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Dell Asking ATI For Better Linux Drivers
Open Source IT writes "According to a presentation at Ubuntu Live 2007, Dell is working on getting better ATI drivers for Linux for use in its Linux offerings. While it is not known whether the end product will end up as open source, with big businesses like Google and Dell now behind the push for better Linux graphics drivers, hopefully ATI will make the smart business decision and give customers what they want."
I must be the only person on Earth who hasn't had much problems with ATI's Linux drivers. Them dropping support for anything older than the 9600 series sucks, but I have been Thrilled with with the Linux performance of my Mobility Radeon x1600. Easily bests my Geforce 6800.
Beryl, XGL, Compiz, UT2003, Enemy Terrority, America's Army, all glass smooth and stable. I can run Beryl while playing high-def (1280p) x264 videos at the same time, too.
Still, better is better, and ATI's drivers do have some problems entering/leaving the console.
here just a couple days ago. Not sure how much better they are, but they are making some efforts.
What if they were 2 clause BSD licensed? Would that be good enough for you?
Though, I'm sure they would prefer to release it under something more like the GPL so that they can poach any changes back again (just like they are allowed too of course...).
I wank in the shower.
M$ DRM and DX is what is keeping good open drivers away from linux. Intel did open there but there hardware at the time was real bad next to ATI and NVIDIA and they had very little to lose as at the time 3D game play was very slow on Intel GMA video.
I think we will eventually see open drivers from amd/ati, after all Intel has open-sourced theirs, so AMD will want to as well. Anything to get their hardware selling I would think. Especially for the server market, where AMD is doing (relatively) well, and the video hardware isn't bleeding edge (I know there are some open reversed-engineered drivers, but it would be nice to have some official ones).
When it comes down to it, as the underdog, AMD has the most to gain, and the least to lose, by open-sourcing their video drivers. And if/when they do, Nvidia will be under pressure to follow suit.
In any case, I would be happy with better support, open or not. With a growing install base and good, stable, 3D graphics it would also make the game companies not completely ignore Linux. Here's to hoping civilization V is cross-platform! (hey, they already started down that path by using much python for IV)
Often, not as much is done in the hardware as is advertised. I have been told that examination of some modern graphics drivers reveals them to be very good implementions IN SOFTWARE of graphics libraries. If those companies were to release the source, their competitors drivers would gain in ability, and projects such as OpenGL might suddenly become a lot better.
Essentially, it is partly the case that graphics cards are hardware dongles for graphics libraries (drivers).
I would be nice if ATI released open source drivers, both for Linux and for Windows. However, none of the big graphics card manufacturers are likely to do that unless they believe that their own card can compete on a pure hardware basis alone. The fact that they don't do it, is evidence that these overpriced 3D watt-burning powerhogs aren't really all they are hyped up to be.
Even if ATI released 100% working, fast drivers, they would be useless if they weren't OPEN and FREE.
You people are all crazy about GPL/Open Source. "VIVA OPEN SOURCE WE WANT SOURCE CODES!". Seriously, how many *nix users contribute to OSS projects? How many contribute code? I bet a good bunch of people contribute because I've seen projects that have died and have been picked up by other developers to keep some applications alive so I won't deny the existence of contributors.
What I will say is that I would honestly prefer closed source drivers like Nvidia but that work correctly and perform great rather than open source drivers with the current ppl @ ATI. Call me crazy but why does every company that develop on Linux have to give in to this OSS idealogy, the idea of giving to the community in order to keep it alive? Seriously the company that do so are great but the companies that don't want to, it's their choice it's their product and it's their software.
Does ATI need to improve their drivers? Hell yes. Is the solution to open source their drivers? Maybe, maybe not. Get a good team of linux developers to regularly work on them at ATI and if the drivers perform great, you will see many happy ATI users who will not need to buy a Nvidia video card to simply to stay on Linux. Sure there will be a few pissed off GPL/OSS/Linux/Penguin zealots who will cry for the source code, too bad for them I guess.
I'm not holding my breath Me neither. I recently switched from ATI (on which I spent several days to get it to work but *still* suboptimal) to NVidia to get accelerated dualscreen and it Just Works. Never looked back. Sorry ATI, you're too late.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
It's working. It's not fast and good karma isn't the motivation, but it IS working.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Haven't learned our lesson regarding security or portability have we?
Popular binary drivers had some unresolved, severe exploits and couldn't be bothered to address them for about two years. That's just an anecdote, but illustrates that the problem is real and not just theoretical. Anecdotes aside, there are inherent problems with binary-only drivers (or binary-only anything). For the obtuse, the interview with Theo de Raadt interview with Jonathan Gray and Damien Bergamini go into more details.
Production mistakes and design flaws aside, happen. That's why we get the effect that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". But with binary-only that also means that nearly anything, from back doors to monitoring, can be piggybacked into the blob. You'd be hard pressed to find out. And depending on the vendor for the binary also leaves you dependent on their choice of architectures - not yours, and their lifecycle timeline - not yours.
Some, like the GP, may prefer the GPL, others may prefer other open source license. Whatever. Any of them is a far cry better than no source code.
Also, remember the open source is not just a license, but a development model. Popular hardware will gain development speed and quality for the drivers. It's not like the drivers have any inherent value without the hardware. Opening up the drivers would most likely boost the sales of the hardware they use.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The Nvidia driver might be admirably well-behaved, but don't forget that the real "Right Thing" would be for it to be released under a Free Software license so that it can simply be distributed with X.org to begin with, like the nv driver.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
A) Nvidia, with the lead, but still no completely open drivers?
B) Intel, with completely open drivers, but nowhere close to the lead or high end graphics cards?
C) ATI, with moderately capable hardware and struggling drivers? If they open their drivers up completely and Dell turns to them for their supply of graphics cards, could we see a surge in popularity amongst Linux users?
Long-term, either Intel will catch up on the hardware side, or Nvidia and ATI will have to open up their drivers. The first of the latter two to open up their drivers completely will probably get the edge they need in the POSIX user crowd.
I guess we can always hope that AMD wises up and makes this a 3 horse race!
If knowing is half the battle, what is the other half?