game. Check the open source games around. You'll notice lots of smart programming, poor graphics and poor or non-existing story line. Let alone high quality music and voice overs.
We've seen how much the open source community understands design and graphics with GIMP, and it's best we stop beating that dead horse.