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!"

Comments

I could not read the summary

[niceone]

I'm sorry, I could not read the summary. I have worked in R&D... I got as far as "VP of sales has promised" and had a panic attack.

Re:I could not read the summary

[xenocide2]

Actually, thats one of the things that a VP could probably promise without severe problems for engineering. I guess you'd probably have to filter out the curse words in comments though...

Nice

[suv4x4]

They're just trying to get them some press. Unfortunately Linux gamers are an edge case. People needing video card support on Linux above vanilla SVGA as a whole is an edge case.

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

No, some other users just want fully operational 2D graphics with dual head support. More especially for dual DVI cards where the external TMDS is not supported under X.

Re:Nice

[someone1234]

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.

Re:Nice

[dc29A]

They're just trying to get them some press. Unfortunately Linux gamers are an edge case. People needing video card support on Linux above vanilla SVGA as a whole is an edge case.

Having solid drivers isn't just "an edge case". Go install the default ATI or Nvidia driver on a recent linux distro then upgrade it to a non open source one from the company. It's like day and night. I noticed a huge difference between having a default driver vs company made one, silly things like dragging a console with transparent background is no longer a pain, it's smooth. The desktop feels fast and I don't even have any 3d desktop installed.

Then you got things like multiple monitor support. My Feisty install without closed source drivers just wouldn't work. It kept resetting the screen resolution after reboots, wouldn't recognize my second monitor, I couldn't even force it, it was a black screen. Once I installed the closed source driver, shazam! All my video worries are gone. Now I am happily using a 2560 x 1024 dual monitor setup with hardware acceleration.

Also you got 3d desktops like Beryl. With eye candy being a major selling point in some operating systems, 3d features will become important if desktop linux wants to get more popular. I hope all graphic card companies will develop good drivers for Linux.

Re:Nice

[gsasha]

Wrong.

3D should not be about gaming only. Right now there are 3D-based window managers, and it's not inconceivable to have more real 3D-based applications. The fact that some mainstream cards have problems with drivers does nothing to help these use cases.

Re:Nice

[mackyrae]

Linux gamers are an edge case because it's too hard to game when your graphics look like $*&#!

Re:Nice

[OmegaBlac]

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.

I, a Linux user, am more then willing to pay for the same commercial games that are available for Windows. Matter fact I have payed already when I purchased UT, UT2k4, Quake 4, and Doom 3 which I have installed exclusively to play on Linux. I have no idea where you got the idea that most Linux users are unwilling to pay for software let alone games. Did you poll every single Linux user? Or did you form your ignorant opinion out your ass? I'm sure there is a large number of Windows users that don't pay for their software hence the existence of warez groups offering commercial software for free. And what about the large number of people unwilling to pay for Windows or games which drives many software companies to develop draconian drm & copyright protection measures?

Re:Nice

[lakeland]

Not any more. Compiz and Beryl are becoming the standard way of drawing onscreen in much the same way as aero and quartz. That means unless you have decent 3D you will stuff up desktop performance. Gamers might have much higher demands, but the days of 2D chips being adequate for desktop use are over.

Re:Nice

[Lumpy]

Nice to see you dont know squat about linux.

3d acceleration and the Video acceleration is used daily by EVERY linux user (short of text based server installs.

What you just said is as redicilous as saying "Vista users dont need anything but 2d Svga."

I run Wxvga all the time WITH 3d and guess what I dont play games in linux at work.

And I am not a "edge case" but a typical linux user.

Re:Nice

[Tack]

And there's no way to compare the same between ati and fglrx, since the later doesn't even have Xv support at all.

Are we sure about this?

[tack@caladan ~]$ /sbin/lsmod | grep fglrx
fglrx 523792 9
[tack@caladan ~]$ dmesg | grep fglrx | head -2
[fglrx] Maximum main memory to use for locked dma buffers: 927 MBytes.
[fglrx] module loaded - fglrx 8.32.5 [Dec 12 2006] on minor 0
[tack@caladan ~]$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf | grep fglrx
Driver "fglrx"
[tack@caladan ~]$ xvinfo | grep Adaptor
Adaptor #0: "ATI Radeon Video Overlay"
[tack@caladan tv]$ mplayer -v *avi 2>&1 | grep Xvideo
Xvideo image format: 0x32595559 (YUY2) packed
Xvideo image format: 0x59565955 (UYVY) packed
Xvideo image format: 0x32315659 (YV12) planar
Xvideo image format: 0x30323449 (I420) planar
using Xvideo port 115 for hw scaling

Re:Nice

[Osty]

I, a Linux user, am more then willing to pay for the same commercial games that are available for Windows. Matter fact I have payed already when I purchased UT, UT2k4, Quake 4, and Doom 3 which I have installed exclusively to play on Linux. I have no idea where you got the idea that most Linux users are unwilling to pay for software let alone games. Did you poll every single Linux user? Or did you form your ignorant opinion out your ass?

It's pretty simple, really:

• You != an average Linux user.
• Loki Software proved the lack of market for Linux games 5 years ago when they shut down in 2002.

Now granted, part of Loki's problem may have been that they were shipping ports of Windows games several months after the game originally shipped on Windows, but the fact that Linux gamers wouldn't wait a month or three to support their platform of choice was damning.

I'm sure there is a large number of Windows users that don't pay for their software hence the existence of warez groups offering commercial software for free. And what about the large number of people unwilling to pay for Windows or games which drives many software companies to develop draconian drm & copyright protection measures?

The market for Windows software is large enough, even with the pirates, to make it profitable to sell them software. The problem with Linux is that the number of "Free or bust" users is large in relation to users who would pay for software, thus making it a losing proposition to try to do anything but niche software on Linux (by that I mean it may be worth selling Oracle at $10,000 per CPU, but it's not worth selling TurboTax at $30, because you have to sell a lot fewer copies of Oracle to break even or make a profit).

Re:Nice

[TheRaven64]

The high-end is still reserved for gamers, researchers, and people doing visualisation. A modern (cheap) GPU, however, does a lot more than a framebuffer. The most obvious thing it does is compositing. Pretty much every application does some form of alpha blending (see those icons on your toolbar?), even if it's with a 1-bit alpha channel, and there's no reason this couldn't be done in hardware. At the windowing system level it's even more important. Draw every window to a texture and let the GPU handle the shadows (not just a gimmick; on OS X is't a huge visual clue as to the active window) and overlaying.

Pixel and vertex shaders are a whole new ball game. There's a lot of text on my screen. All of it drawn from truetype fonts. A truetype font is basically a series of bezier curves. Microsoft Research released a paper a few years back where each of these curves was approximated to a triangle. A vertex shader program then inspects each of the rendered triangles and corrects the error between the triangle and the bezier. This allows an entire font to be uploaded to the GPU and rendered at any resolution with very little CPU load or RAM usage (compare this with Apple's hack of just storing a table of glyphs in the video RAM, which doesn't scale very well).

Pixel shaders can be used for a lot of things. With pixel shaders you can perform a lot of convolutions in hardware, giving some nice effects. You can use a pyramid algorithm to perform a number of things, like bi-cubic filtering, blurring, etc in a fraction of a second.

Sure, you could do a lot of these on the CPU, but the GPU is going to do them a lot faster, and probably use less power (important for mobile users).

Even without needing the 3D support, it's useful to have all of the features working correctly. Power management is a big one, since the kernel needs to be able to save the state of the GPU somewhere before turning it off, and Linux uses a lot of hacks to try to avoid needing to do this.

Re:Nice

[jZnat]

Why should software development companies waste money developing games for Windows when they could get a far larger market share by making games for Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, DS, PSP, etc.? The PC gaming market is much smaller than the console games market, and Nintendo is helping widen the gap with the Wii and DS which appeal to non-gamers as well.

Re:Nice

[howlingmadhowie]

you're not only looking at linux gamers, you're looking at the thousands of linux-workstations used in the special-effects-industry. if they could come with really stable drivers as part of the kernel, that may help sway the balance of power away from the good nvidia cards currently used.
there are a number of reasons why this would be in ati's interest:

1. the cards cost up to 4000 euros a shot, so it's a lucrative market
2. they could advertise with "we make the cards they used for harry potter 14"

opening up the drivers ensures that every linux kernel within a short time will come with a version of these drivers and there will be a good chance that the cards will just work and work well.

Re:Nice

[Osty]

Why should software development companies waste money developing games for Windows when they could get a far larger market share by making games for Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, DS, PSP, etc.? The PC gaming market is much smaller than the console games market, and Nintendo is helping widen the gap with the Wii and DS which appeal to non-gamers as well.

Many developers do exactly that. Some traditionally PC-only developers have been looking towards the consoles to keep them afloat (id). Other publishers (EA, Ubi) go for the spam approach -- develop the game for as many platforms as possible, which right now means release on Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, Wii, PC, DS, and GBA. The PSP doesn't get a port for the same reason as Linux -- the user base is too small (the PSP has a much larger userbase than linux, and is probably larger than the Xbox 360 and PS3 userbase as well, but it has a reputation of being a poor seller with users more interested in hacking for homebrew than buying games; thus, it doesn't get in on the port frenzy and has to hope for a one-off tie-in at some point later).

That said, the PC does have some strengths. Specifically, the mouse and keyboard layout is great for RTS games (I'd also mention FPS, but I believe it's easier to do FPS on a console controller than it is to do RTS on a controller so FPS is not a clear-cut PC win). Also, breaking into the PC market is much easier, given that anybody can develop a game and publish it on the web. Microsoft is trying to capture that market for the Xbox 360 with XNA, but it's still going to be a little while before XNA has enough support to make it worthwhile (needs network support, proper packaging to share games, the ability to play other people's games without spending $100/year on the creator club subscription, etc). I wouldn't be surprised to see big names like EA or Ubi decide to quit porting to PC, but even that won't totally kill PC gaming. It'll probably turn the PC into the platform for the "hardcore", with only hardcore FPS, RTS, or simulation games being profitable on the PC.

Re:Nice

[MoxFulder]

Having solid drivers isn't just "an edge case". Go install the default ATI or Nvidia driver on a recent linux distro then upgrade it to a non open source one from the company. It's like day and night. I noticed a huge difference between having a default driver vs company made one, silly things like dragging a console with transparent background is no longer a pain, it's smooth. The desktop feels fast and I don't even have any 3d desktop installed.

Agreed... this is why I was excited about possibly having open-source drivers, and posted this article. My current box has onboard NVidia, and a low-end ATI discrete PCIe card... frankly, I can't wait for *one* of them to have open drivers. Although using the binary drivers improves 3D performance and a lot of strange display bugs, as you point out, it's a huge pain to keep them up-to-date with kernel upgrades since they can't be bundled with the main kernel. I don't like putting a big binary blob in my kernel, which by all reports is out-of-date with respect to a lot of other kernel subsystems, and may open up security holes.

I don't do 3D anything (word processing, programming, web browsing mainly), but baseline unaccelerated SVGA is definitely *not* acceptable: 2D graphics acceleration is necessary for a smooth and productive desktop experience. The open-source 2D acceleration is actually pretty good at this point, but of course it simply DOES NOT WORK with a lot of the latest ATI cards in particular.

The current pace of open-source driver development is positively glacial, largely because most of the people who have sufficient documentation to easily improve the drivers are under NDA. Read this incredibly frustrating blog entry from a developer who's under NDA with ATI... using only a few hundred lines of code, he has patched the open-source Radeon driver to support most of the newer ATI cards... but ATI has spun its wheels for months without allowing him to release the code.

Re:Nice

[Stewie241]

* You != an average Linux user.
        * Loki Software proved the lack of market for Linux games 5 years ago when they shut down in 2002.


I think we also have to take into account the fact that the Linux landscape has changed drastically in the last five years. How popular was the iPod in 2002?

Re:Nice

[Aladrin]

You've missed 1 key point: 5 years ago!

Linux is a MUCH better desktop OS than it was 5 years ago. Coincidentally, that was about the same time I tried to use Debian as a desktop. It stunk and I quickly dropped it. Then 2 years ago, I found reason to try it out again. Slackware was pretty good, but still iffy for a desktop.

Now I've got Kubuntu. It's amazing, and definitely a good desktop OS. The home PC I have ordered was chosen based on the idea that it would only run Linux, and Windows didn't matter. (This one is going to be my 'game' PC in the living room now.)

Loki was too early. If they tried the same thing now, they'd have a LOT better success.

As for the 'waiting' issue... Was that the only issue? Or did Loki fail to advertise that they were going to be releasing that game in a few months? Because if I didn't know about it, I'd just pick it up for Windows, assuming Linux would never get it. Maybe there were other issues as well, that don't come to mind immediately.

Loki didn't prove anything except that they didn't make it.

Re:Nice

[Breakfast Pants]

World of Warcraft is one of the most profitable games ever created. If they had taken your advice, would it have been?

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Loki Software proved the lack of market for Linux games 5 years ago when they shut down in 2002.

Actually, you are incorrect. Loki Software died mainly because of managerial incompetence and mismanagement. You can read about some of that here.

And, as others have pointed out, the Linux desktop has matured a lot in the last 5 years. Even if Loki died because of a lack of customers (which is not the case), the same would not necessarily happen today.

Re:Nice

[cheater512]

Pull your head out of your ass please.

I do my fair share of gaming under Linux.

And I'm not here for the free ride. The free part just makes the decision to switch easier.

There are quite a few large open source games.
Ever played Bzflag? God that game is addictive.
There is also Nexuiz which I hear is pretty good.
Then you get the small really really fun games like Frozen Bubble.

Re:Nice

[db32]

I think linux users are probably more likely to pay for a game than windows users as long as we go down that road. I mean really the linux user is 100% legal in his usage of free software and is likely to just go buy the game because he doesn't run in the warez scene to get his software. The windows user who is probably running a pirate version is probably out downloading illegal software as we speak. Ultimately any given linux user is more likely to be using 100% legal software. And that is my stereotypical rant for the day.

Re:Nice

[phantomlord]

It's pretty simple, really: * You != an average Linux user. * Loki Software proved the lack of market for Linux games 5 years ago when they shut down in 2002.

Chalk me up to another non-average Linux user. I've got a 3 foot wide bookshelf with boxes of commercial Linux games I've bought (most of Loki's offerings while they were still operational, stuff from LGP, NWN, iD's offerings, etc). I wonder how many of us it takes to make a market.

Loki had a lot more problems going on than the lack of a Linux market at the time. They tried to be too big, too quick and go for too many AAA titles at once. Between having to pay large upfront license costs to port games (often six figures or more) and royalties from every sale on top of that, they just didn't have a business plan that met their market. They would have been much better off as a porting house rather than a self publisher (much like Ryan Gordon/icculus does now).

On the other side of the scale, LGP is working on a lot of B grade games. Some of them are very good but they're very, very slow and methodical in their porting. I've beta tested games for them which took more than a year to release after I got the first beta. They need to get stuff out the door if they want to be serious. Throw in Tux Games charging $50 for the exact same box you can buy in the discount bin for $15 (ok, here's $18.82 at walmart and you might skew the numbers because people aren't buying from them so they "don't get counted" as a Linux sale. In fact, you can pick up NWN, Quake 4 and Doom 3 from Walmart for the price of one game from Tux Games with shipping.

IMO, a lot of the problem is simply the game industry not understanding the linux market properly. A market exists but you can't go at it Loki style or you're doomed to failure, not because of the market, but because the business plan doesn't add up. Software houses should look toward portability when they design a game and the cost of a single developer to handle the Linux port of it would be pretty cheap in the overall development of the game (I haven't exactly done a poll but I wouldn't be surprised if you could find Linux geek willing to work for less than the average game coder just for the privilege of being able to get paid to program a game for linux). Another part of the problem are the publishers who dictate to the game houses what they're going to release so even if they want to do a linux version, it may not be possible.

Re:Nice

[@madeus]

I'm not sure why you seem to think that undermines the previous posters point.

As they said, the console market is far larger than the PC market, and that console titles outstrip sales of PC titles significantly (and that they sell for more). World of Warcraft and Linage don't change that. Selling a million plus copies of a game in the first year is expected of a half decent console game (games EA's Madden do that and more in their first couple of weeks - games on the PC don't sell that well with anything like that frequency (nor do they tend to retail for as much).

Added to that, is of course the risk factor.

You might imagine that releasing an MMO is a better way to make money than a console game, but that's not borne out. MMO are far risker projects, requiring many times the capital investment, much longer development cyles (years longer), a more complicated business structure and business plan and have massive monthly outgoings (rather than just paying a small amount for a tiny helpdesk team and letting the staffers go once the game is out). When the risk is higher, you of course keep less of the return (and again, there is a lower return when you have high on-going costs).

As EA has discovered, it's a lot more economical to stick to releasing incrimental upgrades of existing tiles (from Madden and Fifa to the Battlefield series) than to take risks with PC MMO's, which ultimately fail far more often, and bring in less profit as a percentage of both investment and revenue even when they are successful. EA have even shut down 'successful' PC MMO's down, because they were not successful enough by their standards - there just wasn't enough of a return on their investment, that is, they were better off spending that money in developing a new console title, because it was almost certain to give a better RoI.

The overall numbers of gamers for Lineage 2 and WoW is large, but it's probably not as profitable as many think - a third of WoW subscribers are in China, and they pay just a fraction of the amount US and EU players pay. Several million more people in the US, EU and AUS have played the likes of Halo 2 on the X-Box than have played WoW on a PC or Mac.

All the above is is why there are so few MMO's, compared to console titles, as a business MMO's are simply less profitable (because they bomb more often every n attempts, and when the do go wrong they do so more spectacularly, in that a bigger hole is left in the publisher and/or developers wallet).

Re:Nice

[Goodgerster]

Blender _does not run_ without the binary blobs on my system. Who gives a damn about games?

Re:Nice

[timelorde]

What about that optical mouse you're using?

[looks down...]

Logitech.

[looks over at the 'ol Windows98 box...]

Logitech.

[goes downstairs, looks at wife's laptop...]

Logitech.

'Nuff said.

Re:Nice

[iminplaya]

How popular was the iPod in 2002?

I had something similar in 1963. It was a media player that fit in my shirt pocket. Though it had no storage to speak of(none), it played streaming media quite well. And because it was not stereo, I only had to wear one earphone, leaving the other ear open to hear the horn of the car that was about to run me down. We all thought it was pretty nifty.

Re:Nice

[StormReaver]

Loki Software proved the lack of market for Linux games 5 years ago when they shut down in 2002. Not quite. Loki Software proved that a small startup gaming company for a small gaming market cannot survive when its president is draining the company coffers for personal extravagances. If you factor back in all of the large amounts of money that Scott was taking out of Loki's operations and throwing away for personal use, Loki was more than self-sustaining.

Re:Nice

[Draek]

I will go back to the PC Gaming magazine article I believe it was where John Carmack everybody's favorite guy here around here said he was seriously disappointed on the sales of Doom 3 Linux and that would most likely affect future choices on development for games on Linux.

please do, because I've never heard of such thing as "Doom 3 Linux" being for sale, and ID Software's own Doom 3 Linux FAQ states that you need a retail copy of Doom 3 for Windows in order to install the Linux version, which is how I installed and played it btw, so either your memory is failing you, or you confused DooM3 for Descent 3 or something (the last game I recall had different retail versions for both Windows and Linux, as I found out the hard way), but Descent wasn't made by John Carmack so I'd bet on your memory failing.

ohh and btw, both Neverwinter Nights and Enemy Territory run flawlessly on Linux without Wine in case you're interested.

Re:Nice

[Max Littlemore]

People needing video card support on Linux above vanilla SVGA as a whole is an edge case.

Hello, 2000 called and said they'd like their "Linux is just for hard core geeks who do everything in an xterm" cliche back.

Re:Nice

[Jesus_666]

I have a Mighty Mouse, so no microsoft there either, but at one point I had a Microsoft AP/router that almost didn't suck. Okay, I bricked it when I tried to reflash the firmware with something better (which required me to build my own serialJTAG cable) and it only worked well when you used Microsoft's weird config tool (which didn't work that well either)... But in theory it was worth its money. When I bought it on eBay. Used.

Re:Nice

[triso]

English motherfucker, do you speak it? Your post was almost impossible to read. Seriously. Hey! You sound like you need a foot massage.

I'll believe it when I see it

[The One KEA]

$SUBJECT. If AMD really means it, it bodes well for the future - I always hoped that their openness with the Linux community over the x86-64 porting effort wasn't a one-off.

The big question though is whether or not they will try for mainline inclusion, or if they will go with an out-of-tree effort.

Ethics? Still, nice to hear.

[The Orange Mage]

This has created numerous [...] ethical problems for users of Linux and other open source OSes,...

Damnit, Jim, I'm a computer user, not a philosopher! But honestly, I think most of the people COMING to Linux in the Desktop world could care less about these "ethical" issues. Once again, it's just another thing that some of the Linux community puts above having things Just Work(tm). However, since some of these closed-source drivers aren't working for some, it's nice that AMD wants to open theirs so that eventually they can be modified until they work. A win for everybody, actually.

Re:Ethics? Still, nice to hear.

[Just Some Guy]

I think most of the people COMING to Linux in the Desktop world could care less about these "ethical" issues. Once again, it's just another thing that some of the Linux community puts above having things Just Work(tm).

Under Linux, most things Just Work(tm) because people with those ethical issues took the time to do something about it. You can't possibly claim that GNU or Linux exist in an amoral vacuum.

Re:Ethics? Still, nice to hear.

[TheRaven64]

Free Software has never been about ethics, it's always been about making stuff work. One of the pre-requisites to making stuff work, however, was the availability of the source code and the rights to fix or adapt it, and redistribute the changes (so not everyone needs to do the same fix themselves). BSD started with a bunch of guys trying to fix UNIX. GNU started with RMS trying to fix a printer driver. Linux started with a guy trying to fix Minix.

The last one is the most interesting, since fixing Minix ended up meaning completely re-writing it because (at the time) the license didn't allow redistribution of modified versions (only patch sets, and those were growing unwieldy).

To an outsider, it might seem that ethics or ideology were the motivating factors, but in reality it's just a desire for things to work. The problem with binary-only drivers is that they might kind-of work now, but at some point they might not and then there will be nothing we can do about it.

Re:Ethics? Still, nice to hear.

[replicant108]

Free Software has never been about ethics

On the contrary, Free Software has always been about ethics.

From the GNU Manifesto:

"Why I Must Write GNU: I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way.I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it."

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html

Re:Ethics? Still, nice to hear.

[16K Ram Pack]

That's just one viewpoint.

I worked for a long time on mainframes, and never heard of Richard Stallman or the GNU Manifesto during that time. Yet, I saw first hand how much easier it is to fix something if you've got the source code than not.

Richard may have an ethical or political view on this, but most businesses that use Free Software, do so because it's the practical solution. Because they think that the savings will outweigh the proprietary alternative.

That's why I like to use it (but I'm also nice enough to contribute my changes back!).

Re:Ethics? Still, nice to hear.

[stinerman]

No. Open Source is about making stuff work. Free Software is about ethics and freedom.

can they?

[mastershake_phd]

The agp specification is proprietary and you need to pay (heavily) for the spec. Releasing their driver source would be like giving away the agp spec. It might not be legal.

Re:can they?

[Excelcia]

I don't think their driver source has anything in it that discloses AGP specifications. They've been using Linux apgart code for a while, in a manner that may have already been violating the license.

Seeing is believing

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't buy ATI until they have followed through with that promise. As far as I am concerned, they have until July, when their new low end card becomes available. If there are no Linux drivers for that card then, I will buy an NVidia based card.

Re:Seeing is believing

[Aladrin]

I think the coward's point was that nVidia's drivers are better right now. If ATI hasn't made good on their commitment to open source (and thus foster an environment for better drivers) then he's just going to keep on as if nothing has changed.

Why should he believe the promises of an PR person and let that influence his buying decision?

I just ordered parts to build a new PC and the GPU is an onboard Intel X3000. Why? Open source drivers. If ATI has open source drivers the next time I buy parts, I'll probably choose them for the GPU, even if nVidia also has open sourced, despite the fact that I've been an nVidia fan. Why? ATI has better hardware! It's just too bad their drivers have always sucked, on all platforms.

The AC stated it like an ultimatum, but I think he/she was just stating a fact: Their next purchase would depend on ATI's action or inaction.

Re:Seeing is believing

[babyrat]

Good thinking!

Punish that damn ATI for not having an open source driver. Punish them by buying hardware from another company that doesn't have open source drivers!!!

This is great

[C_Kode]

I only buy Nvidia because it just runs better under Linux even though ATI is better on Windows. I happen to run both and I want the best of both worlds. My guess is this is partly because of the change of momentum towards Linux on the corporate desktop over the last year.

Some people will be sure to downplay this, but I think this is really the beginning. It will take time, but I expect that Linux desktop graphics will closely compete with the Windows desktop soon.

Nvidia, this is your wakeup call. Follow suit, or my next graphics card will ATI.

Don't Promise it. Do it.

[TechyImmigrant]

Really it isn't hard. Identify the code you own, replace the code you don't, put on a GPL header and release.

Promises are cheap.

Intel driver Open Source?

[slashdot.org]

Last time I looked at the Intel driver source, there were a ton of calls into the video BIOS. Not something I would call an "Open Source" driver. This may have changed since then,- I really hope so.

Why is it important to have more source you might ask. Well, for one thing it would be really nice if we can get rid of the video BIOS altogether. A full source driver which shows how to switch video modes is a very good start to accomplish this (although not necessarily enough).

And then you might ask, why do we need to get rid of the video BIOS? Well, when evaluating graphics chips for an embedded systems, I found out that the video BIOS can spend an insanely long time initializing stuff and displaying stuff that we don't want/need (some like several seconds). In general, video BIOSs are over-engineered and do waaaay more than needed.

If you are aiming to build a near-instant-on system, and/or something that doesn't look like a PC, you want this sort of flexibility. If AMD steps up to the plate, that would be awesome.

Re:Intel driver Open Source?

[Josh Triplett]

Last time I looked at the Intel driver source, there were a ton of calls into the video BIOS. Not something I would call an "Open Source" driver. This may have changed since then,- I really hope so.

Why is it important to have more source you might ask. Well, for one thing it would be really nice if we can get rid of the video BIOS altogether. A full source driver which shows how to switch video modes is a very good start to accomplish this (although not necessarily enough).

Look into the new "modesetting" branch of the Intel driver, currently moving towards the default. It moves all the work of modesetting and other related hardware manipulation from the video BIOS into the driver, and avoids the video BIOS entirely. This does indeed give the benefits you describe in your post. Some of this modesetting code also moves toward sharing between drivers, to support modesetting for all Xorg video drivers. (Some of it consists of driver-independent code, such as dealing with funky monitors.)

Vague...

[evilviper]

Anybody got any more details? They talk about the lack of a timeline, but "graphics drivers" is also vague, and could mean 2D, or just another small subset of features.

I'm certainly not going to go out and start buying ATI cards until all the details are worked-out.

Ethics? Yes.

[pedestrian crossing]

I think most of the people COMING to Linux in the Desktop world could care less about these "ethical" issues.

True, right now they don't care. But that doesn't make it any less important to develop Free drivers.

Richard Stallman had his realization that Free software is necessary based on his experience with a printer driver.

Re:Ethics? Yes.

[808140]

If you'd actually read the article you linked to, you would realize that the quote in question (about charging money for software being a crime against humanity) was not in fact said by Richard Stallman, but only attributed to him by someone else. There's nothing new here: people are constantly trying to claim that the GPL is somehow anti-profit. But the GPL has never been about restricting anyone's ability to profit: in fact, consider the following statement, from the GPL itself (emphasis added):

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

People who claim that the GPL explicitly forbids making a profit from selling software or that Stallman himself is against the sale of software are either deeply confused or dishonest. In fact, in the early years of the FSF, the foundation was primarily supported by the sale of its own, GPL-licensed software. In those days, the internet was still slow, unstable, and inaccessible to commercial interests, many of whom nonetheless ran UNIX systems and desired GNU tools. These were sold, on floppy disks by snail mail, to people who were interested. Yes, for a fee.

"Yes," says the businessman, "I understand that -- but the GPL effectively drives the profit from selling software to zero, even if it doesn't explicitly prevent me from selling said software, because the person I sell it to can turn around and distribute it to his friends for free, a right the GPL guarantees!"

He's right, in a certain sense. However, anyone with a cursory understanding of economics and the free market knows that healthy markets also serve to drive profits to zero -- that's how you know the market is functioning properly. Margins will decrease with competition by definition, and prices will drop until all that is being covered by price is operational cost. This is considered good for the consumer; it means that businesses are forced to innovate and develop new markets, because when a sector becomes saturated, profits will by definition lower until the margins are so thin that companies previously providing the service will no longer be interested in providing them; this reduces competition, prices rise, margins widen, providing incentive to other companies to re-enter the field and make a profit -- and so the cycle begins anew. Clearly, in a properly functioning market with low barriers to entry, margins will oscillate very close to zero. This is how it is supposed to work. You don't have the right to make a profit, not in capitalism.

The case with the GPL is analogous -- the freedoms it guarantees the user reduce artificial barriers to entry and make competition very easy. For example, had I decided to sell GNU software in the 1980s -- ie, compete with the FSF, who was making a tidy profit this way -- I could have. I would have figured out how much it cost to distribute the software, and made my price lower than theirs by reducing my own profit margins, thus stealing their business. They could then have undercut me, or perhaps a third party could have undercut us both, and so on and so forth, until there was nothing left to undercut, and the price of selling the GPL'd software was exactly equal to the cost of distributing it. I probably wouldn't see this as ideal, and I'd probably stop selling GNU software. Competition would ease. Prices would rise. Business people call this an arbitrage opportunity: a product is overvalued, so you sell it for less to bring prices down, until the opportunity vanishes and there's no more profit.

The catch is, with the internet, distribution costs are nearly -- although not exactly -- zero.

Clearly, there's not much money to be made selling Free Software, although you'r

Mainstream gaming

[CustomDesigned]

I agree that hard core Linux gamers are an edge case. However, most of us would like to be able to play Penguin Racer or Tux Kart occasionally. Useless eye candy like 3D window switching effects help relieve boredom as well. This doesn't require the latest hot graphics card with dedicated cooling towers. However, it would be nice to have stable drivers that track kernel evolution for entry level 3D cards - sufficient for simple games and effects. The present situation is that old low end Vanta Nvidia cards (suitable for Tux Kart) still require proprietary drivers - and Nvidia is losing the motivation to keep them updated (they did patch old drivers for the security hole mentioned on Slashdot a while back).

IMO, using binary blobs that run in the card, not in the kernel (i.e. downloadable firmware), are a reasonable way for vendors to hide trade secrets while keeping the card updateable and the kernel driver open source. As long as shared memory between the graphics card and main system is restricted to a window, bugs in the firmware shouldn't cause security holes in the kernel. In fact, one benefit of micro-kernel architecture is that isolated drivers that run in their own process and address space, can run in an intelligent I/O card instead.

The IBM Series/1 was built on the principle. All I/O was done by intelligent cards with a common API: submit Device Control Block with command, memory block, and parameters to start an operation. Receive vectored interrupt and find results in updated DCB and memory block. Interrupt included address of DCB, so interrupts were trivially "object oriented".

Re:Mainstream gaming

[OrangeTide]

It sure is nice when GLX works and you can do CAD, modeling, simulations and 3D programming(OpenGL) on a Linux box. So there are practical uses beyond gaming for those fancy 3D cards.

Re:Mainstream gaming

[howlingmadhowie]

the current situation is pretty rediculous. the way i see it, a graphics card manufacturer makes a card where the capabilities of the chips on the board are unknown, the firmware on the board in a binary blob, the meaning of the various pins in the pci-express slot is unknown and a second binary blob installed in the kernel of the operating system is also unknowable. how did it ever get this ridiculous?

Re:Day one Sale

[mlts]

Same here. If ATI acts on this promise and gives out open source drivers which allow use of all features at normal speed, I'll be making the switch back to ATI.

Otherwise, its nVidia for me, period.

Now, if both ATI and nVidia make truly open source drivers, that will make the choice difficult, though it would be a quite pleasant situation to be in.

Dual head

[markov_chain]

Now there's something to do if you had a million dollars.

Slashdot greatest hits

[Sits]

ATI Committed To Fixing Its OSS Problems was posted only a few days ago (that one came from Chris Blizzard's blog) and the cautious tone is backed up by other Red Hat summit reports. However, since we're here why don't we pick out the highlights (along with overlooked gems) from last time?

• Someone contacts ATI's sales about this announcement and is told to hold tight for more news (this is consistent with what was posted to German news site heise.de link found via liquidat)
  
• Thank you for your current drivers ATI
  
• Slashdot shouldn't speculate on what ATI's roadmap
  
• We want open source ATI drivers, not Linux drivers
  
• ATI don't support vblank in their binary drivers (open source drivers do support vblank but it's hard to find the cards)..
  
• ATI? You mean AMD!
  
• Marketing... Ha!
  
• This is because of Dell starting a Linux push
  
• Doing a Windows graphics driver wrapper wouldn't be feasible...
  
• Reverse engineering modern graphics cards is hard... because the API driving them is complex.
  
• Intel have released open source graphics drivers BEFORE their next card was released!
  

Elsewhere on the web folks are wondering whether this means that the a new GPGPU will be accessible but the actual graphics driver itself will remain closed. AMD/ATI has also announced open source drivers before which translated into more stable and more frequently released Linux binary x86 drivers...

Re:Actually, I hope they don't.

[MoxFulder]

Actually, being an ATI fan, I hope NVidia doesn't release open source drivers. ATI will get a lot of goodwill with this, at the very least, and at most, if Dell's experience with Linux is good, perhaps they'll get more sales. Go ATI. :)

I'm sorry, but that's a really stupid attitude, since you're a *consumer* of their products. You benefit from your favorite company's *innovation*, not from their sales figures.

Hoping that your favorite company's competition continues to fail basically ensures that your favored products start to suck... without NVidia and Intel at nipping at its heels, I can assure you that ATI cards would stagnate.

For example, I am an AMD fan when it comes to processors. I like the value of their mid-range offerings, I like HyperTransport, I like their innovation in the 64-bit area, and I consider them more friendly to open source. But does that mean I want Intel to suck? Far from it!! I want Intel and AMD to fight each other tooth and nail. I rejoice at the low-power Core 2 Duo processors, knowing it will force AMD to come up with something better. I delight in the price wars that have forced AMD to discount its processors, allowing me to buy a dual-core 64-bit Socket AM2 processor for $60 from Newegg.

The way I see it, I want my favorite products to encounter incessant and BRUTAL competition... and to triumph through innovation.

So, I guess next time I recommend PCs using ATI!

[OldHawk777]

I always try to be fair and make exceptional recommendations and deals for the folks at work.

A couple years ago I turned a CFO projected enterprise $8M deal into a $5.5M deal while getting hard-drives sizes doubled, RAM doubled, all CRTs swapped to same size LCDs ... upgrades, an additional 100 desktops (900 total), 35 HP Intel Servers, 20 SUN-Cisco nodes, and three Alcatel-Lucent Omnicore switches. Yep also the cable, patch-panels, wire-racks, transceivers, and all the other required hardware and software trinkets (let me think, was that Gates-Arrow, Ingram Micro, or CDW we made the deal with? Dang, I forget...). Total screw-ups were kept at less than 0.5% of cost which the vendor we went with resolved at no cost. Saved $2.5M ... had a ~$27K problem resolved for $0.

Maybe next time I will look at the MB-graphic or cPCI cards and decide ATI is easier to support over the lifecycle requirement. It will have to prove a better business decision, but I will look, and if all is about equal well ATI will win my recommendation.

I still have another year before I need to seriously start thinking again about big problems, but I won't forget to look at the ATI and NVidia lifecycle supportability issue. The recent distributed content management and storage network was set too a non-proprietary architecture for lifecycle compliance requirements ... scaleability and upgradeability as CFO/CIO infrastructure like to call it.

I am seldom questioned ... when I make a recommendation %~$, most of the technophobes in management remain silent and just hope I screwup.

Kitten killing

[Sits]

Ah one of the classic "why the drivers are closed arguments". Dave Airled basically summarised all the reasons for keeping the drivers closed in his Open Source Graphic Drivers - They Don't Kill Kittens talk at the 2006 Ottawa Linux Symposium (a longer more detailed version can be found on page 19 of conference proceedings and there's also an LWN discussion of the talk). The basic arguments were as follows:

• Microsoft - Conspiracy theorists find a way to blame Microsoft for every problem in Linux. This time they point out when Microsoft decided to use a vendor's chip in the XBox consoles or chipset vendors puts DirectX 8.0 support you don't get specs any more.
  
• ??? - Patents and fear of competitors or patent scumsucking companies bringing infringement. Vendors claim releasing chipset docs to the public may make it easier for these things to be found; however, most X.org developers have no problem signing suitable NDAs .
  
• Profit - Graphics card manufacturing is a very competitive industry, especially in the high-end gaming, 3-6 month development cycle, grind-out-
  as-many-different-cards-as-you-can. Quake 3 speeds are spotted in binary drivers any way and it doesn't explain fglrx which are some of the most unsuitable drivers for gaming on Linux.

Read the proceedings for detailed explanation of why no more kittens need to killed!

I don't think everyone understanding the argument

[jabjoe]

I don't think everyone understands the argument here. There is a problem with closed source drivers. It's not just ideology. Closed source drivers means you can end up with no drivers for a device for your version of the kernel. Even if drivers for some different kernel version exists. A good example of this is old devices. If the manufacturer still exists, they probably don't care to do the work to update drivers for a device they no longer sell. Maybe there should be a device/kernel interface that stays the same for all time, but I think as a rule, people want the best interface possible, with open source drivers so devices can be kept up. You then of course get the advantage of open source so you can fix/work-round bugs (or improve it!).

eye candy and scientific workstations

[nanosquid]

With Compiz, Beryl, and XGL, excellent 3D graphics support has become a mainstream issue. Furthermore, Linux is widely used in science and engineering, and those users use excellent 3D graphics as well.

Re:Beryl is a joke

[redcane]

Maybe it's the other way around, or more for the novelty factor. I visited a friend yesterday, and his theme made it look like he had switched to Vista, but he's actually been running that theme for two years, and it's just an unforunate coincidence that vista looks like that.