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AMD To Open ATI Specs
Several readers tipped us the followup of yesterday's AMD/ATI news, the new development hinted at by Phoronix: AMD has announced they are releasing the specs for all new Radeon chipsets, and will be working with the open source community to develop a fully functional 2D and 3D graphics driver. An anonymous reader opines: "AMD appears to be following in Intel's footsteps with upcoming releases. If AMD is successful NVidia will have real competition in the GNU/Linux gaming arena. While past support by ATI was unsatisfactory the new AMD buyout appears to be having some effect."
I guess this development will have an effect on my fanboyness towards nvidia . . .
The tide might just be changing. Have you looked at the ubuntu forums how many "normal people" has started using ubuntu after they found out they can actually run WoW in it?
I say a serious commitment from one of the two large gfx-chipset suppliers is extremely huge and will probably force the other one to do the same in time.
I know you're joking, but bear in mind that nVidia has a huge chunk of the Linux workstation/rendering market which is a highly profitable and competitive - better graphics drivers for ATI cards could be a blow to nVidia here and it'll be interestng to see how they react.
Just cos there's comparitively few games for Linux doesn't mean that decent 3D/OGL isn't important.
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This really could be a "right place, right time" thing for Linux gaming though. There is a circular dependency between gamer use and game availability - WGA and Vista *might* actually make Windows just irritating enough and good ATI drivers might make Linux game performance just attractive enough to break through.
I can hope, because I really want my current PC to be my last Windows machine and the availability of mainstream games for Linux would make it happen.
"More than open-source drivers, we need a good replacement for DirectX." Unless the game companies start designing games for multiple platforms to begin with, or design for Linux firsthand, having a replacement would give you nothing. Hardly any or none commercial games would be made for it. Unless DirectX gets ported to Linux, and there's a bigger chance that Vista turns public domain than that happening.
I think these news might have different implications than we might suspect. While we may think "that's cool, although so few gamers are running Linux", I think this move might have other repercussions than just help the Linux PC game market.
In this day and age, we've got Open Source Anything, handheld consoles, cell phones, toasters, anything. Now if we imagine that some people somewhere decide to make a gaming console to rivalize with the Xbox 360 and the Wii, an Open Source Console, running Linux, or even some Open Source AppleTV-like box, which GPU will the makers choose? Obviously the most FOSS/Unix friendly, and that would be AMD/ATI.
They might be feeling that a large market might open up soon, and that's why I think they chose to do this move, while they can easily become the first ones there.
You just got troll'd!
The fact is, companies are reacting to demand. There are a lot of people who would ditch Windows in a heartbeat if only for windows-only games.
To be more accurate, companies are interested in whether there are people who would ditch gaming (or at least that company's games) in order to ditch Windows.
G
While I think that's a good guess, I don't see any actual statistics to back it up.
I think instead that they are seeing a huge outcry at Vista's problems, a large swelling of (K|X|Ed)Ubuntu followers, Dell -and- HP selling Linux-based machines, and general non-MS market/mind-share changes.
ATI knows that nVidia can't legally copy anything from their specs, and their current drivers for all platforms are a joke.
It costs nothing for a home user to switch to (K|X|Ed)Ubuntu and if the user can know their graphics card will actually work BETTER that way, they might actually switch permanently. If the other graphics cards don't work on that system after the user has switched, they'll buy ATI from then out.
Yes, some of those are big IFs... But there's a lot more where that came from, and this move just costs them some engineer/programmer time to write the documentation up, which they should have anyway! What have they got to lose?
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
FTA:
Does this mean they don't have them yet?..
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Demand the older 3D specifications as well!
Read the notice... they're only intending to release the hardware specifications on new cards. This is a ploy to sell more equipment.
What about all those cards that are already out there. Let's hold these people to a higher standard. If they WANT us to buy their new cards they are going to have to give open access to their old hardware specifications. It's that simple.
For the time being I'm delighted to have modest 3D support with Open Source INTEL drivers on a pre-release of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbons.
-Joe Baker
Digital Communications Research, Inc.
Even if that doesn't happen, they're promising open specifications. This should be a boon for every single open source OS out there.
To play proprietary video games from major publishers on a Mac running Mac OS X or on a PC running GNU/Linux, try using an external gaming accelerator. This comes in two pieces sold separately: a "TV tuner" that you put in an internal slot, and an external "PlayStation 2" unit that you connect to the TV tuner and your sound card. Then you use xawtv to connect to the gaming accelerator. I did something similar a decade ago, by running a "Nintendo 64" unit through the TV tuner of a Macintosh Performa 6230.
You can continue to play Free video games using the hardware already in your PC.
Why the hell would you want to reboot your computer just to play a game? That means your torrents go down, your network shares go down, you can't multitask email/irc with gaming, all the terminals you had open get closed and you lose your place. If you can justify shutting everything down and dedicating your hardware solely to playing games, you should have just bought a console in the first place.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It would be understandble if they need to edit the documents or have the legal team review them.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
At some point, your LCD has to toggle pixels in the "cleartext" not the "ciphertext". At that point you can decode the signal. Just crack open the case, and try to find the easiest place to tap the unencrypted signal (1600x1200 wires is a bit tedius to solder).
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Open Source Sysadmin
This will probably get modded as flame bait but whatever....
I am speaking of commercial game titles here. If you are referring to Open Source games then that is a different ball game.
The linux gaming community is a hack at best, with a few interspersed titles (older titles I might add) having been built to natively play on linux.(Mainly by iD)
When game studios begin releasing titles capable of playing natively in linux, then we can consider linux gaming doing "quite well" The fact that I have to f**k around with Cedega/Wine configs to get a game to work is bulls**t. I play games to take a break from thinking not to configure yet another piece of linux software.
When people say "Game X works great except for the mini-map and any anti-aliased fonts." By definition that is a game which is not working correctly. The fact is you are accepting mediocre game support in order to say "I play games on linux with no problems, why would I need to load windows?"
Bioshock, Call of Duty Airborne, Spore are three new games which if I wanted to play under linux I would have to scour through forums, usenet posting, etc just to get the game to launch, and this is not including any other issues that tend to arise when running games through cedega/wine.
Except LGPL isn't overly commercial-friendly. If I find a way to make SDL do something better, faster, cooler or just plain different, my choices are to either let all my competitors have access to it or not to use it myself. Not an easy choice to make. Now I'm far from a BSD fanatic and think the LGPL is a good and fine license that I would happily use myself, but if you want to see SDL in more commercial games and see it taking on DirectX then BSD is the only way to go.
In the case of DirectX you don't have that choice at all - you're stuck with what Microsoft gives you. This hasn't harmed its popularity, so the LGPL shouldn't be a problem for those making non-Free software with SDL.
Screw 3D and gamers... I just glad ACPI developers will finally have the docs they need to get ATI video cards to come out of S3/Suspend successfully.
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Frat boys don't play Doom on the PC, they play Halo 3 and Madden on their XBox 360's. PC is a niche when it comes to the general gaming public. Maybe not to "gamers", but to the public, it is, at least when you discount things like Pop Cap games. If you don't, then PC gaming wins, hands down.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Err.. then you're a windows user who also runs linux, from a commercial point of view. I know there are some linux-compatable games, but if you have a windows PC you are not the market niche of "linux-only gamer" you suggest. Moreover, since "we all have windows boxes" there is no linux niche worth speaking of. The whole point is that in this medium, the consumer still has to work to fit with the vendor, be it in hardware or software requirements. This isn't like food where specialist needs are catered for, it's like the movie industry where it's their format or nothing*.
*or theft.
I am. I run *only* free software on my computer - with the sole exception of my nVidia drivers. Some of the games I play are Doom 2, OpenArena (and various mods), Urban Terror, Sauerbraten, and Warsow - all multiplayer. I find some of the marketing tactics in the gaming industry to be even more disgusting then any other software market. This disgust has made commercial games a huge turn-off for me.
Anyway, It would seem as though ATI is getting their act together. Unless nVidia catches up by the time I need a new card, it will certainly end up being an ATI. You can't loose with free software.
Anyone talking about _just gaming_ and thinking the industrial market is the _real prize_ will most likely never ever in his life understand why Microsoft rules the Desktop.
Gaming is important - who cares about those few video workstations? The mass market is the one thing which makes a company rich. And the mass market is the desktop on home computers - once you have that the company computers will follow anyway, because people like to have the same system in the company than at home. And home computers are for games - who buys a new computer for any other reason?
"Anyone else suspect that we might possibly be seeing the start of the slow decline of Microsoft's empire?"
Yes. I can almost taste it. From the moment I got Ubuntu installed and working in ways that I didn't expect linux to from my previous experience (detecting stuff, opening any document I cared to throw at it, etc), I've been of the opinion that linux will take over a lot sooner than most people expect, and when it happens, it will eat into M$' market share in a flood. After that, there will be minority holdouts who have legacy apps etc. The jump from 10% or so to 80% I'd expect to take place in 5 years or less.
The reason I think it will happen that way is that the bigger the user base, the better the software, including apps written specifically for the purposes of migration. Enough users, you get the best games being written in linux, and M$ compatibility for legacy games becomes way more profitable. You get hardware drivers and specs opened immediately, with a working driver for linux/BSD the moment it hits the streets.
With free software, the switching costs are approaching zero, and the benefits are immense. No malware (for now), no vendor lock-in, no crappy default applications like notepad.exe unless you pay $$$, download any software you want legally, easily, for free, and with a minimum of fear for spyware.
You also have a much larger army of backyard enthusiasts doing installs on other people's old computers just to hear "Thanks! My computer runs so much better now! You've saved me hundreds of dollars! I can't believe it's free!?!". I mean, that was how the old Doom shareware spread. "Here, check out this free game!", "Wow! That's the coolest thing I've ever seen on a PC!".
I can remember reading a magazine article around the year 2000 that Bill Gates was hiring someone to manage his investments as he slowly divested himself from Microsoft. Bill Gates is many things, but fool is not one of them. His challenge has been to keep the stock value high enough, long enough, that he doesn't collapse the price.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.