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AMD Launches New ATI Linux Driver
Michael Larabel writes "AMD has issued a press release announcing 'significant graphics performance and compatibility enhancements' on Linux. AMD will be delivering new ATI Linux drivers this year that offer ATI Radeon HD 2000 series support, AIGLX support (Beryl and Compiz), and major performance improvements. At Phoronix we have been testing these new drivers internally for the past few weeks and have a number of articles looking at this new driver. The ATI 8.41 Linux driver delivers Linux gaming improvements from the R300/400 series and the R500 series. The inaugural Radeon HD 2900XT series support also can be found in the new ATI Linux driver with 'the best price/performance ratio of any high-end graphics card under Linux.' While this new driver cannot be downloaded yet, in their press release AMD also alludes to accelerating efforts with the open-source community."
Really, it's not that I like nvidia. But I've been hearing reports on /. since the beginning of the year of ATI linux drivers coming soon. How about we wait until they're actually release before bothering to give them any support.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Here, you dropped your tinfoil hat.
They're useless to me unless the source is available, preferably under the GPL. I really wish they'd work -inside- the framework of the kernel, Mesa, and xorg projects instead of building one-off binary drivers. What if I want to use their card on PowerPC, want to link against the latest (or a non-mainline) kernel, or just want to run an all-open system?
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I purchase Nvidia only because the cards actually work under linux, or they used to. Lately there are issues...
If AMD steps up to the plate and gives us good drivers and actually listens and reacts fast to reported problems, they can come out way ahead.
Nvidia driver install used to be painless, now it can be incredibly painful depending on the Distro and Card you have. I still cant get a old Geforce4 card working on my wifes ubuntu PC. I gave up and switched to the intel onboard chipset. Far better support for that video chipset than nvidia is giving us even for the older cards that USED to work great.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's only been 3-4 years since I bought an ATI card in the (vain) hopes that they would continue supporting X devs. Sadly, I found poor support and lots of bugs. Unless they pull an Intel and release/fund Free drivers for their graphics chips, for me it's Intel for ease-of-use and NVidia for performance. I've lost faith in them.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Have ATI even stopped violating the GPL by shipping old code from AGPGart in their binary? This is too little too late, I've already given up on high performance 3D and decided to stick with intel graphics because of the open drivers. What's the betting this 'driver' requires mono? Seriously, last I looked the windows drivers required the .NOT framework for the craplet and settings manager.
There is still no support for all-in-wonder cards. Nice try though.
In previous discussions about ATI and their Linux driver support, I had mentioned that I made the bold move to move away from ATI on my laptop to nVidia. (Dell makes these kinds of changes fairly easy) My laptop is an Inspiron 8600 which I had originally ordered to use the ATI Mobility 9600 card. Through eBay, I ordered and later installed the 128MB version of the nVidia card to replace it. (Not terribly expensive either.) I just checked AMD/ATI's web site to see what the current hardware supported under the current driver is. Sure enough, my mobility 9600 is now at the very bottom of the supported hardware list and with the new release, it is certain to fall off entirely.
If it hasn't been stated clearly enough in the past, I'll state it again. Even if you don't care about whether a driver is OSS or proprietary from a technical standpoint, users are advised to understand that proprietary drivers places control over your hardware's obsolescence firmly in the hands of the manufacturer. And these days, with limited hardware selection for things like laptops or very tiny PCs, your options are pretty limited. These proprietary drivers are damaging the viability of Linux on older hardware which has been one of Linux's strongest motivators for adoption.
Moving to nVidia helps because at least with nVidia, they have a legacy hardware program to support and update drivers for older hardware. AMD/ATI does not. Ultimately, though, I should probably settle in and get comfortable with the OSS drivers for my hardware even if the performance is lower... it's a damned shame though.
All I want is AIGLX. If I get AIGLX I'll be happy.
Even a blind pig will find an acorn occasionally.
Lets suppose that this driver does all it says, and more. That'd be one in a row for ATI. They have even had drivers that will sometimes work under Windows. Not very often, and not by any stretch routinely.
Why would I put my money behind a product that I can be fairly certain will never have another driver that will ever work?
There's tons of games that run on Linux that tax 3D graphics to no end...
.........
UT2004, doom3, quake4,
Not to mention Cedega offering options for 'windows-only' games
Please try and support The Open Graphics Project.= AboutOpenGraphics
http://wiki.opengraphics.org./tiki-index.php?page
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
There are not that many graphic-intensive games for Linux.
Not many, true, but the FlightGear flight simulator is the main reason I upgraded from a cheap generic graphics card to an ATI 9250 based card (the highest level card with FLOSS drivers based on specs ATI released back when they were doing that). (And yeah, compared to current state of the art graphics cards, 9250s are still cheap.)
I wouldn't mind something a little faster, though.
-- Alastair
Wrong. Many Linux machines are now desktops. 2/3 of the Linux machines in my home are desktops. I don't use fancy 3D desktops, but I do use everyday apps like Google Earth and the occasional kids' games that are much faster and smoother with hardware rather than software OpenGL.
However I have solved this problem by only buying Intel graphics hardware. They work from the moment Fedora first boots up.
Exactly. I got a laptop with an Intel GMA. Not a powerful video chip, but it has enough power to do all that 3D desktop stuff. And there was no fuss getting drivers. No extra stuff to download. No configuration to do. Everything just worked. For all my new computers (for the foreseeable future, until other graphics cards manufacturers release good open source drivers), they will all be using Intel GMA, because these video chips are good enough for my uses, and the drivers are extremely solid. If I want to play video games, I'll use my console (Wii).
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
There are not that many graphic-intensive games for Linux.
Nonsense, while the list isn't as big as Windows's there's still a fair number of graphics intensive games on Linux (though admittedly there may not be any ones that are so current that they absolutely need the latest hardware). Even just playing Doom 3 or UT2004 needs a 3d capable driver.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The title is misleading - AMD did not launch anything, they announced it. Just the fact that some random hardware site got a sneak peek at the driver does not change anything...
I didn't see any word about MPEG2/MPEG4 offloading, or even word of proper Xv support/controls. I've got my fingers crossed, but for those of us who live & breathe MythTV, I fear it's still a one-horse town.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
I don't think he dropped it. I don't think he trusts the tinfoil manufactures not to collude with the government and put small holes in their foil to permit the government's rays through. He's going to beat them through shear force of will by not thinking anymore.
Cool! Now we can play games which were on Windows only about five years ago!
Who's chasing tail lights now? In your face, Apple!
Is there a particular reason you need the driver to be open-source? Are you planning on re-writing it? I've been hearing the open-source arguement for years but never understood it. Unless you are a driver developer yourself or plan on going through the code line by line, what does it matter? Why should a commericial company release their intellectual property for free when there are hundreds of people creating these products for a living. This is completely different than FOSS. What if you started giving away what you did for a living? /rant off
What the hell is up with all the scathing remarks?! Let's remember that the ATI acquisition by AMD is new and let's be impressed, considering past support, that progress is being made in the Linux ATI drivers arena AT ALL! I really do believe that AMD is going to do the right thing by Linux. They're two underdogs that stand a lot to gain from each other and it would only stand to hurt any gains to be had by such a relationship by continuing what ATI was doing before the buyout. The fact of the matter is, ATI has undoubtedly undergone a mass re-organization and is, doubtlessly, also operating under a new philosophy. Anyone who knows someone who had their division bought out knows this to be true. Let's just sit back and see what happens before we start (effectively) blaming AMD for ATI's past mistakes and poorly written code.
It was announced today at the Linux summit they will open up specifications for all graphics cards, and release a 'reference'/minimal open-source driver for all cards.
More here: http://lwn.net/Articles/248227
xer.xes -- 4181
Since the beginning of the year? Hell, I've been hearing murmuring for years on "support for XYZ will be coming soon!" - and yet today the disparity between the ATI/nVidia feature set and stability under Linux are still huge. How long since nVidia got support for AIGLX? ATI only just adds it now?
You'll also note that, GeForce 8x00 series notwithstanding (which are marginally slower under Linux), nVidia maintain a very small performance delta between the Linux and windows version of their drivers. ATI's performance delta can sometimes be as much as 50% (top-of-my-head BTW, Phoronix had another full-of-crappy-graphs article about it a while back).
I'm hoping AMD can pull some weight and at least get better support for laptop chipsets and IGP's in their otherwise pretty nice chipsets. Until then, I have to stick to Intel or nVidia for graphics, and since I only need the one gaming box, I'm getting through alot of Intel motherboards. Guess what CPU goes in an Intel motherboard, AMD? Despite me wanting to use X2's for their lower idle power envelope, I find it hard to justify.
Sigh.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Don't forget GPL Nexuiz from http://www.alientrap.org/
In either case, here at Microsoft, we feel standards are important. And we have fun, too. Doug Mahugh, Microsoft
Holy cow, folks. Can't you be just a little happy that ATI has finally gotten their crap together performance-wise before criticizing their potential lack of openness? I would like OSS drivers as much as the next guy, but at least we ought to appreciate AMD/ATI is finally putting some effort into Linux. Besides, one of those Phoronix articles is insinuating that there is more for the OSS community coming than just higher performance.
Awesome!
Even though its not "out" yet, there are plenty of benchmarks available. It'll be out soon.
What does this "prove" for me? That AMD's commitment to make ATI a first-class contender on the Linux front was for real. I'm guessing that Windows users will also see improvements in OpenGL performance, and we'll see better adoption of OpenGL on all three major platforms (Windows, OS X, Linux).
I'm happy as hell about this. About time us Linux users got to take advantage of GPU price wars!
I'm still an NVIDIA fan, because they've been good to me for all these years (on Linux), but I'm at least willing to look at ATI these days; particularly because the ATI peripheral GPU software is much better (better control panel, better install program). I wonder if the driver quality is good (not just performance, but does it always compile correctly, does it always fix broken installs (the way NVIDIA's does?)).
This is a good day for Linux.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
What about people like me that use Solaris? or any othe esoteric operating system other than the big-3 ?
or if there's strange bugs that you think are the drivers fault, and you happen to know enough C to fix them right now instead of whenever the snail-slow vendor gets around to it?
as for your comment about giving away what you do for a living... AMD doesn't write drivers for money, they make hardware. Intel manages to make hardware and open-source a good majority of their drivers, so that's just a stupid argument.
Ironically you have a lot more choice on your Linux PC than I do on my Apple desktop. Thing comes with a defective ATI video card that overheats the moment you actually try to make it DO anything. And my choices are another (probably defective) ATI video card or a less capable Nvidia one. Well there's always a massive amount of suckitude associated with my experiences with ATI, from months spent with no PCIe support on Linux to drivers that would randomly break X to outright defective hardware. And now promises of a new driver that's going to crap daisies and rainbows? I'll believe it when I see it. Until that time, I'm going to be going out of my way to avoid buying any more ATI hardware.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Thanks, AMD!
Unfortunately, under the existing driver, any time my rogue applied poison in WoW, I had a full half-second freeze. Which means that, last december, I got an nVidia card.
Since I only upgrade graphics cards every couple of years, it might be a while before this matters -- especially because, until the "complete freeze on certain texturing operations" bug is documented and acknowledged and someone who had it before tells me it's fixed, I'm not about to buy an ATI card on the off chance that it might work.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
That wasn't a tinfoil hat, it was Sony/BMG music CD.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
I don't think ATI and nVidia, the two big graphic chipset manufacturers, will keep their drivers closed for much more time. GPUs are more and more being seen as advanced mathematical co-processors rather than "mere" gamers' hardware. Keeping them closed is akin to keeping most if not all of a CPU's opcodes closed under NDA's. What good would that do to a CPU manufacturer? There'll come a point where software companies will simply start demanding open low level access to GPUs for performance improvement purposes (think advanced video editing, strong cryptography, grid computing etc.), and it'll be hard for GPU manufacturer to offer any reasonable explanation for not providing it.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Yea, because you would be able to find the rootkit in a driver with thousands of lines of code...
So... I don't even bother trying the fglrx drivers since the reverse engineered free driver is more stable, and actually works. I mean seriously ATI, a non-profit project which bases its code on guessing how your hardware works has not only better, but in some cases superior, stability than your shitty driver, that really says something. I think it is time for a bad car analogy. Imagine a driver who memorises the layout of the town by carefully noting down where his car crashes as he drives. This guy's taxi company is currently beating your top of the line staff, even thou you have a full map of the town, a military grade GPS receiver, and real-time information about traffic congestion. Oh, and btw, your competitor's car has opaque windows, can only use the reverse gear and he is only able to turn left. Even so, the customers prefer him in front of you. In short: You suck! Big time...
And that's a shame, because people probably really ought to keep their hats on.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
There WAS that request from some PR type in the Firehose to give Slashdot an interview over the subject. So I suspect that they plan to do something. Because if they're plotting a PR blitz over a lot of nothing, that'd only backfire.
Honestly, I suspect this has more to do with Dell selling Ubuntu than anything. Hopefully that'll at least get them to improve the drivers, although I wish we could get some open ones. I mean, the kernel team is willing to work under an NDA... what more do they need?
Accidental security hole, deliberate rootkit, what's the difference, right?
Oh, wait, I forgot: fuck Heinlein's Razor; every mistake is deliberate! nVidia is consipiring with Microsoft and Halliburton to take control of your computer and obfuscate the true nature of The Milkman. It's all clear to me now!
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
> Is there a particular reason you need the driver to be open-source?
So it works when the kernel changes their *&^!%@! ABI yet again in the latest patchlevel. To port it to other OS's. So smarter people than me can look at it and find bugs or interoperability problems with it and send vendor updates to it.
I can understand their reasoning -- video cards are more or less big FPU arrays these days, and the actual 3d graphics is all software, so they might not want to expose their secrets. The other problem is that the competition would use it to find potential patent infringement. It's a Nash equilibrium: the first one to open-source loses. If I were to put the number generously at 50,000 extra customers due to OSS, that simply wouldn't cover the potential loss. But the fact is, there aren't any solid numbers as to what the market effect would be, and uncertainty is in a lot of ways worse than outright losing -- at least you can write off the latter on your balance sheet early.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
You sure are distracted. By releasing open source drivers it is possible to support (i.e., new features, bugfixes, security fixes) the same hardware in a larger variety of platforms, some which were never supported officially and others that the hardware maker simply dropped the support. You may not notice it if you are that kind of user who adopted the dominating platform and needlessly upgrades hardware and software every year or so. If someone uses a niche platform along with outdated hardware, you bet that open source drivers are important. They are a life saver.
Oh and by the way, not everyone needs to be "a driver developer planning on going through the code line by line" to make the case for open source drivers. It takes a single user to write a patch that influences the entire community, which means that an isolated contribution by a random user can benefit the whole project and community. For example, do you ever heard about a project called linux?
Really? Who, exactly is "earning a living" selling standalone ATI drivers? AMD sure isn't doing it. Oh you mean no one?
Just because someone may have found a way of getting paid for doing something it doesn't mean that anyone who intended to do the same thing for free should be barred from doing so. Do you believe that those bastards working on all FLOSS operating systems that release everything for free should just stop doing that just because some poor sap decided to try ask for money after providing that exact same service? Moreover, why exactly do you believe that locking down a driver is a decision that helps the hardware's paying customers? Do you believe that no one should offer something for free, something that undeniably improves the life of the community, just because a poor sap somewhere got rich by selling that exact same service?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Development in the open source world happens fast and it doesn't take long for a driver that isn't continuously updated to fall into obsolescence.
Therefore, I submit to you the reason that I prefer the following pragmatic argument that open source drivers are better than closed source drivers: closed source drivers lag behind kernel development.
*sigh* back to work...
Uh, because the driver's authors can't anticipate all the ways in which people might want to use it?
Nvidia's binary blob driver doesn't work with Xen, so I can't use Xen on my desktop, and it'll only ever get fixed if Nvidia gets around to it.
http://outcampaign.org/
In that case, you can join the 170 people (so far) that have signed my pledge to "support graphics card manufacturers with open source drivers". At the end of the year I hope to have 1000 signatures and I will send a letter to ATI/AMD and nVidia representatives with the pledge and the signatures.
As a counterpoint, I recently bought a laptop with an ATI vid chip. No, I didn't have 3D accel working immediately, but all I had to do was click on "System"->"Admin"->"Manage Restricted drivers" (I'm using Ubuntu). I restarted my x server and I was good to go.
Compiz runs great (faster than my GMA850 based laptop I had previously) and no issues. This was waaay easier than my previous experience with installing drivers for both Nvidia and ATI, of course the majority of the thanks has to go to Ubuntu in this case. Stuff is looking up for drivers under linux. I'm crossing my fingers that the whole Dell/ubuntu thing will help accelerate the progress.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
I have a perfectly good 3 year old laptop with a video card that ATI decided to drop support for. The last proprietary driver that it IS supported on (8.28.8) will not install on Feisty. My options are exactly:
Exactly none of those options is appealing, so I won't be buying ATI again until they open up.
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
Or you could put your money where your mouth is and support the Open Graphics Project. If this gets off the ground, the other manufacturers might wake up.
http://outcampaign.org/
Is there a particular reason you need the driver to be open-source?
Yes
Unless you are a driver developer yourself..
I am.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
How does this detract from my statement that I need open-source drivers because I use an esoteric operating system ( I happen to think it's the best OS out there, so I use it. This means to me that I'm limited to intel & nV cards, and if I were a fooBSD person or something, I might be limited only to intel )
Absolutely! Nex is great fun, and the community is growing.
Technology tips and tricks.
> He's going to beat them through shear force of will by not thinking anymore.
Well, he sure came to the right place!
I'm guessing you think the only application for 3D acceleration in Linux is games.
Perhaps the Linux ABI developers should coordinate with 3rd Party OEMs more closely to keep them abreast of any dev changes that would break their driver processes. It's a two-way street.
ATI and AMD can do whatever they want. No one owes Linux users an opensource driver, but Intel increased our loyalty by giving them to us. Even though they're not the best hardware. nVidia has excellent hardware and while the drivers aren't opensource, at least their binaries work fairly well.
I used to really like ATI when I used Windows. I might even recommend them to a Windows user.
We may not be the largest demographic, but there is no doubt that they could sell Linux users more hardware if they got out of the "software business"
If they're even in it...don't they provide the drivers at no cost only to people who have their hardware? Sounds like they're really diversifying.
Another interesting thing about the Intel driver is that due to being pretty much the most capable open-source driver around, it gets a lot of attention from XOrg way, including being compatible with the latest nifty standards. If I want TV-out on ATI, I have to use a driver that's been in continuous beta for the past four years and reboot the machine with the TV plugged in so the card notices it. If I want TV-out on NVidia I have to put weird crap in my X config file and then run nvidia's custom settings app to configure displays. Okay, better. If I want TV-out on Intel I use xrandr -- from the commandline or from any of the GUI utilities already out there... and it works. Bang. Just like that.
Before announcing/implementing these wonderful new useless features (XComposite/AIGLX), I'd like to see existing functionality fixed.
fglrx currently can handle dual-head setups in one of two ways. The first: you run two X servers, which wastes memory and makes you unable to move windows between them. To make it worse, Xv doesn't work on the second head. The second: use a combined framebuffer/xinerama setup which works if your monitors are exactly the same resolution but otherwise forces one to change res.
It is impossible to use both OpenGL and Xv at the same time with fglrx. That's just plain stupid.
VSync doesn't stop OpenGL video playback from tearing, it just makes the video tear diagonally/in the corner.
fglrx is just plain unstable. I've had it regularly lock up my machine with no apparent reason.
fglrx isn't even fast. Running 3dMarkSE2001 in WINE (not a great benchmark by any means), I get a good 60ish% performance loss compared to Windows. That's just plain stupid.
How bout the rest of us in operating system land? *bsd, solaris...
ATI and nVidia are in the software business because software is required to make their hardware work: the hardware only does what the software allows. Since they don't charge money for their Windows drivers, I find it hard to believe that money is any obstacle to making their video drivers free software.
Also, for many applications (3D desktop effects, most games) IBM's shitty display adapters work pretty well, and I'm perfectly happy to use them because they are fully supported on Linux and some other free platforms.
Any luck with Beryl.Compiz, or AIGLX? Or you didn't bother? I was thinking of upgrading soon...
What distro and which driver are you using? Just curious...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I've got an Ubuntu FF installation languishing on my hard drive in a secondary partition to XP, because I've never managed to get my 3 monitors spread across 2 ATI videocards (X800 and 9250) to work correctly.
Does this release make it any easier, at all, to make it work?
Something tells me from reading the rest of the comments that the answer is "no" but I don't know for sure.
I am actually running nvidia under xen right NOW.
:D
http://en.opensuse.org/Use_Nvidia_driver_with_Xen
a big shame its not the latest driver... but it works
no idea if it is easy to hack this fix into later versions of the nvidia driver though..
but i agree that official nvidia support would be a lot better...
... does this mean they've got time to fix the broken Rage128 driver for XP???
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Does this mean ATI will actually deliver stable drivers for windows? That would be a first!
Horns are really just a broken halo.
I call BS, someone who writes video drivers professionally should really be able to spell nVidia.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Well, yeah, actually I could. You mean you can't?
I'm pretty sure the whole reason ATI is in the mess of being regarded as having crappy linux drivers is because they've released crappy linux drivers. I'd be fine with them releasing some sort of 'beta' driver to help appease people with currently unsupported hardware but they should not put out a real release until it's tested and working properly.
And in my opinion the only other thing I would request out of them until that time is silence on the matter.
Any luck with Beryl.Compiz, or AIGLX?
Only to the extent that I tried a live CD with Beryl.Compiz on it and played with the eye candy for a little while. It worked fine, but I'm not a big enough fan of eye candy to worry about it too much. I'm not even sure what driver it loaded now.
My default distro is SUSE 10.1 (from before the Novell-MSFT deal, I've been using SUSE for years), with the radeon driver. AMD64 in 64-bit mode.
-- Alastair
If its the same or better compared to their chief competitor's linux drivers, then I buy a card for my next linux machine.
;-) It's good news.
It would help if the driver were open-source, so that the ABI developers know what changes are likely to affect the driver without guessing.
Sure, they can claim all the want that they have their act together, that's fine; but I will be the final arbitrator of that morsel myself. If their 8.42 driver doesn't fix the issues I've experienced for a while now (see my journal for the info), then they can be assured that they are not going to get more of my hard-earned cash. I've been able to prove that FGLRX + Linux + 3D = broken. If they can fix that, I'll be happy. Mesa's driver doesn't fail like the ATI driver...pity you get far less performance from it...but at least it's stable.
ATI: don't prove yourself a liar with this. I will wait. I will see. Until then, give me no hype: give me results instead.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Well, it might except that the ABI changes are probably designed largely to make life as difficult as possible for anybody who distributes binary drivers. Helping them to cope with the changes would sort-of defeat the purpose in making the changes in the first place.
The kernel developers aren't exactly supportive of non-GPL binary modules...
If you read my journal, you will see that I am hardly the Stalin^H^Hlman type. I tend to think that we should be looking at pragmatism as a foundation of idealism not the other way around.
THe basic issue, however, is that nVidia drivers generally (at least in my experience) tend to require more effort to get installed than they should if you start to move outside of the most common process ro configurations. For example, on one of my Fedora boxes, I can get a kernel that works well with my processor or a precompiled 3d video card driver. I cannot get both. This gets worse as you move away from IA32/64 architectures.
So if you want every Linux user to be able to *easily* use the driver, it *needs* to be open source.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
for basic features like Resize & Rotate (especially rotate), and dual-headed display on monitors with different resolutions.
What's so hard about providing the same features in their Linux driver that they have in their Windows driver?
I'm repeating what others have posted already, but what you wish for looks to be happening soon.
http://lwn.net/Articles/248227/
Sabayon supports Compiz-Fusion out of the box on both ATI and NVidia cards. You get codecs, proprietary drivers, and everything. It just works.
The Live DVD is horribly slow, but the installed system is pretty nice. Just make sure to uninstall Beagle, which is a performance hog, and then you get a great desktop which includes Skype, Google Earth, Picasa, tons of 3D Games, Second Life, etc.
www.sabayonlinux.org
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
There's always the ancient nv driver if you want something open and free. It gets the job done, at least in 2d land. If you want a free driver, I guess we can all petition Nvidia to strip SGI's secret OpenGL magic out of the drivers, leaving us with a substandard card and a wonderfully open driver. It's been discussed to death, and the reason Nvidia won't give us an open driver is because they can't. At least, they can't give us one that performs as we expect Nvidia cards to perform.
What I want to know is.... is Xv working again on the X1xxx series cards again? I know it worked on the older drivers ( 8.24-ish?) but the drivers in debian stable ( 8.36? ) Xv was never there. Not to mention that watching video with GL or GL2 rendering would totally crash X whenever you hit the stop button. If they have Xv working ( and the AIGLX support I would happily throw my X1600 back in.... as it is for dvd / video watching my ti4200 outperforms it.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
I don't doubt that there are legal obstacles to fully open source drivers. However, I was mostly trying to use nVidia as an example of concrete, practical problems with closed source drivers.
:-)
With nVidia, I think that people like to blame them too much, but they do make a good example of the problems of closed source drivers on something like Linux.
On the other hand, maybe it is time we start petitioning SGI to allow an open soure driver for the nVidia cards
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
AMD, Nvidia and Intel don't care if your old GeForce 4, RageXL or intel crap integrated 4 year old graphics cards don't work anymore and really, they shouldn't. That hardware was made several years ago, is no longer in production and I don't recall any of them offering a lifetime warranty on their products. By the same logic you should be upset that Sega isn't releasing any firmware updates or new games for Sega Dreamcast or that Nintendo has dropped support for the Gamecube. It simply does not make sense. The companies have moved on and have shareholders to answer to. Supporting 5 year old out of production products for users who are unlikely to upgrade soon anyways, does not make the company any money.
Further to this, they REALLY don't care if it works under linux. Complain and threaten to boycott them all you want, linux users make up what, 5 maybe 10 percent of all desktop users? Out of that lets say that each graphics vendor has an equal share of linux users so approximately 3.33% Out of that 3.33% only a small fraction, say 50% have bought a new graphics card in the past year (gross overestimate) that they aren't using for gaming (since only a few commercial 3d games are ported to linux every year as opposed to the hundreds made for windows) so it's almost certainly a low end and low margin card. This means that even if any one of these companies dropped linux completely, their sales would go down at MOST by 1.5% That is still an exaggeration since VGA mode works fine for the majority of linux users who use their systems primarily as servers and these are low margin parts.
Supporting linux is almost akin to charity for these companies, except without the tax benefits. Despite this, they continue to support something that makes them no money and is unlikely to make them money in the near future. Perhaps one day it may, but certainly not now.
There is this new Company called Id Software. They plan an entire line of games with native Linux support. I think the first game will be called Quake Wars : Enemy Territory. Or they may have had 1 or 2 games before it.
Well.. It's the chicken and the egg story but for computers..... Without good drivers there cant be any good games..
And it's not just about 3d... good 2d performance is also a big issue, and without open specifications it's very hard to write good drivers..
In the datacentre you don't have screens connected to the machines. Since this is where most Linux machines are (fact) we will treat your anecdotal evidence as cute, misguided and uninformed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
http://slashdot.org/~vipulgoel/journal/182135