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Kernel Builders Appeal For Open Source Drivers
snydeq writes "The Linux kernel development community has released a statement emphasizing the need for open source drivers. The statement, signed by 135 developers, is aimed at preventing future vendors from following the closed source path. One holdout cited is Nvidia. The Linux Foundation has also released a statement in support: 'The Linux Foundation recommends that hardware manufacturers provide open source kernel modules. The open source nature of Linux is intrinsic to its success. We encourage manufacturers to work with the kernel community to provide open source kernel modules in order to enable their users and themselves to take advantage of the considerable benefits that Linux makes possible.'"
There is only one thing holding back Linux from being used more wide-spread.
Gamers, the Linux community just doesn't care for them. But that is wrong, just wrong. Gamers are the reason why computers are the way they are nowadays, without good games to play on our electronic devices I guarantee that computers wouldn't be a big as they are today, and that's something that Linux has always failed to do bring us top-shelf gaming
having open source graphic drivers would be nice but i don't think that is the true problem for games on Linux
there true enemy that needs to be defeated before Linux even has a chance at becoming mainstream:
Games for Windows
The fug-tards at Microsoft pay off every last PC game maker to put their dirty label on everything even the damn game reviews have that garbage label on it for god sakes.
They do it because they know no one else stands a chance in the PC gaming market. Stop them please stop Microsoft and there proprietary-ness. Defeat games for windows and Linux will be main stream, because freedom and openness shouldn't be a standard just for big iron. Theirs little guys like me that would love nothing other than to give windows the old heave-ho but can't because where all locked down in a homeostasis environment.
Also running in an emulated environment just doesn't cut it - it could be possible but WINE just can't do it for some games. Normally the games that don't run are the most proprietary ones sadly but there's still room for them in the sphere that is Linux. Help make a home for gamers where there not locked and bogged down by corporate greed. crack Games for Windows and please dear god make "Games for Linux" a reality
Shipping drivers for only windows is bad, but shipping drivers for only windows and linux is (magically!!) good???
Fight for open specifications. That will enable any competent driver-writer to write drivers and all OSs can compete on fair grounds. By technical documentation, I don't mean "the guide to programming the Emc2x86" kind of stuff. There should be "The exhaustive reference to programming the Emc2x86" kind of stuff. There should the following guarantees associated with the documentation, only then the hardware can be called as "openly documented hardware":
1. For a sufficiently competent programmer, the documentation supplied is enough to achieve 100% feature parity with the proprietary drivers.
2. The documentation supplied must contain as a subset, all interfacial knowledge known to the writers of the proprietary drivers.
I posted this over at RWT a month or so ago..
>Here is really the main point, which you're brushing
>aside -- this makes the hardware worth more, because
>you're making it potentially more usable for end users.
>Maybe not all end-users, but certainly some. I don't
>understand why you say it's a "very different kettle of
>fish" ? Different than releasing the specs? If anything
>it means fixes will happen faster.
I am not brushing anything aside, I am saying that a lot of people for a long time have ranted about opensource drivers for advanced video cards - and as yet I have seen no-one discuss it at a level that actually addresses what would be involved.
My 'very different kettle of fish' above is the vendors actually releasing full-stack sourcecode, versus just hardware specs.
My position on the hardware specs (and I am not claiming proof for this, it is only my position) is that it is next to useless for high-performance users. We may well see competent 2d opensource drivers, and 3d ones that can limp along - however graphics hardware has moved a LONG way from there.
I would *love* to see a fully opensource stack with high performance for opengl, however is it practical?
In your reply (sorry, I clipped it back a bit for brevity) you mentioned harddrive makers doing sector remapping - that is probably a whole few pages of code in their controllers. For a full modern opengl stack we are probably talking in the millions of lines region - we are talking of something with a scope not unlike the linux kernel itself, or at least a good proportion of it.
This is NOT similar to any other type of driver that I can think of - it is an almost unique case.
Just looking at opengl, the cards driver needs to be able to handle multiple simultaneous execution of overlapped and scheduled code, all in realtime, on in the region of 100-300 semi-linked vector cpus, all without cross-interference, while also maintain multiple streams of data at GB rates in and out of the card, and all while following a VERY explicit and highly complex set of rules governing the results.
Put another way, these devices are bleeding edge modern realtime computers, on a card - and their 'drivers' are really realtime OSs, although highly specialised.
Intel, in its infinite wisdom, as about to try and take that to the next level - making such cards x86ish, with an eye I suspect to reducing the complexity of software entry, after having failed miserably to write working drivers for their existing (965, g35, g45 so far) hardware.
All I say is lets cut these guys some slack - the capability of the hardware/software combination of a 9600gt, for around $150, is simply astounding. Should they expect 'help' from kernel developers, etc? of course not. Should they be punished? I say no.
Anyhow, I know that is bordering on preaching, and of course very opinionated - however I do like to see things treated with an even hand, and I have not always seen that happen with the issue of opensource 3d graphics drivers.
The manufacturer might want repeat business...
They're not selling suicide bombs.
"Is it technically impossible to provide for closed-source drivers in Linux?"
No. But it provides an ENORMOUS technical and legal hurdle (nobody's even sure yet if binary kernel modules are legal in most countries, although the *intention* is that they are). Supporting closed-source means, at some point, freezing interfaces, which means supporting every version of every interface created indefinitely. That's an AWFUL lot of work that would have to be done by precisely the people who don't want to do it and have enough to do already. You are doubling their workload by this simple request.
"Many people simply want Linux as an alternative to Windows, and a good alternative it is already."
Correct. Unfortunately, that's up to THEM to do something about, because that's not why Linux existed, exists or continues to exist. Linux is an OS, so in that sense it's an alternative. But it's not Windows. It won't ever BE Windows. It's just an OS. Who here complains to Apple because the Mac doesn't work with their Windows-only printer? Very, very few people.
"But insisting on open-source drivers will make the situation worse, not better in the long run: more and more special-purpose hardware is getting attached to the computer; mobile devices, chipcard readers, entertainment devices, GPS devices ... the list goes on and on."
Yep. And none of it we know how to drive, how to support, how to operate, how to upgrade, how to interface or how to port to other machines (like, I don't know, all those other alternative OS's that don't have compatibility layers). It's all just "black boxes" that sometimes (often, actually) the manufacturer's don't even know how they work. Just throwing in drivers "because they work now" isn't any good in the future, and certainly isn't any better than saying "Well, you'll have to run DOS if you want X to work". What's the difference between that and "You have to use Linux kernel 2.5.12 and our binary-only driver v 1.4.1"? The latter is available now for all current closed-source Linux drivers too... I can run my ATI card on Linux 2.6.1 with an old ATI driver just dandy. I could never upgrade that machine, though. They stopped supporting my card and they made the last compatible release for kernel 2.6.15.
Closed source drivers work now and break (for certain) in the future. Open source drivers have trouble working now (although that's not certain) but work the same or better in the future. With company co-operation, that can turn into "works before the product is out, works until there aren't any products that use the same driver in the general marketplace". Look at some of the 10Gig cards, or NX-capable processsors - there were drivers in Linux for them before anyone had even put their products out on the market.
"It is simply naive to think that we will get open-source drivers for all of these."
But experience shows you wrong - every single network card vendor on the planet had the same idea of not supporting their cards. Now almost every single network card, from token ring to wireless-N, on the planet is supported, and usually supported under Linux first. The only hardware that *doesn't* work is stuff that people don't care enough about to reverse-engineer or to build a compatibility layer for, or where there are legal issues. For those same hardware, even the closed-source drivers are now usually, or will be soon. And to be honest, most of that stuff won't work in Vista, or ME, or 98, or DOS, or Mac or anything else. And in a few years time, it'll break BEYOND REPAIR even in Windows either by a Window Service Pack or the next version of Windows.
Intel have Open-Source chipsets. AMD/ATI are open-sourcing. RaLink release a set of GPL drivers for their wireless cards. *Virtually* every piece of hardware in the world (as a percentage of overall items sold, e.g. the "production-run-of-ten" cheap knock-off PCI cards that don't have OS drivers don't really count against the 10 million sound cards sold which run
Why does hardware need to be so non standard and proprietary requiring its own drivers?
Take for example USB1, all USB controllers from many different manufacturers work with generic UHCI or OHCI drivers.
USB2 is even better, since all controllers support EHCI.
SATA potentially has AHCI, tho not all controllers support it.
Most CPUs have the x86 instruction set.
Video cards have VGA/SVGA/VESA, tho these specs are obviously far too old to be useful today.
Sound cards have soundblaster compatibility, and more recently AC97.
Proper modems have the Hayes command set, not counting some software modems.
Printers have postscript, tho typically only higher end printers support it.
If you have standards in hardware then the issue of drivers goes away... Your OS can provide drivers for the standard hardware, and thus not have third party driver code in the kernel... This would cure the Linux driver problem, and cure a majority of Windows crashes.
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