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AMD Promises Open Source Graphics Drivers

Posted by Zonk on from the feel-the-love-linux-gamers dept.

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!"

11 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. I could not read the summary by niceone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
  2. Re:Nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:Nice by OmegaBlac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?
  4. Re:Mainstream gaming by OrangeTide · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  5. Re:Intel driver Open Source? by Josh+Triplett · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.)
  6. Dual head by markov_chain · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
  7. Re:Nice by MoxFulder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    --
    My bicyles
  8. Re:Nice by Stewie241 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    * 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?

  9. Re:Nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  10. eye candy and scientific workstations by nanosquid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  11. Re:Nice by timelorde · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.