AMD Releases Open-Source R600/700 3D Code

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AMD Releases Open-Source R600/700 3D Code

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday December 29, 2008 @04:27PM from the playing-nice-with-others dept.

Michael writes "AMD has just released code that will allow for open-source 3D acceleration on their ATI R600 and R700 graphics cards, including all of their newest Radeon HD 4xxx products. This code consists of a demo program that feeds the commands to the hardware, updates to their RadeonHD driver, and a Direct Rendering Manager update. With this code comes working 2D EXA acceleration support for these newer ATI graphics processors as well as basic X-Video support. AMD will be releasing sanitized documentation for these new ATI GPUs in the coming weeks. Phoronix has an article detailing what's all encompassed by today's code drop as well as the activities that led to this open-source code coming about for release."

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Hallejulla! by keatonguy · 2008-12-29 16:28 · Score: 1

At last, the deghettoization of Linux computers with ATI chips!

--
If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
1. Re:Hallejulla! by AndrewBuck · 2008-12-29 16:35 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  If I recall correctly this isn't the first code ATI has released and hopefully it won't be the last. I think we are beginning to see companies starting to realize that although there may not be a huge number of linux users, we sure do buy a lot of computer hardware.
  -Buck
2. Re:Hallejulla! by WiiVault · 2008-12-29 16:37 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Thats true, but this sounds far more complex and useful that what has been released in the past, perhaps they are getting more serious. I would love to see good ATI drivers on OSolaris/ BSD and Linux. There is no reason we- the OSS community, can't have the best drivers, like we have the best web browsers.
3. Re:Hallejulla! by In+hydraulis · 2008-12-29 16:42 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I have an R350 chipset, you insensitive clod!
  
  Seriously though, I'm not seeing much progress with respect to older processors. FTFA,
  
  Two weeks after the initial R500 3D documentation release, AMD had released an R300 3D register guide. This programming guide concerning their older graphics hardware was previously only available through Non-Disclosure Agreements to select developers.
  Well, so far my experience with the open source R350 drivers is lukewarm. They do work to an extent, in that they can run Tux Racer and its forks, but FlightGear remains beyond their capabilities.
4. Re:Hallejulla! by armanox · 2008-12-29 17:00 · Score: 1
  
  I can't get any 3d accel with the open source R300 driver, and writing it myself is far beyond my current programing knowledge.
  
  --
  I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
5. Re:Hallejulla! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 17:13 · Score: 0
  
  Damn. Beat me to it.
6. Re:Hallejulla! by afidel · 2008-12-29 17:14 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I'm hoping for an open source Windows driver, the thing holding me back from using ATI has been the absolute crap drivers they supply.
  
  --
  There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
7. Re:Hallejulla! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 17:37 · Score: -1
  
  The nvidia drivers are a million times worse. Good hardware, but without good drivers, it's still worthless trash.
8. Re:Hallejulla! by afidel · 2008-12-29 17:43 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  LOL, I haven't had a BSOD from nvidia drivers since the early days of XP and at least their driver's don't require the freaking bloated .NET CRL to even install! In fact I can't remember a time in the last 4 NVidia cards I've owned (going back to a Ti-4200) that I had an issue related to the driver.
  
  --
  There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
9. Re:Hallejulla! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 17:53 · Score: 0
  
  Mod parent informative. Back in the early days of ATI I remember seeing their driver process appearing in task manager as the default name for a project in visual studios.. The point is, their drivers were never first rate.
10. Re:Hallejulla! by mysidia · 2008-12-29 17:56 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  I don't think it's very likely to come about with new versions of Windows requiring signed drivers, unfortunately.
  Unless you feel like writing a wrapper for Windows to allow it to load drivers written and compiled using the Linux binary driver framework.
  Oh wait... there is no standard Linux driver framework, they're just kernel modules, and are only supposed to be loaded into the specific kernel build the modules were compiled to go with.. hrm.
11. Re:Hallejulla! by GigaplexNZ · 2008-12-29 17:59 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I've been getting a few BSODs lately regarding the Nvidia driver. Just because you haven't seen any on your particular machine doesn't mean the code is perfect. Also, you don't need .NET to install the ATI drivers. You only need it for the catalyst control panel.
12. Re:Hallejulla! by SpaceLifeForm · 2008-12-29 18:09 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  It appears that you have an itch that needs scratching.
  Keyword: current
  
  --
  You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
13. Re:Hallejulla! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 19:31 · Score: 0
  
  Too bad I see them everyday, on dozens of different cards, chipset drivers, network drivers and all? nvidia is *trash*. I'd say about 2/3rds of BSODs I see are directly caused by them.
  At least ATI can write decent drivers. Hell, I'd go back to Intel GMA video over nvidia trash -- at least it's stable!
14. Re:Hallejulla! by Jedi+Alec · 2008-12-29 20:36 · Score: 1
  
  I'd agree with you completely...if it weren't for me trying the 180.48 drivers the past weekend.
  Great way of rendering a perfectly stable system nigh unusable.
  
  --
  
  People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
15. Re:Hallejulla! by Hal_Porter · 2008-12-29 23:20 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  I have an R350 chipset, you insensitive clod!
  Seriously though, I'm not seeing much progress with respect to older processors. FTFA,
  
  Two weeks after the initial R500 3D documentation release, AMD had released an R300 3D register guide. This programming guide concerning their older graphics hardware was previously only available through Non-Disclosure Agreements to select developers.
  Well, so far my experience with the open source R350 drivers is lukewarm. They do work to an extent, in that they can run Tux Racer and its forks, but FlightGear remains beyond their capabilities.
  Why not just buy a R600 or R700 card?
  Yours
  AMD Marketing.
  
  --
  echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
16. Re:Hallejulla! by Hurricane78 · 2008-12-30 00:04 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I can remember reading from John Carmack, that he hated the ATi drivers, because they were so crappy. The impression that I got from his description was, that it's kind of like the Internet Explorer of graphics drivers. They did seem to not be able to conform to the OpenGL or DirectX specifications at all, and had weird bugs when rendering in a specific condition.
  Does anyone who is programming actual 3D and shader code know if this has changed? I can imagine that nowadays, everything is written as shaders, so the actual implementation of higher level functionality (like the OpenGL default rendering model) does not matter anymore.
  
  --
  Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
17. Re:Hallejulla! by pdusen · 2008-12-30 00:28 · Score: 1
  
  And I haven't had a BSOD from an ATI driver ever... can you say PEBKAC?
18. Re:Hallejulla! by Lumpy · 2008-12-30 00:50 · Score: 1
  
  Um huh?
  I recently built a XBMC live box for a friend with a el-cheapo Nvidia 8500GS chipset and it rocks HARD. It plays HD video with less than 10% processor use because the video card and drivers are taking care of it.
  Intel? Bonk, 86% processor load.
  AMD? Bonk, 78% processor load.
  I'd try others but it's a waste. Right now Nvidia holds the holy grail for Linux video drivers. ATI needs to release far more to overtake them. I do hope that ATI get's it in the bag and we can have full support under linux for their chipsets, but they have a long way to go if they only release cookie crumbs instead of a cull cookie recipie.
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
19. Re:Hallejulla! by RMingin · 2008-12-30 02:11 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Problem is that the drivers you're referencing and the Carmack's comments on them date from around 2000. Lots has changed in the meantime. FWIW, the Carmack was referring to Rage128 era hardware/software, which was one unusable ball of software workarounds for hardware bugs and hardware workarounds of legacy software bugs. ATI threw it all away and started fresh roughly around the time they ditched the Rage architecture and had released drivers on the newer codebase when they released the second-gen Radeons. The hardware wasn't fully new-gen and pretty until roughly Radeon 9700.
  They repeated the process on a smaller scale again roughly the time the X1K cards were released (software restart) and around the time the HD2K cards came out (completely new hardware generation).
  This is all just a lot more info than you needed, but the simple answer is 'Yes, everything has changed since the paleolithic quote's time. Twice'.
  The current quality of ATI/AMD's Windows drivers is debatable, but I'd be entirely comfortable saying 'they are very comparable in quality to Nvidia's current drivers'.
  
  --
  The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
20. Re:Hallejulla! by KovaaK · 2008-12-30 02:51 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Lots of good information in parent's post that I've sort of imagined to be true but had no evidence - wish I had mod points for you.
  As for my experience between the two sets of drivers, I've been switching back and forth between ATI and Nvidia graphics cards for the past 4-5 computers that I've built. Feature-wise, (recently) both of them are pretty smooth about dual monitors, setting up custom resolutions/refresh rates without needing programs like reforce, and all sorts of bells and whistles that I'll never use.
  The only noticeable difference between the two that I've seen is that when the graphics card is having issues, ATI has a "VPU recovery" feature that is likely to prevent your computer from getting a BSOD, whereas Nvidia will just BSOD.
  I had an MSI motherboard (RS480-M2, iirc) that was having all sorts of issues despite replacing literally every piece of hardware in the tower. Turns out that any time I had a video card in the PCI-E slot, it would do weird things - and I even RMA'd the motherboard before figuring this out. Of course, I discovered this way too late. On-Board video worked fine, but my Nvidia card would BSOD (but worked fine in other computers), and the ATI card would go to black screens in games, then eventually reset itself and give me the VPU recovery error message.
  That feature alone seems like a major improvement over Nvidia's cards, but given that it rarely happens, it isn't a determining factor in which card I will select. Since that POS MSI board, I've only had one VPU recovery error, and I'm not even sure why that one happened yet...
21. Re:Hallejulla! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 03:19 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  That's one of the reasons hardly no one ever bought an R350. I don't buy hardware in the hopes that someday I'll have drivers; I buy hardware for which drivers already exist. The R350 was never "on the market." It looks like the R600/R700 are about to be introduced.
22. Re:Hallejulla! by halltk1983 · 2008-12-30 03:31 · Score: 1
  
  If you RTFA, you'll see that they released a fully working DRM, with Example Code and some documentation, with much more documentation to be released in the next month.
  
  Hardly what I'd call "crumbs"
  
  --
  Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
23. Re:Hallejulla! by FunkyELF · 2008-12-30 03:39 · Score: 1
  
  You said best web browsers (plural). Which ones are you talking about? I still need to fire up virtualbox and run Windows to watch NetFlix. Also, there is no Chrome on anything but Windows either.
24. Re:Hallejulla! by kv9 · 2008-12-30 04:27 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  There is no reason we- the OSS community, can't have the best drivers, like we have the best web browsers.
  Opera isn't open source.
  
  --
  Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
25. Re:Hallejulla! by Fweeky · 2008-12-30 04:37 · Score: 1
  
  Not had any problem with ATI's drivers myself; they feel pretty much like nVidia's, only with a very slightly less awful control panel app. I've been all-nVidia since the GeForce 256, and switching to a HD4870 has been about the least painful hardware change ever; everything works, it's a fair bit faster, and new drivers keep coming out that supposedly make things even faster.
26. Re:Hallejulla! by sholsinger · 2008-12-30 05:05 · Score: 1
  
  I had an MSI motherboard (RS480-M2, iirc) that was having all sorts of issues despite replacing literally every piece of hardware in the tower. Turns out that any time I had a video card in the PCI-E slot, it would do weird things - and I even RMA'd the motherboard before figuring this out. Of course, I discovered this way too late. On-Board video worked fine, but my Nvidia card would BSOD (but worked fine in other computers), and the ATI card would go to black screens in games, then eventually reset itself and give me the VPU recovery error message.
  Yeah that MSI board was shite. I bought that around 2005-ish and prompty threw it into my junk pile. I replaced it with a Gigabyte and have been quite happy with the results. Despite the R690 chipset. The lack of Linux drivers sucks, which now ought to be fixed by this release.
  As for the Nvidia drivers of late, it depends whether you install the drivers from the disc, or the newest ones. They had this "Feature" where they would treat both monitors as one big monitor and stretch your desktop across both screens. Nobody in their right mind, unless they're trying to build a video wall, would want that. The newest drivers on the other hand at least give you the option of using dual-head (TwinView?) or that other style.
  I have since found XFX branded Nvidia cards to be truly awesome. The double-lifetime warranty is stellar. The fact that I can sell a last-year's top-of-the-line board to my friend and extend my warranty to him is awesome. They seem to be rock-solid too.
  On the VPU recovery feature, I agree that is an excellent addition. I remember the Catalyst update for my Radeon 9800 Pro including that as a shiny new feature. It blew my mind. I wondered why they hadn't thought of it before. Now I wonder why Nvidia doesn't do something similar.
27. Re:Hallejulla! by aztracker1 · 2008-12-30 05:40 · Score: 1
  
  Well, you can give Moonlight a try, from the second link, it seems they were working on supporting moonlight users. I know it may irk some to use proprietary codecs in linux, but worth a look.
  
  --
  Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
28. Re:Hallejulla! by Yfrwlf · 2008-12-30 06:30 · Score: 1
  
  Doesn't have the plethora of plugins that Firefox does either, and with the new versions of Firefox, it's largely caught up speed-wise but no doubt has a ways to go before it's equal in speed to Opera.
  
  --
  Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
29. Re:Hallejulla! by TemporalBeing · 2008-12-30 06:52 · Score: 1
  
  Why not just buy a R600 or R700 card?
  Are you paying for a new laptop? It's kind of hard to upgrade the video card in laptops, and that's where my R250 sits. Sure I would love to upgrade it, but it's beyond the capabilities of the system. Stupid integrated graphics... FYI - it works pretty well with the F/OSS drivers...though I'm having some difficulty with getting VegaStrike to run - resolution and depth problem so far as I can tell.
  
  --
  Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
30. Re:Hallejulla! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 07:22 · Score: 0
  
  Exactly. ATI drivers now are pretty good. nvidia = BSOD all the fucking time, with *any* version of their drivers.
  You'd offer to give me 2 high end nvidia cards, and I'd tell you where to shove them.
31. Re:Hallejulla! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 07:35 · Score: 0
  
  Chrome is.
32. Re:Hallejulla! by ThePhilips · 2008-12-30 09:27 · Score: 1
  
  ATI needs to release far more to overtake them.
  
  The whole point of RTFA is that ATI released now more or less complete documentation for R600 and R700 chips. (One more document is still internally waiting for final approval).
  ATI already did what everybody asked it about. Now the ball in hand of OSS community to develop driver for the cards.
  
  --
  All hope abandon ye who enter here.
33. Re:Hallejulla! by ThePhilips · 2008-12-30 09:43 · Score: 1
  
  And so never nVidia drivers were.
  I use nVidia right now and can confirm that they are buggy as hell. And they always were: I had in past Riva128 and TNT2. I have tried to use couple of advanced features (e.g. profiles trying to ease switching from plain dual head to dual head with my HDTV) only to find that they work probably once out of ten times. Often leaving system in unusable state. Sometimes crashing OS completely.
  Back in old days (Rage128, Rage Pro) ATI though sucked hard on performance side was always of better driver and graphics quality. (And functioning video playback acceleration they implemented first.) Then it changed: ATI tried to catch up with performance of nVidia h/w and driver quality degraded very much (esp with 3D games). Now ATI started again properly polishing their drivers (in 38x0 times) and their quality now apparently is on par with nVidia.
  N.B. most industry uses nVidia and only few of game companies actually test thoroughly with ATI cards: problems experienced by users often relate to that lack of QA. Some cases of lacking performance also sometimes relate to in-game optimizations favoring nVidia 3D implementation.
  Quality of drivers - just like any other software - is never constant.
  
  --
  All hope abandon ye who enter here.
34. Re:Hallejulla! by WiiVault · 2008-12-30 10:30 · Score: 1
  
  The Zilla's and KHTML/WebKit browsers, are OSS, and yes they run on Windows, but they are still open source.
35. Re:Hallejulla! by WiiVault · 2008-12-30 10:31 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Who said Opera? I was refering to Gecko and KHTML/ Webkit.
36. Re:Hallejulla! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 11:34 · Score: 0
  
  It's just you! nvidia drivers are notoriously awful. Great way to make a perfectly stable machine BSOD everyday!
37. Re:Hallejulla! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 15:28 · Score: 0
  
  Yes it is, but the way you spell WebKit makes me wonder if you just switched to dvorak, or are simply just very, very drunk.
38. Re:Hallejulla! by In+hydraulis · 2008-12-30 18:11 · Score: 1
  
  With respect, I think you may have missed Hal's satirical jab at AMD.
39. Re:Hallejulla! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 22:36 · Score: 0
  
  On Windows, maybe, but on Linux the ATI drivers are still craptastic, quirky and unstable.
  You know you're getting fucked over when the very act of installing the damn things proves damn near impossible, unless using a custom patchset and a specific kenrnel...
40. Re:Hallejulla! by Hurricane78 · 2008-12-31 01:59 · Score: 1
  
  Thank you. :)
  That was a very informative answer.
  If only you would have refrained from attacking me... (2nd last paragraph)
  I want to remind you, that intelligent people find disagreements more useful than agreements, and therefore see no reason to start attacking each other to defend a twisted reality. :)
  
  --
  Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
41. Re:Hallejulla! by Hurricane78 · 2008-12-31 02:04 · Score: 1
  
  Hey, I used that "one big monitor" feature, and it was great.
  Just because you found no use for it, you don't have to insult everyone else!
  I used it to have one monitor (the new and big one) for the document and one (the old and smaller one) for the tool-palettes in photoshop, maya, and so on.
  Being able to drag them over is a major plus.
  
  --
  Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
42. Re:Hallejulla! by RMingin · 2008-12-31 02:22 · Score: 1
  
  I didn't see it as attacking you, more attacking the quote still being in use.
  I'm sorry you read it that way, it wasn't my intent.
  
  --
  The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
43. Re:Hallejulla! by olman · 2008-12-31 02:24 · Score: 1
  
  ATI drivers seem to have problems with suspend-to-ram and hibernate, thought. I have grand total sample of 2 ati cards and 2 nvidia cards - With Nvidia suspend always worked. With ATI there was always problems. In fact I've not been able to make HD3850 card to suspend/resume despite trying every trick in the book up to and including tweaking bios..
  The older radeon 9700 worked fine until driver release ZZZ, after that it shazam stopped working. I was using year'n'half old driver just to keep the suspend working.
  Suspend is one of these things that you never miss until you see it working 1st hand and then you can't figure out how you survived without..
44. Re:Hallejulla! by sholsinger · 2009-01-01 17:31 · Score: 1
  
  You can do that just as easily without the "one big monitor" feature. Then... you can maximize windows to each monitor instead of stretching it across both. It helps a lot for just about anything I can think of doing.
  Gnome on Linux has a pretty good handle on this by default. It even splits the window lists up on a per-monitor basis if you make another panel on the second monitor and add the "Window List" applet to it.
Don't forget... by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 16:34 · Score: 4, Funny

Don't forget to pay your $699 licensing fee, you cock-smoking teabaggers!
1. Re:Don't forget... by Narcocide · 2008-12-29 21:16 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  -5 not funny: strongly disagree and wish to censor.
Heck yeah by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 16:34 · Score: 0

Its about time ATI gets serious about OSS!
1. Re:Heck yeah by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 16:35 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah... is there a catch?
2. Re:Heck yeah by symbolset · 2008-12-29 18:53 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Yeah... is there a catch?
  No. You can be forgiven for asking the question, given history, but... no.
  TFA:
  
  The microcode for the newest GPUs has also been released.
  This is the real deal. Actual specifications about how the hardware interfaces actually work in a format that can't be encumbered by copyrights or patents. NVidia and Intel will follow with their own release announcements within weeks, or watch their proprietary crap die. This is "a race to the bottom" where the "bottom" is "fully open". The funny thing is that the "bottom" is a door to a whole new world of opportunity.
  To be fair Intel has been fairly open, and Nvidia has been opening up. Windows only video drivers are soon to be a legacy best forgotten. Please hold a moment of silence for the brave chairs that are about to lose their integrity in Redmond.
  
  --
  Help stamp out iliturcy.
3. Re:Heck yeah by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 22:15 · Score: 0
  
  If you think this is the race for the future of graphics cards, you are seriously delusional.
  The vast majority of the graphics market is OEMs that don't care one way or another if something is "open" or not. Neither do their customers.
  The majority of what is left of the market is pedantic gamers looking for that extra frame per second that only the top hardware provides.
  The joke, and the rub are one in the same. Nvidia isn't going to open their entire line because AMD/ATI did. Nvidia has too much to loose by people figuring out that the difference between the top and the middle/low end is 300$ and a bit of code. (and possible manufacturing defects, however that is less true now than it has ever been)
4. Re:Heck yeah by marcosdumay · 2008-12-29 22:45 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Well, Nvidia could afford not to follow Intel open-source drivers, since they share just a small part of the market, but it is doubtfull if they can ignore ATI open-sourcing their drivers.
  The race here is exactly for the future of graphic cards, both Intel and ATI/AMD want to get rid of it, replacing them by some SIMD massively multi-core general processors (forget about those physics engines you heard about recently, it is going to be replaced by your general porpouse GPU). They think that this configuration is what the consumers want, and they may be right, but Nvidia has no route to get there. Now, Nvidia face a harsh future, both because of this change and because they have being losing quality/competitiveness/reputation recently. I really don't know how they can survive, but open-sourcing the drivers look like a good help, even if it canibilizes some product lines.
  By the way, I'm delaying buying a video card since AMD brought ATI, because I trusted them to release open source drivers for their line. Before that, I'd buy Nvidia (I did buy a Nvidia card just before that), now I'll go get an ATI.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
5. Re:Heck yeah by Seriousity · 2008-12-29 23:36 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Nvidia has been opening up. Windows oly video drivers are soon to be a legacy best forgotten.
  If this is true, then in all seriousity it is a joyous occasion, and hence a time of celebration. Anybody care to post a link confirming this? Since I switched from XP to Ubuntu the proprietary drivers for my Nvidia 8600 GT have been drilling a hole in my sanity, and I fear that soon my hair may turn prematurely grey.
  
  --
  This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
6. Re:Heck yeah by Raenex · 2008-12-30 02:12 · Score: 1
  
  They think that this configuration is what the consumers want, and they may be right, but Nvidia has no route to get there.
  Nvidia always has the option to sell out to Intel. They probably will if they feel the market slipping away.
7. Re:Heck yeah by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 03:35 · Score: 0
  
  Nvidia isn't going to open their entire line because AMD/ATI did
  Then Nvidia still doesn't exist. I always thought my next box would have Intel graphics on the motherboard. Now it looks like I might have an AMD/ATI card instead. Nvidia has not yet offered a product that I can be sure I can use.
  I, for one, would welcome a third player in the graphics market. It sounds like Nvidia has the hardware expertise such that they might be able to compete. But if they're not interested in my money, I'm sure not going to lose sleep over it.
8. Re:Heck yeah by greg_barton · 2008-12-30 03:49 · Score: 1
  
  This is "a race to the bottom" where the "bottom" is "fully open".
  You're not kidding, and it's true in more ways than one. This decision must be seen in light of current economic conditions.
  1) Economy is tanking, and probably won't recover fully until 2010. It's the perfect time to put pressure on your competitors, especially pressures that require them to expend more resources.
  2) As the economy tanks, more labor talent becomes available that you can't hire due to limited resources. It's a perfect time to utilize open source developers because a) they're available, and b) they're motivated.
  3) As a result, when the economy recovers you have a better talent pool to hire from, and a more vibrant open source community.
  Some may see item 2 as exploititive, but it's a two way street: AMD is giving up intellectual property and the open source developer gives up time and effort. The result of those two losses is a net gain for everyone.
9. Re:Heck yeah by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 04:37 · Score: 0
  
  No, this is a race till the next year, where the next year will introduce a new GPU/architecture with a need of new drivers.
  Common, this is a catch too.
10. Re:Heck yeah by LWATCDR · 2008-12-30 04:43 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Okay I use Linux and I really do like FOSS but are you nuts?
  "NVidia and Intel will follow with their own release announcements within weeks, or watch their proprietary crap die."
  To be honest 99.99% of the people that use computers don't care if the driver is FOSS or not. The majority of these card are used on Windows boxes so FOSS doesn't matter to them.
  Then you have the majority of Linux users that just want drivers to work. All they will care about is if there cards work out of the box. Which will be a good thing but as long as they can click and install a driver that works they will also not care that much.
  
  --
  See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
11. Re:Heck yeah by powerlord · 2008-12-30 04:43 · Score: 1
  
  They think that this configuration is what the consumers want, and they may be right, but Nvidia has no route to get there.
  Nvidia always has the option to sell out to Intel. They probably will if they feel the market slipping away.
  They also have the option of selling out to AMD, VIA, or IBM.
  AMD probably won't be interested, since they've already bought ATI, but VIA or IBM might be.
  VIA would probably drool over the idea to pair with their x86 chip (and independent video card upgrades, if they can keep people buying them), IBM might want it to pair with their chip offerings for the next generation of Console, after all, every console THIS generation has an IBM CPU inside of it, why should every console NEXT generation have an IBM CPU and GPU inside of it?
  
  --
  This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
12. Re:Heck yeah by symbolset · 2008-12-30 04:50 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I'm not as crazy as you think. It'll take a while, but yeah that's what's going to happen. It's not because people care about the FLOSS. It's about the secondary effects - code quality, clever applications, creative leverage on having a real view of the underlying architecture. That, and more eyes on the problem.
  No, I'm not crazy enough to think the vast majority of people care about this for the inevitable fully functional GPL video drivers that will come of it. Some do, but in the grand scale not enough to shift the market faster than the technologies go obsolete.
  
  --
  Help stamp out iliturcy.
13. Re:Heck yeah by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 07:56 · Score: 0
  
  Well perhaps, but I am looking to accelerate H.264 decoding. Whoops, looks like an NVIDIA card for me! ATI can release all the docs they want, NVIDIA has actually produced something I can USE.
14. Re:Heck yeah by Kjella · 2008-12-30 08:45 · Score: 1
  
  Somehow, I don't see the connection. For example nVidia supports OpenGL, there's no reason to believe they won't support OpenCL. In fact, "Nvidia announced on December 9, 2008 to add full support for the OpenCL 1.0 specification to its GPU Computing Toolkit."
  The big question mark on the horizon for nVidia is the future of the discrete graphics processor, open or closed source have next to no impact there. I'm not even sure it's a technical question but rather a political one as AMD and Intel each want to push their own graphics solutions.
  Right now, I'm most excited by AMD but closest to buying a nVidia card to use in a HTPC. Don't forget that AMD has not released all documentation even if they released the 3D specs and it's still unclear when or even if it'll ever reach feature parity with the blobs. Among the big missing pieces are video acceleration and HDMI (particularly audio) support.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
15. Re:Heck yeah by JAlexoi · 2008-12-30 10:07 · Score: 1
  
  IBM? I doubt that. And VIA does not have the "dough".
  Intel is the best realistic option, but will they want to diversify so much?
16. Re:Heck yeah by Jorophose · 2008-12-30 10:08 · Score: 1
  
  I could see VIA and nVidia getting very closer together in the very near future.
  It's not like nVidia and Intel are nothing but sour grapes either. nVidia wants the GeForce chipset with the Atom; hardly Intel being the bitch it could be (and it's very strange considering they didn't want to "canabalise celeron sales").
  nVidia definately has a future for a fair lenght of time. If ever AMD and Intel move to turn the GPU into a CPU component like the math co-processor, at worst nVidia will be working on PMPs, cellphones, consoles, etc, where it's all ARM+GeForce. At best they'll be doing that and have nicely done miniITX deals with VIA (Nano+GeForce anyone? what about in the HP2133?) and the console makers.
  And that's more than enough to keep them alive.
17. Re:Heck yeah by DaleCooper82 · 2008-12-30 12:23 · Score: 1
  
  To be honest 99.99% of the people that use computers don't care if the driver is FOSS or not. The majority of these card are used on Windows boxes so FOSS doesn't matter to them.
  Still, you can't get "the Year of the Linux Desktop" when your PC is headless.
  
  --
  :: There is no light at the end of a tunnel. There is a tunnel after a tunnel : Thom Y. ::
18. Re:Heck yeah by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 22:44 · Score: 0
  
  Idealism is good, but instead of buying an ATI card I'd just send them 100$ in an envelope with a "thanks for open-sourcing your drivers" letter, and buy an nVidia card for my computer.
  Because I need to, you know, acutally use my computer.
19. Re:Heck yeah by badkarmadayaccount · 2008-12-31 01:04 · Score: 1
  
  Doubtful. VIA is already in cahoots with S3, who fit heir target market much better.
  
  --
  I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
20. Re:Heck yeah by symbolset · 2008-12-31 22:16 · Score: 1
  
  All they will care about is if their cards work out of the box. Which will be a good thing but as long as they can click and install a driver that works they will also not care that much.
  The people who recommend stuff will care. They'll care whether or not their recommendation leads their client to lock-in, especially in the current environment where lock-in always leads to an unpleasant trap. Some of them care because they're doing the right thing, and some of them care because it's embarrassing to get caught with your pants down. Some of them care because leading your clients into a trap is not a goot path to retirement. Whatever. If you're an MCSE now is a good time to get your linux certs, your Security +, your Citrix certs so you can choose with understanding.
  
  --
  Help stamp out iliturcy.
this is either by Rooked_One · 2008-12-29 16:35 · Score: -1, Troll

a move of desperation... or... wait... it can only be a move of desperation.

Or I guess it could be a moral move... but since when did companies do anything moral unless they have more money than they could ever spend (ala - gates foundation)
1. Re:this is either by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 16:37 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Or you know, it could be doing what they've been planning to do for several months now.
2. Re:this is either by QuantumG · 2008-12-29 16:38 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Or just good economical sense.
  "Hey Bob, these kids on the Internet want to write Linux drivers for our cards."
  "Oh really? Have we had any customer requests for Linux drivers lately?"
  "Yeah, a couple."
  "Send 'em that dev code we did last week, see what they come up with."
  "Ok."
  Shocking!
  
  --
  How we know is more important than what we know.
3. Re:this is either by _Sprocket_ · 2008-12-29 16:47 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Or it could be a new direction spurred on by new bosses (read: AMD).
4. Re:this is either by Tubal-Cain · 2008-12-29 16:54 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The scenario you describe has one issue: last week's dev code is copyrighted by the company, not the developers. They probably needed to have some long conversations with the lawyers and accountants to get this done.
5. Re:this is either by QuantumG · 2008-12-29 16:58 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  accountants? I don't think they do what you think they do.
  
  --
  How we know is more important than what we know.
6. Re:this is either by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2008-12-29 17:02 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  What you say is correct. This is why they have been having a series of conversations with lawyers and accountants. This plan has been in the works for some time now.
7. Re:this is either by Tubal-Cain · 2008-12-29 17:06 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I think they know how to write off such a contribution as charity.
8. Re:this is either by QuantumG · 2008-12-29 17:11 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  I think you should put down the crack pipe.
  
  --
  How we know is more important than what we know.
9. Re:this is either by nschubach · 2008-12-29 17:30 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  There are people that believe the "Gates Foundation" is more of a marketing move than a moral standpoint. When you give that much money under the name of a company founder, you don't need advertisement... Viral marketing kicks in and it's spread by word of mouth. They can spend money on things they want to do and get free advertisement "credit" for the company.
  
  --
  Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
10. Re:this is either by plover · 2008-12-29 17:52 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Why can't it be both? I'd say the Gates Foundation has been far more successful at promoting Microsoft than some of their more direct efforts.
  We all joke about his billions of dollars, but to see them put to use attempting to vaccinate an entire continent, I gotta tell ya that is a pretty damned impressive thing to do.
  Don't get me wrong, donations of time and money to Open Source projects are also good and noble things, and they provide infinitely-copyable and long-lasting amounts of good. But if someone asked me "who did more good, the guy who saved x-hundred-thousand kids or the guy who donated an improved scheduler algorithm to the Linux core?" there's only one way a human being could answer that question. There is a different question in there, and that is "who donated more overall effort?" Gates' money made him rich enough that he may not even feel the pinch of spending $37 billion, but the coder likely sweated over his efforts for months, sacrificing evenings and dinners with his S.O., etc. And I suspect its part of the job of the foundation to ensure the first form of the question is asked on camera, and not the second.
  
  --
  John
11. Re:this is either by hilather · 2008-12-29 17:55 · Score: 1
  
  Desperate people are always the most dangerous.
12. Re:this is either by jonnythan · 2008-12-29 18:03 · Score: 1
  
  Why does it have to be either?
  AMD has some great cards out right now, especially in the mid and low range markets. They're not desperate by any means.
  Why can't this simply be a good business decision? Hasn't the populace of Slashdot been asking for open source graphics card code for a long time?
13. Re:this is either by Repossessed · 2008-12-29 18:04 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, i heard about a rider that would have allowed open source development work to be tax deductible. If that went through an accountant might be key to getting management to say yes.
  
  --
  Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
14. Re:this is either by ShieldW0lf · 2008-12-29 18:38 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  There are people that believe the "Gates Foundation" is more of a marketing move than a moral standpoint. When you give that much money under the name of a company founder, you don't need advertisement... Viral marketing kicks in and it's spread by word of mouth. They can spend money on things they want to do and get free advertisement "credit" for the company.
  
  It's not a marketing move, and it's not a moral standpoint. People are denied access to drugs that are cheap to manufacture because they are encumbered with intellectual property. Nations were prepared to do away with intellectual property law and supply their population with the medicine they needed. That's why Gates is doing this. He doesn't give them money because he wants to help them, he gives them money because he wants to maintain the laws that prevent them from helping themselves, because his fortune depends on the exploitation of people using those laws as a mechanism. If the Gates foundation did not exist, more people would have medicine.
  
  This sort of behavior would be totally illegal if it wasn't disguised as charitable work. That's what the Gates foundation is for, to allow them to circumvent laws, manipulate and subvert government programs and engage in even more anti-social behavior than they are already known for.
  
  --
  -1 Uncomfortable Truth
15. Re:this is either by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 18:44 · Score: 0
  
  This has been coming for a year now, and was the reason I chose an ATI chipset when I bought my laptop. So yes, it does make economical sense.
  And also, I think most of the developers work for AMD.
16. Re:this is either by Hucko · 2008-12-29 19:14 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  But we have been innundated with Microsoft Fanbois thus the question. Yes, I acknowledge I'm an OSS Fanboi.
  
  --
  Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
17. Re:this is either by Jeoh · 2008-12-29 19:35 · Score: 0
  
  What if this improved scheduler algorithm indirectly saved x-hundred-thousand kids?
18. Re:this is either by dangitman · 2008-12-29 20:19 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  We all joke about his billions of dollars, but to see them put to use attempting to vaccinate an entire continent, I gotta tell ya that is a pretty damned impressive thing to do.
  Yeah, but what they don't tell you is that the vaccinations create genetic mutations which cause the patient to be unquestioningly obedient to Microsoft.
  
  --
  ... and then they built the supercollider.
19. Re:this is either by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2008-12-29 22:46 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  We all joke about his billions of dollars, but to see them put to use attempting to vaccinate an entire continent, I gotta tell ya that is a pretty damned impressive thing to do.
  Sounds good on the face of it doesn't it? But look a little closer. The entire vaccination program is about intellectual property - countries have to forgo local pharma factories that produce medicine without paying royalties - despite it being perfectly legal to do so since most of those countries do not recognize foreign patents anyway.
  
  But if someone asked me "who did more good, the guy who saved x-hundred-thousand kids or the guy who donated an improved scheduler algorithm to the Linux core?" there's only one way a human being could answer that question.
  If you are going to cherry pick the question, then of course the outcome is predetermined. But what about taking into account the source of all that money in the first place? How much of the world's GDP has microsoft skimmed off the top? Money that would have been re-invested into the domestic economies all around the world, resulting in improved economic and living conditions without having to go through all the fat-cat middlemen, each taking their cut of that money before it eventually comes back around in the form of a "charity?"
  
  --
  When information is power, privacy is freedom.
20. Re:this is either by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 23:12 · Score: 0, Offtopic
  
  The Gates Foundation is just another evil fund.
  The foundation invests the assets that it has not yet distributed, with the exclusive goal of maximizing the return on investment. As a result, its investments include companies that have been criticized for worsening poverty in the same developing countries where the Foundation is attempting to relieve poverty. These include companies that pollute heavily and pharmaceutical companies that do not sell into the developing world.
  Read e.g. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story?coll=la-home-headlines
21. Re:this is either by Hurricane78 · 2008-12-30 00:19 · Score: 1
  
  But.. but... that's the idea behind all of it. Making them dependent. And making us dependent (trough loans).
  I read, that if the world bank did not actively keep Africa poor, they would boom, because of all their subterranean resources.
  Also I'm pretty sure, that the Internet makes it possible to gain knowledge and use that to make money, even in the poorest, most remote five-hut town, as long as they have cheap Internet access.
  
  --
  Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
22. Re:this is either by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 00:59 · Score: 0
  
  You don't normally have to talk to the lawyers for company owned code. The lawyers just want to know:
  1) Is there any third party owned code in it and what are the license terms?
  2) Do you know if it infringes any patents?
  The question of whether to release it then simply falls on the asset manager. Where I work, open-sourcing of company assets requires the permission of just one person and at least one team open-sources core code on a regular basis and another open-sources build system enhancements (eg Nant/CruiseControl.Net/boost-build stuff).
23. Re:this is either by ozmanjusri · 2008-12-30 01:19 · Score: 1
  
  I guess the Microsofties have mod points tonight.
  This should not be modded troll - it's a very clear description of the Foundation's activities.
  
  --
  "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
24. Re:this is either by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 01:48 · Score: 0
  
  They buy vaccines at inflated prices from companies directly or indirectly owned by the foundation or it's founders, so a majority of the money they supposedly donate actually comes right back to them...
  Those vaccines may prolong peoples lives, but it only treats the symptoms and not the root cause of the problem, thus the people who survive due to the vaccines may die for other reasons such as war or starvation, and those who survive will typically reproduce and increase the food shortage issues.
  You need to teach these people about contraception... Shrink the population to a sustainable level, or nature will do it for you. And get rid of the greedy dictators who run many of these countries... Bill Gates is no different to these corrupt greedy third world leaders, he just operated in different circumstances. He had a higher power (the government) that restricted him from doing more extreme things, like physically killing his competitors... But who's to say he wouldn't have if he ran a third world country with noone to answer to instead of an american company?
  He has time and again shown the same ruthlessness and disregard/disdain for his people/customers as the likes of Robert Mugabe.
25. Re:this is either by drinkypoo · 2008-12-30 01:52 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  We all joke about his billions of dollars, but to see them put to use attempting to vaccinate an entire continent, I gotta tell ya that is a pretty damned impressive thing to do.
  
  Please read the following article before believing for one fucking second that Bill Gates is anything other than a wannabe Dr. Evil:
  
  Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
  By Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, Times Staff Writers
  January 7, 2007
  
  To be fair, BillyG might be nothing more than a hand puppet. There's no way to tell from here.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
26. Re:this is either by robot_love · 2008-12-30 02:23 · Score: 1
  
  ...because they've only been in severe financial trouble for less than 90 days...
  
  --
  .there is enough of everything for everyone.
27. Re:this is either by robot_love · 2008-12-30 02:26 · Score: 1
  
  What if this improved scheduler algorithm indirectly saved x-hundred-thousand kids?
  So you're saying there are several hundred thousand poorly scheduled children out there? Interesting.
  
  --
  .there is enough of everything for everyone.
28. Re:this is either by verisimilitudo · 2008-12-30 03:17 · Score: 1
  
  [...] taking into account the source of all that money in the first place? How much of the world's GDP has microsoft skimmed [...]
  Also worth remembering that that legality of exactly how (at least a portion of) the skimming took place has been called into question on more than one continent.
29. Re:this is either by anon+mouse-cow-aard · 2008-12-30 03:27 · Score: 1
  
  Proprietary IP is a very important Asset to VC's and such. The accountants will definitely need to account for "giving it away" (I prefer the term investing in the open source community... natch ;-)
30. Re:this is either by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 05:04 · Score: 0
  
  It should be modded troll when it's entirely supposition with no sources, no proof, and no citations whatsoever.
31. Re:this is either by zeropointburn · 2008-12-30 09:15 · Score: 1
  
  Contraception doesn't work. The people we are talking about are primarily subsistence farmers. Another child to help tend the fields means a better chance of surviving the off-season. Birth 12 so you still have 2 to support you in your old age after childhood diseases, war, and accidents kill off the rest. Contraception is antagonistic to their lifestyle. Changing the realities they face takes a lot more than some extra food and the availability of medicine, but it is a start. A better start would be cheap sustainable water purification, access to seed developed to thrive in their climates, and fertilizer. Continue that with a means of making an income (something to export, cottage industry style) and a lot of things become possible without external intervention.
  The issues driving the Gates foundation and others to contribute to the third world are complex and far from altruistic. There is a similar if somewhat less sinister complexity behind the release of previously proprietary code and/or specs. There are dozens of reasons why AMD would be making their developments available to the public. The fact that they have means they have decided that it will offer their competitors no advantage in the Windows world at the very least. Certainly there are other negatives that had to be overcome or offset by the positives stemming from an open-sourcing of their spec. I'm in no position to elucidate on the subject, so I'm going back into my hole now.
  
  --
  -1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
32. Re:this is either by ThePhilips · 2008-12-30 10:00 · Score: 1
  
  Well, one can say that AMD is still paying debt to F/LOSS for spurring adoption of AMD64, especially in server space where before AMD wasn't present at all and now a major player.
  Or probably they learned how to use F/LOSS community to their own advantage. After all for AMD it is another way to outsource driver development.
  Frankly, given current proportion of nVidia vs. ATI install base, seeing that traffic in ATI related Linux forums outpaces similar nVidia forums by magnitude of 10 (and no, the messages are not all complains) I see that AMD/ATI gained quite publicity. If one build Linux box now, temptation to include ATI card - even for nVidia fan - is very real. Two years ago there were no question at all: nVidia was Linux standard.
  
  --
  All hope abandon ye who enter here.
33. Re:this is either by Hucko · 2008-12-30 10:52 · Score: 1
  
  Ahh... take a look at some of the political situations in Africa and I think you may come to the conclusion that it is not all the world bank's fault.
  
  --
  Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Mod parent informative by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 16:39 · Score: 5, Funny

I had almost forgotten to pay my $699 licensing fee. Makes me feel like such a cock-smoking teabagger!
1. Re:Mod parent informative by AndrewBuck · 2008-12-29 16:43 · Score: 0
  
  I realize the above is a troll but what is he referring to with the licensing fee? I've seen this in a few stories and have always wondered what it was.
  -Buck
2. Re:Mod parent informative by Tubal-Cain · 2008-12-29 16:47 · Score: 1
  
  It probably has something to do with SCO's lawsuits.
3. Re:Mod parent informative by Timothy+Brownawell · 2008-12-29 16:49 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I realize the above is a troll but what is he referring to with the licensing fee? I've seen this in a few stories and have always wondered what it was.
  A while back, SCO tried to claim that they owned Linux, and that anyone using it had to buy licenses at $699 each (I think this may have been related to their lawsuit against IBM, before Novell stepped in). A couple of companies actually paid up, and were duly ridiculed here.
4. Re:Mod parent informative by AndrewBuck · 2008-12-29 16:54 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks for the info.
  -Buck
5. Re:Mod parent informative by dbIII · 2008-12-29 19:29 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  A few people in Australia offered to pay up but the local agent for SCO refused to take the money. If they had taken it there was a chance people from SCO could have gone to jail for "demanding money with menaces" I think it is called.
Proof that competition is good by dfn_deux · 2008-12-29 16:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

This seems to confirm what people have been predicting all along, that OSS philosophy is driving competition between vendors to cater to their customers' needs. Nvidia, Intel, and now ATI all providing increasing levels of documentation and code support in competitive volleys. I for one welcome our new 3d accelerated overlords.

--
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
1. Re:Proof that competition is good by domatic · 2008-12-29 16:46 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Er, what exactly is Nvidia doing in this regard? They've put out more or less OK closed drivers for Linux for a number of years now but they go out of their way to frustrate FOSS efforts. The "open source" nv driver is obfuscated. About all you can say about it is that it compiles to a basic 2D driver.
  Intel releases fully realized drivers and some docs. ATI/AMD is releasing ever more complete docs and more or less cruddy closed drivers. With the help of Mr. Weite, VIA is starting to release docs and is co-operating with current FOSS driver authors. I don't see Nvidia doing anything of this sort.
2. Re:Proof that competition is good by dfn_deux · 2008-12-29 16:54 · Score: 1
  
  I thought I recalled reading something recently about Nvidia releasing more documentation on their video decode acceleration, but looking back through my browser history I think i may have created a composite memory based on an intel article and Nvidia opening an API for video decoding using their closed source driver. Either way I can't imagine that Nvidia is gonna be able to leave us out in the cold much longer on this front. Keep voting with your wallet and we'll see them change their tune soon enough.
  
  --
  -*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
3. Re:Proof that competition is good by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 17:16 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Er, what exactly is Nvidia doing in this regard? They've put out more or less OK closed drivers for Linux for a number of years now but they go out of their way to frustrate FOSS efforts.
  You half-answered your own question. They've been putting out fairly stable and fast drivers long before *any* other company was doing that (with the possible exception of matrox, but they're a non-factor at this point). Nvidia has built a certain amount of good will from a lot of Linux users simply because they actually care to release good quality drivers. The open source nuts obviously don't care but everyone else does.
  Second, and this is coming from someone who's had a decent amount of 3d development experience: working with nvidia drivers/cards is just a whole lot easier than ati or intel. All three companies don't do the best job, but the amount of hacks you have to make in software to get stuff working with both ati and intel cards far surpasses anything you have to write for nvidia cards. I'm sure there will be open source nuts in this is article saying how intel is awesome because they release open source drivers and that's great if all you care about is running glxgears and desktop effects. Anything more complicated is an absolute nightmare with intel hardware.
4. Re:Proof that competition is good by SanityInAnarchy · 2008-12-29 17:24 · Score: 1
  
  Slight problem here -- what should I use my wallet to vote for?
  I just recently bought a Dell laptop. It came with an nvidia card -- no option for ATI. What's more, this is all new stuff -- as far as I can tell, the closed nvidia drivers are still better than any ATI Linux drivers, but that may have changed.
  Since I can't afford another computer so soon, I'm kind of stuck. The video card is embedded, after all, so the best I could do is get ExpressCard video, and I doubt that will perform as well, even with a better card.
  But, hindsight being 20/20, which should I have voted for? I'd think I'm voting for Linux by buying a machine with Linux preloaded. But it's more complex -- I'm apparently also voting nvidia, and since I bought XP, I'm voting that, too.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
5. Re:Proof that competition is good by zappepcs · 2008-12-29 17:45 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The parent has pegged a round hole with a square question. Hardware support in Linux works well if you build your own machines, or happen to get one with supported hardware. How do you find a system that is fully supported and for which distributions?
  This is still a problem for F/OSS software. Some distributions are better at handling the problem than others. For many end users, finding a proprietary driver and installing it on Linux is a deal-breaker.
  I'm glad to see that ATI is moving toward support for all OS software, but it still leaves the general community with a problem. That problem won't go away until hardware manufacturers support F/OSS out of the box. It means changing their model and prospective future business plans to some extent.
  I'm willing to bet that if everyone who *REALLY* wants to see great F/OSS drivers for ATI were to plop down $5 USD it would make a difference to how they are thinking about releasing drivers. Yes, $50,000 might not be much but it also might make a difference to ATI. This falls into a category of donations that I've talked about before.
  Finding who to donate to is not always easy since many apps are hidden from the user, such as Samba, drivers, etc. It would be good if there were some place people could just drop a donation for the distribution they are using and feel safe that some percentage of that went to all those apps that are part of the distribution. This always brings up some heart felt discussion, but I think something like this is an awesome thing that would help drive better development for F/OSS software. See, getting $1.75 per user is a lot of money to some F/OSS teams. Hell, even fifty cents would be a lot more than they are getting now. So a donation of 50 or 75 bucks could mean a lot to many people. I try to donate to the apps that I use the most and I KNOW how difficult it is to do that.
  If anyone is interested in progressing such a thing, contact me. I can probably find some time to donate to this as a project.
  
  --
  Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
6. Re:Proof that competition is good by SanityInAnarchy · 2008-12-29 17:59 · Score: 1
  
  Hardware support in Linux works well if you build your own machines, or happen to get one with supported hardware. How do you find a system that is fully supported and for which distributions?
  A sensible assumption, I would think, is to buy it preloaded with Linux. And this has worked fairly well. I've had weird issues with the nvidia drivers and KDE4, but that's to be expected -- KDE4 is still beta. (Oh, they'll tell you it's a stable 4.1, but that's like Vista claiming to be released...)
  Other than that, though, it's been perfect, as far as compatibility goes. I'm starting to think my next system won't be Dell, though. Optical drive died, and it took them three trips (first trip was the wrong drive, second trip it was damaged) -- though they were nice enough to include Vista install media (WTF? I ordered Ubuntu!) on one of those trips. Currently, the battery is not charging (stuck at 26%, will discharge, but won't charge again) -- probably will involve replacing the motherboard, which means another trip or three.
  And I bought this thing less than three months ago.
  To add insult to injury, an old-ish video card, and a 100 mbit network card (no gigabit), both soldered to the motherboard.
  Anyway, bitching over. To the rest of your idea:
  
  It would be good if there were some place people could just drop a donation for the distribution they are using and feel safe that some percentage of that went to all those apps that are part of the distribution.
  If you can make it work, great!
  But, that seems a bit difficult, considering the number of applications, and the way in which they are used. You'd need something like popularity-contest to find out which apps are actually being used -- or you could just watch that user, or allow them to automagically submit a list of apps.
  Even then, there'd be questions of usefulness factoring in. If you base it on something as crude as CPU time, wall time, number of executions, or LOC, it's ripe for abuse. But if you make it subjective, it's ripe for politicking and corruption.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
7. Re:Proof that competition is good by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 18:18 · Score: 0
  
  Agreed. This is why I have stuck solely with nVidia since the late 90's (both on desktops and laptops). Their Linux support is better than anyone else, open-source or not. For the most part nVidia Just Works. So far I haven't seen anything that would change my opinion.
8. Re:Proof that competition is good by zappepcs · 2008-12-29 18:25 · Score: 1
  
  By way of background. I've got 8 Linux systems using 2 distributions mainly. I also play with others, so when I donate, I think what is eight times what I want to donate etc. This project should be something that I can register eight systems with. That is to say that whatever donation option I choose, I should be able to annotate that it is for xyz number of systems, and the site/service would add that up for me so that I don't have to go through the process 8 times. Even two times would be tough going for just wanting to donate. Hell, I don't even want to fill in a questionnaire for a chance at a free iPod, never mind to give money away.
  I agree with your thoughts on the problematic issues with a donation system. I definitely believe it would be something that needs more heads on it than one. Certainly more than just mine. One major problem is that each distribution should need to have some input as the packages in each can be and are different.
  Since it is donation, I think it should be both automagical and subjective. It should be as simple as
  1- 'divide it among all apps on distribution disk' or that are in use
  2- 'base packages plus others I select' or
  3- 'let me pick which packages'
  The automagic part would be to note which packages are being used, present the list of them, and the options for splits as above.
  Even with just three options, the site/service would then have to collect the money and mark accounts to distribute to. Technically, this is not an overwhelming problem for code, but it gets political on the UI and on the legal side of moving those donations to the right project funds. Collecting the money and disbursing once a week or month would make bigger values for easier transactions, but might also clash considerably with the preferred method of donation by many projects. So, even before opening the website there is much politicking to do. Do you seek out co-operation, or wait for package devs to apply? Tough questions that I would not want lone responsibility for.
  Again, each distro can be different, so input from the packagers would be very useful. With large groups such as Canonical, I'd imagine it might be straight forward. With smaller ones it might not. I've seen some packages that I could not find donation methods for.
  Lastly, should such a service offer a check box to collect a small tip for making it easier to donate? Should that service scrape a few pennies from donations? By pennies, I don't mean millions, I mean just enough to stay open. Should the service rely on donation recipients to play it back in support? All questions that should be handled by a group of people to think it through.
  So, I'm willing to put in time/effort for such a service. Any other volunteers? Any package maintainers with input?
  I'm listening. Should probably start a project page/website....
  Cheers
  
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  Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
9. Re:Proof that competition is good by ion.simon.c · 2008-12-29 19:15 · Score: 1
  
  All three companies don't do the best job, but the amount of hacks you have to make in software to get stuff working with both ati and intel cards far surpasses anything you have to write for nvidia cards.
  [citation needed] Sample OGL code would be an adequate citation.
10. Re:Proof that competition is good by ion.simon.c · 2008-12-29 19:19 · Score: 1
  
  For the most part nVidia Just Works.
  That's fine. Folks like me care about having an *open* system that also works. xf86-video-ati works pretty well for my R420 AGP card, so I get everything that I'm looking for. :)
11. Re:Proof that competition is good by fringd · 2008-12-29 19:21 · Score: 1
  
  maybe this would help people donate easily?
12. Re:Proof that competition is good by turing_m · 2008-12-29 19:40 · Score: 1
  
  I'm willing to bet that if everyone who *REALLY* wants to see great F/OSS drivers for ATI were to plop down $5 USD it would make a difference to how they are thinking about releasing drivers. Yes, $50,000 might not be much but it also might make a difference to ATI. This falls into a category of donations that I've talked about before.
  Since AMD/ATI made the commitment to open source the video drivers and docs I bought an AMD CPU and ATI GPU knowing full well the GPU wouldn't work very well yet in Linux. At least the GPU part of the purchase was made specifically because of AMD's commitment to FOSS, and the CPU was good enough that I didn't bother looking at the equivalent Intel offering. Hopefully they made more than $5 USD from the purchase. And I wouldn't have cared about any of this if it weren't for Theo's proselytizing.
  If they can get rid of the tearing and provide some useful 3d by 2010 or at least the next LTS Ubuntu (10.04) I will be happy.
  
  --
  If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
13. Re:Proof that competition is good by Belial6 · 2008-12-29 20:12 · Score: 1
  
  Same here. I have bought 1 motherboard with built in ATI graphics, One ATI video card, and I going to get another motherboard with built in ATI graphics next week. Prior AMD moving to support OSS, I had zero ATI graphics, and they were not something I would have even considered.
14. Re:Proof that competition is good by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 20:33 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  I am omeone else, but:
  Look at MPlayer's libvo/vo_gl.c and all the code under if(ati_hack). And that is about the very most trivial OpenGL code in existence.
  In addition to that, the lscale=1 code in that does not work either since ATI messed up something as simple as GL_REPEAT, at least with fragment programs.
15. Re:Proof that competition is good by dfn_deux · 2008-12-29 20:54 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The parent has pegged a round hole with a square question. Hardware support in Linux works well if you build your own machines, or happen to get one with supported hardware. How do you find a system that is fully supported and for which distributions?
  Anything with an Intel Centrino logo /should/ have a full array of linux supported hardware. The intel centrino chip "package" includes wifi, video, cpu, acpi, sata, and sound all with known working mainline kernel supported hardware. Not that I work for or endorse their products necessarily, they just happen to be the only vendor who has bothered with providing the code, documentation and (in the case of their wifi chipset) firmware for all the same hardware that they include in their logo certification program. Probably not the top of the line hardware, especially the video, but it's hard to argue with a product that fits so neatly into the HCL for any recent linux distro.
  
  --
  -*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
16. Re:Proof that competition is good by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 20:59 · Score: 0
  
  Er, what exactly is Nvidia doing in this regard? They've put out more or less OK closed drivers for Linux for a number of years now but they go out of their way to frustrate FOSS efforts. The "open source" nv driver is obfuscated. About all you can say about it is that it compiles to a basic 2D driver.
  Agreed. Although "frustrate" is a little too strong, "ignore" is a better term. The original nv driver was written under NDA with NVidia about ten years ago, which is why it contains a lot of magic constants and no documentation. I don't think NVidia has cared about it since then.
  Anyway, the nv driver will be obsolete in a year. The Nouveau driver has already achieved the same level of functionality as nv, and I believe that Red Hat has started packaging the Nouveau driver. No doubt a few bugs will appear once it gets used by more people, but they will be resolved in time.
  I'm actually curious as to how NVidia is going to respond to the Linux kernel finally getting graphics device support (KMS). As the only significant manufacturer that solely relies on its closed-source drivers, they should expect a lot of fall-out once the kernel starts taking control of the graphics hardware (I expect in 2.6.31 or 2009.3?).
17. Re:Proof that competition is good by dfn_deux · 2008-12-29 21:03 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Heh, just occurred to me that withing the next few months Toshiba's Open Solaris branded/installed laptops powered by centrino chips will, likely, have full drivers for Windows, Solaris, and Linux making a purchase of their gear a pretty solid vote for consumer choice.
  
  --
  -*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
18. Re:Proof that competition is good by ion.simon.c · 2008-12-29 21:45 · Score: 1
  
  The xf86-video-ati driver reports a vendor of "DRI R300 Project". If I'm reading the code correctly, this means that ati_hack will always be set to false (unless the undocumented ati-hack option is passed to the vo driver?).
  The gl vo driver doesn't give me any problems when running with xf86-video-ati. I suppose all of that extra code was dumped in there for the benefit of folks who were running with the fglrx driver?
19. Re:Proof that competition is good by ion.simon.c · 2008-12-29 21:47 · Score: 1
  
  Ah. I'm an illiterate moron. The ati-hack option *is* documented.
20. Re:Proof that competition is good by SanityInAnarchy · 2008-12-29 21:50 · Score: 1
  
  1- 'divide it among all apps on distribution disk' or that are in use
  Which means the apps on that distro disk will be chosen by who needs the money, or who's paid the bribe, not which app I actually need. What's more, even if done properly, it will have a bias towards hardware autodetection, disk compression, hacks like unionfs, installation, and recovery tools -- things like ntfsresize and friends.
  
  2- 'base packages plus others I select' or
  So, again, there's the problem of packages now being chosen for more reasons than just "it belongs in the base distro".
  
  3- 'let me pick which packages'
  This would work, except most users aren't going to know which packages they mean. I know I don't. To which package does credit go for KDE4's mount/eject system? What about the fact that the system tray displays an icon to show when updates require a reboot, or when I must restart Firefox?
  Those are pretty lame examples, but you get the idea. Would credit for integrated desktop search go to something like Beagle, or something like GNOME?
  There's also two other, larger problems with this that I don't see going away: There's now a massive incentive for forking, because if the fork is successful, not only do you get the credit, you potentially get the money. Now, most people can't effectively do that, but some are in a position where they can if needed -- Debian's Iceweasel and Ubuntu's abrowser are good examples; Firefox has great branding, but I'm guessing most Ubuntu users aren't going to replace their browser without at least opening the default once.
  So, in the case of something like Iceweasel, who gets the money? Debian? The Iceweasel team? Or Firefox?
  The other large problem it creates is an incentive to have large numbers of small packages. Maybe that's a good thing (the Unix philosophy), but some things actually do go together, and I can see people avoiding sensible metapackages (empty package which depends on the components of the app it's named after) in favor of pretending these things have as little as possible to do with each other.
  And that gets worse, the more user interaction you have -- because if the user makes the connection, they might decide to give just one donation to the parent project, rather than five to the children. And this is true even if you say "I want to donate $60, divided however I divide it", because there's still the difference between giving $30 to Samba and $30 to OpenOffice, vs giving $20 to Samba, $20 to Writer, and $20 to Calc.
  
  Lastly, should such a service offer a check box to collect a small tip for making it easier to donate? Should that service scrape a few pennies from donations?
  That seems reasonable, but I think you'd really have to just put it as another program in the list. Eat your own dogfood. If you're not making enough from those donations to stay open, that means either your system isn't working very well, or you don't really matter.
  But I don't think the political problems are really solvable. I think it's easier just to stick PayPal buttons all over the place, and make it as easy as possible to donate $1 or $5 when a project makes me happy. Beyond that, I'd donate to the distro -- a good distro will contribute at least some work back to the projects they use.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
21. Re:Proof that competition is good by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 22:20 · Score: 0
  
  I have 3 OEM machines in my room. They all worked 100% out of the box (with slackware). My laptop was the same, even with the wireless.
  Currently i find setting up a linux machine as painless (or as painfull) as setting up a windows machine.
  I should be pointed out that one of these machines (vista) did not work out of the box with the pre installed drivers.
22. Re:Proof that competition is good by Vanders · 2008-12-29 23:43 · Score: 1
  
  ATI/AMD is releasing ever more complete docs and more or less cruddy closed drivers.
  ATI are releasing huge amounts of code to the X, Mesa & kernel developers. Like the code-drop we're talking about that adds R600/R700 support to those drivers.
  
  --
  Syllable : It's an Operating System
23. Re:Proof that competition is good by dpilot · 2008-12-30 00:07 · Score: 1
  
  > I'm willing to bet that if everyone who *REALLY* wants to see great F/OSS
  > drivers for ATI were to plop down $5 USD
  I was perhaps thinking of making this an "Ask Slashdot" question, breaking my years-long moratorium on ever bothering to try to submit something to them, again. I'm sure micropayment questions are a dup, but an occasional dump on their current state would be nice to have.
  How do I dump $5 on someone?
  I don't give out my credit card number freely. I don't like PayPal - they really, really, really want my bank account number for a direct feed. I know there are ways to get around that, but I just don't want to deal with people so interested in getting into my funds. I'd like someone who operates kind of like EZ-Pass - I initiate a credit card transaction to give them a balance every so often, and then I can spend from that balance. No bank account tap, no ongoing credit card tap.
  Somewhere up-thread there was a remark that the developer would like an HDMI-audio-capable monitor so he could debug that part of the code, so he could us a bunch of us chipping in $5 ea.
  
  --
  The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
24. Re:Proof that competition is good by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 01:14 · Score: 0
  
  Look e.g. at http://www.winehq.org (reimplementation of Windows on top of *nix) and their Direct3D implementation. During it's implementation there were quite a few bugs that were found in the opengl from nvidia (so they are not good enough either) but the amount of hacks for ATI and the amount of bugs exposed in the opengl from ATI is much more (though they are getting better, and a complete FOSS driver may even get rock solid). (Those bugs usually get reported if someone finds enough time to craft a minimal testcase and sometimes get fixed, but FOSS drivers make this much easier.) (I'm too lazy to find the references on the mailing list and bugzilla, one should be able to with a bit of effort, especially in the later.)
25. Re:Proof that competition is good by zappepcs · 2008-12-30 01:16 · Score: 1
  
  I'll have to check that out further. A 60 second look before the first coffee is done isn't helping me to understand it. Not the experience that end users should have. Thanks for the link.
  
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26. Re:Proof that competition is good by zappepcs · 2008-12-30 01:26 · Score: 1
  
  Awesome. This has been much more productive than I imagined. That should be an option for end users also: to be able to donate to dev teams with hardware or money for hardware.
  I think that with some simple marketing and explanations it's possible to get end users to understand that their donation went to someone or a group who directly work on code that they use, rather than some faceless big corporation. Sort of the same feeling those commercials try to elicit by showing you starving kids with only one shoe who live next to a railroad track in some poor foreign country. "Your 75 cents per day will keep poor Marietta in clothes and food for months, and you'll get pictures of your child..." blah blah blah
  Nothing like a starving developer commercial... right? Seriously, This all started for me because I find it difficult to donate to all the groups whose code I use because of it's inclusion in the distro ISO. I donate regularly but would like to know that even the guy who did nothing but a small app that is used by Gnome for handling floppies gets some reward for helping to make my experience awesome. I'm that impressed by Linux that I want to pay for it!
  I think that other end users will be the same if there is an easy place and method to donate. Not many people will work hard to donate if it takes a lot of effort. All suggestions are welcome. No one person will be able to easily figure this out.
  
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27. Re:Proof that competition is good by drinkypoo · 2008-12-30 01:29 · Score: 1
  
  Unfortunately at the moment the problem is still that ATI's binary driver is asstacular, and the open source drivers still have a number of omissions (plus as you say, only nvidia has video working properly) and as we all know, intel is super-slow. So your choice is to support the people trying to give you what you want but have a crap experience, or support the people who don't give a fuck about you but have everything beautiful. If only ATI were more competent...
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
28. Re:Proof that competition is good by rohan972 · 2008-12-30 01:41 · Score: 1
  
  May I suggest you tell both ATI and the manufacturer you would otherwise have chosen the reason for your purchasing decision.
  
  --
  http://marriedmansexlife.com/
29. Re:Proof that competition is good by drinkypoo · 2008-12-30 01:46 · Score: 1
  
  Centrino does not mandate video, although they are often mentioned together. It does require the wifi though, which is why so many PCs don't have the centrino sticker. Keep in mind that the Centrino label is as valid in Windows-land as in Linux-land; I've gone through at least as much driver hell on Windows as on Linux, granted I tend to keep hardware well past its prime, and I get my hands on a lot of cheap junk and try to make it work well beyond the point at which I should have just binned it. But life is not all rosy with hardware support in Windows. Hell, I can't use a Joystick-port Cyborg 3D on Windows XP, that's fucking lame. I bet it works on Intrepid.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
30. Re:Proof that competition is good by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 02:02 · Score: 0
  
  nVidia doesn't have to do anything since their propietary drivers, unlike ATI's, work VERY well with X11.
  All this means is that maybe some day ATI cards will have non-crap 3D accelerated drivers for X.
31. Re:Proof that competition is good by fast+turtle · 2008-12-30 03:15 · Score: 1
  
  But, that seems a bit difficult, considering the number of applications, and the way in which they are used. You'd need something like popularity-contest to find out which apps are actually being used -- or you could just watch that user, or allow them to automagically submit a list of apps.
  Which is exactly what Ubunta is doing with their community ratings. That's based upon how often an app is installed along with how long they stay on the system. Pretty simple really yet it has enormous impact on where Ubunta is devoting development effort. Popular apps get the development needed to either fix bugs or make damn sure it works well on Ubunta.
  
  --
  Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
32. Re:Proof that competition is good by ianare · 2008-12-30 04:07 · Score: 1
  
  Hardware support in Linux works well if you build your own machines, or happen to get one with supported hardware. How do you find a system that is fully supported and for which distributions?
  I agree and have felt that frustration myself, but for graphics (the topic at hand) the vast majority of GPUs out there are Intel integrated chipsets, for which there are good, stable, OS drivers.
33. Re:Proof that competition is good by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 04:15 · Score: 0
  
  Anything with an Intel Centrino logo /should/ have a full array of linux supported hardware. The intel centrino chip "package" includes wifi, video, cpu, acpi, sata, and sound all with known working mainline kernel supported hardware.
  I have Dell laptop with "Centrino" logo, it has NVidia video and it suffers the same problems.
  So what is so special about "Centrino", Intel-fanboy?
34. Re:Proof that competition is good by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 06:40 · Score: 0
  
  The Centrino label does NOT ensure that you have intel wireless or any open source goodness.
  I have a Centrino-labeled laptop with a Dell-branded wifi that includes infamous Broadcom chips.
  Also, that laptop does not include Intel video, but Nvidia graphics with a pretty good closed-source driver - except that the graphics card won't wake up properly from sleep or hibernation.
35. Re:Proof that competition is good by ion.simon.c · 2008-12-30 09:07 · Score: 1
  
  Okay. Correct me if I'm wrong here. You're not saying that ATI's hardware requires these OGL hacks. You're saying that ATI's offical drivers suck?
  If so, this isn't surprising... the Windows drivers for the Radeon 8500 sucked, hard-core for several revisions. I remember anandtech.com remarking that -prior to the 8500- ATI's drivers were *really* bad.
36. Re:Proof that competition is good by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 12:45 · Score: 0
  
  considering im plopping down 310+ CDN$ for a 4870 i think they should get better foss support, and i want crossfire to work and all that stuff
  geez amd is getting better but with their recent success in the r700 they should get more on the ball
37. Re:Proof that competition is good by randyleepublic · 2008-12-30 18:20 · Score: 0
  
  >> For many end users, finding a proprietary driver and installing it on Linux is a deal-breaker.
  
  I see this again and again, but it makes absolutely no sense to me: the hardware is proprietary is it not? What difference does it make whether the driver that makes the proprietary hardware work is FOSS or proprietary? Do people write code that would become somehow compromised on it's FOSS pedigree if the graphic driver of the workstation that the code was written on is proprietary? It sounds like religious nonsense, but perhaps I am missing something (?).
  
  --
  Social Credit would solve everything...
38. Re:Proof that competition is good by zappepcs · 2008-12-30 19:01 · Score: 1
  
  Free is just one aspect, to be distributed with the OS under a GPL license, proprietary drivers can't be included per se. It's to do with the licensing rather than the religion. Ubunutu allows you to load proprietary drivers for Nvidia as non-licensed. They even make it easy. It just can't be part of the distribution because of the licensing, unless I've missed it as well. It means going an extra step when what is needed is 'works out of the box' functionality. This is what would make better F/OSS drivers from AMD special... they can be included with the distribution, not to mention that it widens the list of supported graphics cards.
  
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39. Re:Proof that competition is good by argiedot · 2008-12-30 19:09 · Score: 1
  
  Hell yeah, Intel rocks in this respect. If all you want is a hardware accelerated desktop and a few small games, the Intel X3100 is actually better on Ubuntu (in my experience) than the nVidia 8400M GS. I have the latter, and a friend has a laptop with the former and I was amazed to see how much better his worked with Compiz.
40. Re:Proof that competition is good by randyleepublic · 2008-12-30 22:10 · Score: 0
  
  Seems silly to me. Why don't all the distros just do what Ubuntu does? In fact, as I recall, even Ubunutu's implementation of that was sort of kludgy. Their wording of the various options made it seem like you were polluting the purity of your installation. How hard would it be to detect the card, finish the install, and then on first log in display an option to download and install a proprietary driver with enhanced functionality? Two buttons: "OK" "Cancel". Pick one and you are done. Again, I don't get it.
  
  Let me take it a step further: Let's say you are downloading a distro. Why can't the distro have a link to a *separate* driver compilation download. You could run your install, then at the end put in the "driver CD". Much ado about nothing.
  
  One other observation: Windows makes you do pretty much the same thing. In fact it would be pretty easy to implement this in a more user friendly manner than Windows, so why not just go ahead and do so? It still smells churchy to me...
  
  --
  Social Credit would solve everything...
41. Re:Proof that competition is good by zappepcs · 2008-12-31 01:34 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, Ubuntu made it easier... do the install, reboot, soon as the OS figures out what is going on it displays an expansion card icon with a note saying advanced non-licensed drivers are available. Click the icon and it goes to the install window. Click, click, done. Currently with 8.10 it shows three drivers available, and 'recommends' the latest version. I think it's pretty awesome actually. I didn't have to look for anything, just pay attention to the icons. Even my parents could handle that.
  
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42. Re:Proof that competition is good by SanityInAnarchy · 2008-12-31 05:11 · Score: 1
  
  What is this "Ubunta" you speak of?
  Sorry to be pedantic, but it just bothers me when so many people manage to misspell such a simple word. All phonetic, too -- none of those tricky English spellings. Say it with me -- oo boon too. Not oo boon tah.
  And yes, I'm pretty sure you're talking about popularity-contest, which I mentioned. I don't actually participate in those, by the way.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
43. Re:Proof that competition is good by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-31 07:27 · Score: 0
  
  It would be good if there were some place people could just drop a donation for the distribution they are using and feel safe that some percentage of that went to all those apps that are part of the distribution.
  http://www.fossfactory.org/
  Is this what you are looking for?
44. Re:Proof that competition is good by zappepcs · 2008-12-31 07:45 · Score: 1
  
  That's awesome, but not really what I mean. I mean a place where the end user can tribute their gratitude toward those that have already created software that the end user is using, and do so in such a way as to make it painless to donate money to all the packages in a distribution, or just some select packages etc.
  This seems to be a place to gather funding for specific software yet to be developed. That is also a good idea.
  
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45. Re:Proof that competition is good by randyleepublic · 2008-12-31 07:54 · Score: 0
  
  That's good to hear. I haven't done an Ubuntu install for quite some time. My last was Dapper and it was not that slick.
  
  So that begs the question: Why is Ubuntu alone in this functionality? And again, what's the big deal? If it's that convenient, (as it obviously is), to include the installation of a proprietary driver with one's GPL distro, why all the excitement over FOSS drivers? Are we back in church? :eek:
  
  --
  Social Credit would solve everything...
46. Re:Proof that competition is good by LingNoi · 2008-12-31 11:22 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah great, now both of you run Fallout 3 via wine and see how shitty his card is...
47. Re:Proof that competition is good by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-31 15:30 · Score: 0
  
  I just read it as being spoken with a south london accent,
  
  chill dude
48. Re:Proof that competition is good by argiedot · 2008-12-31 21:05 · Score: 1
  
  Because Fallout 3 falls in the category, "a hardware accelerated desktop and a few small games", of course...
49. Re:Proof that competition is good by LingNoi · 2009-01-01 00:08 · Score: 1
  
  oh sorry my mistake. I thought you meant games that people actually play... Instead you're talking about mine sweeper and glxgears.
  Why don't you do the world a favour and stop lying to everyone to further your open source agenda.
50. Re:Proof that competition is good by Xabraxas · 2009-01-02 10:40 · Score: 1
  
  The Centrino label does NOT ensure that you have intel wireless or any open source goodness. I have a Centrino-labeled laptop with a Dell-branded wifi that includes infamous Broadcom chips.
  Then it is misbranded. Centrino is intel cpu, intel wifi, and intel chipset.
  
  --
  Time makes more converts than reason
51. Re:Proof that competition is good by argiedot · 2009-01-10 08:15 · Score: 1
  
  Are you joking?
  
  Well, just in case you aren't, and are truly confused by something I said: by 'a few small games' I meant just that, 'a few small games'. Quake 3 Arena, TA:Spring, Half Life 2 don't qualify, though those run on a GMA 950. There are quite a few people who just play a small game - I still play just a little xmoto, and I'm partial to a quick round of teeworlds. I do play Battlefield 2 now and then but most of the time I just want a quick 3 minute distraction.
  
  If you want to play Fallout 3 on your laptops, then maybe an Intel-graphics-based laptop is not for you? You're not really someone who just wants a hardware accelerated desktop and 'some small games'. What makes you think that everyone is like you?
52. Re:Proof that competition is good by LingNoi · 2009-01-10 11:17 · Score: 1
  
  All the games you mentioned are years old, you're the one that has segregated yourself from the norm, not I.
53. Re:Proof that competition is good by argiedot · 2009-01-10 21:09 · Score: 1
  
  Well, I was wondering if what you were saying was true, and so, lacking any other way of determining which games are most played, I decided to have a look at Steam Stats and guess what? Most players on that list are playing games that would work on a GMA 950. Heck even WoW works on it! Compare Fallout 3 to Counterstrike Source, and we'll see who's segregated themselves from the norm.
  
  I really don't understand your obstinate opposition to an Intel integrated graphics card. Everything that I've said is easily corroborated by other sources.
  
  PS: Just so you know, some sources say that 75% of all laptops have integrated graphics.
Dammit by wicka · 2008-12-29 16:47 · Score: 5, Funny

AMD doing nice shit just makes it all the more heartbreaking when Intel releases better chips. I hope they get their shit together soon, I feel dirty with a Core 2 Duo.
1. Re:Dammit by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 16:54 · Score: 0
  
  Just buy a 4850 and feel better
2. Re:Dammit by keatonguy · 2008-12-29 18:45 · Score: 1
  
  Dunno what you're talking about. I've got an Athalon chipset and it runs swimmingly. Way cheaper than the Intel equivalent too.
  
  --
  If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
3. Re:Dammit by innocent_white_lamb · 2008-12-29 18:46 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Eh? Intel has had fully open-source drivers available for quite some time now. ATI is currently playing catch-up in that regard. (And Nvidia isn't playing at all.)
  
  --
  If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
4. Re:Dammit by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 21:09 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  I've got an Athalon chipset and it runs swimmingly
  Cool, I've never heard of those. Who builds these? And what processors do they support?
  I would love to have a chipset that can still operate correctly when fully submerged. Do they generate enough heat so I can do the dishes with the waste water?
5. Re:Dammit by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 21:52 · Score: 0
  
  Paul Otellini was asked recently at one of intels open forums. "Who is intels biggest competition going forward"
  Nvidia was the answer.
  He didn't offer an explanation, but no one here should need one.
6. Re:Dammit by ubergeek65536 · 2008-12-30 04:45 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  It is irrelevant if the supported hardware is useless for gaming for a 3D workstation. ATI and Nvidia are currently the only two that matter.
7. Re:Dammit by wicka · 2008-12-30 04:52 · Score: 1
  
  You can get lots of CPUs cheaper than Intel, that doesn't mean you should buy them. Intel has been killing AMD in price/performance for at least two years.
8. Re:Dammit by ThePhilips · 2008-12-30 06:18 · Score: 1
  
  Can you name an Intel chip comparable to e.g. ATI RV7x0 (found in 48x0 cards)?
  Intel video is 2D or 2.5D at best. Here we're talking about currently one of the fastest GPUs available. Obviously amount of info needed to program Intel driver vs. ATI 48x0 driver would differ by magnitudes.
  
  --
  All hope abandon ye who enter here.
9. Re:Dammit by adiposity · 2008-12-30 07:13 · Score: 1
  
  mod parent up
  Intel can open source its garbage accelerators all they want. Even with the best drivers, they still can barely handle 3d. I wouldn't be surprised if mesa outperformed their drivers.
  Don't get me wrong, it's great that they open source their drivers, but it's not a competing product.
  The only time that open sourcing a driver has historically been resisted by a high profile company is when the driver did a lot of the work (software modems, for example). Nobody cares about open sourcing a mouse driver, and nobody cares about open sourcing a CGA video adapter driver.
  -Dan
10. Re:Dammit by NoGoodNicks · 2008-12-30 07:59 · Score: 1
  
  That depends on what you need. I just ordered a 5050e with 4GB DDR-2 RAM because it's fast enough (or even much faster than I need it) and it supports HW virtualization and other cool stuff combined with best power saving. Intel E8xxx (E0) is close to that WRT features and power efficiency but costs about 100EUR more. Why should I spend that, and even much more on electricity costs? To play games with 50fps instead of 40fps? Bad deal, IMHO.
11. Re:Dammit by LunarCrisis · 2009-01-01 07:30 · Score: 1
  
  I wouldn't be surprised if mesa outperformed their drivers.
  You think you're joking. . .
  I use hardware rendering because it takes the weight off of the CPU for the most part, and because it seems to generally work better (software rendering seems to often give strange artifacts). In my experience, it's not actually faster than software rendering.
  lspci | grep Graphics 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
  
  --
  Mr. Period: Nine is the one that's right by ten!
  Nine: One day I will kill him. Then, I will be Ten.
Wow by shiftless · 2008-12-29 16:59 · Score: 3, Interesting

Every single 3D accelerator I have ever owned has been an NVidia, up until now. Not because I am an NVidia fan-boy, but because that's what I started with (TNT!) and (since I switched over to Linux) because NVidia has always been the best choice for Linux support. I have never considered ATI since their Linux drivers have been craptastic. But in between what I've heard of ATI drivers having improved lately, and now with these drivers being open source, I will definitely be giving ATI a look when I build my next PC in a few months. Thanks ATI!
1. Re:Wow by grimwell · 2008-12-29 17:09 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  ATI's linux drivers are still craptastic... not likely to change in the next few months. You're still better off with Nvidia for linux.
  
  --
  If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
2. Re:Wow by speed+of+lightx2 · 2008-12-29 17:19 · Score: 1
  
  It is now Nvidia that wins the crappy-linux-drivers crown. Aside from the fact that they are closed binaries, among other things you can now do hardware accelerated H264 on AMD supported cards in Linux. In the meantime, if you own a newish Nvidia card, it only exists on their Windows driver.
3. Re:Wow by steveha · 2008-12-29 18:02 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You're still better off with Nvidia for linux.
  Well, for Linux gaming, you are, for now anyway. But over the long term, we should get free, open-source drivers, which means drivers that actually work. In the long run, you may be better off with ATI cards.
  And, I will be voting with my dollars: I'll now try to buy ATI cards where it makes sense, partly because for the long term I think they will be a win, but also to thank ATI for doing something I wanted them to do.
  steveha
  
  --
  lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
4. Re:Wow by marsu_k · 2008-12-29 18:34 · Score: 1
  
  Ask and ye shall receive. Although application support is not quite there yet - there are patches for mplayer, and preliminary support in some branches of xine and MythTV; but it probably will soon be better.
  (Not that I wouldn't welcome Nvidia opening up their drivers more, or at least offering proper XRandR 1.2 support. Unfortunately they still offer in my experience the best performance in Linux)
5. Re:Wow by lakeland · 2008-12-29 18:41 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I don't think the parent should be called a troll; It's a valid opinion. Up until now, nvidia is what you picked if you wanted:
  better compatibility with recent kernels
  easier installation
  better performance
  I used to have an ATI card (hehe, nearly wrote AMD - the merger really has started to change how I think). It was built because I needed 3D in a 100% open source system and NVidia's closed-source drivers were so good that not enough developers could be bothered developing open-source equivilants (whatever happened to noveau anyway?). At the same time, ATI's closed-source driver sucked so the open-source support was pretty good.
  But apart from that one foray where open-source was a requirement, I've always wanted things to 'just work' and nvidia has been so much better in that regard.
  Now, AMD (and independently, intel) have thrown down the gauntlet and next time I will actually have to think instead of buying nvidia automatically. Having said that, and I think this is the parent's point, if I were buying a system next week then there is no way I'd go ATI - this donation will take months before it finds its way into released distributions and I've long past being willing to patch my kernel constantly to support my hardware.
  If you're a consumer, rejoice in this annoucnement but wait a few months before changing your buying significantly. If you're nvidia - now is the time to start sweating and seriously think about just exactly why you can't open-source your drivers.
  That's my opinion, anyhow.
6. Re:Wow by innocent_white_lamb · 2008-12-29 18:49 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  whatever happened to noveau anyway?
  
  It's still being worked on, apparently. http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/ The last update was on November 16, so it's not being worked on really fast....
  
  --
  If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
7. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 20:40 · Score: 0
  
  scratch the "Linux" part. The drivers are of the same quality for Linux and Windows (except the Direct3D part which _may_ be better). And yes "craptastic" describes them favourably.
8. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 22:39 · Score: 0
  
  ATI's linux drivers are still craptastic... not likely to change in the next few months. You're still better off buying a new Nvidia card every couple of years so you can still get new drivers for linux.
  FTFY
9. Re:Wow by Seriousity · 2008-12-29 23:44 · Score: 1
  
  Seriously? My Nvidia 8600GT can run compiz fine 90% of the time, but whenever I try to game the X-server crashes and I need to crank out the ctrl-alt-backspace (less annoying than a blue screen but still a pain in the arse). This even happens on Tux Racer (I'm not fscking joking lol) If the ATI linux drivers are worse than the latest nvidia drivers you'd be lucky to play "3D Chess" without errors. Yes, the quotation marks are necessary as it's actually 2D.
  
  --
  This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
10. Re:Wow by Hal_Porter · 2008-12-29 23:52 · Score: 1
  
  Back when I was a kid I went to Yugoslavia. We searched for coffee in all the shops and didn't find any. So we went to the state run Tourist Bureau and asked them and they told us there was coffee IN ALL THE SHOPS.
  With that in mind review this comment
  http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1076021&cid=26266223
  This is a better way to talk about the free and open source Nouveau driver.
  
  --
  echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
11. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 00:33 · Score: 0
  
  WoW. Do you know that until some late 8xxx there were a great free ATI driver with 3d available?
  (I can only claim that for FreeBSD, but if I get a working driver there it also works on linux in most cases.)
  And the early nvidia drivers were bad hacks. (I had an nforce and a nvidia gfx and the driver only looked for vendor and not if it was a gfx to attach to. So it also tried to attach to the ata controller of the nforce before the system ata driver took over from BIOS.)
  I really hope they get back to the pre 9xxx state.
  ac
12. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 02:10 · Score: 0
  
  Yep. I must agree. I avoid ATI cards like the plague because of a) thei lagging openGL support and b) their craptastic X11 propietary drivers.
  Even then I've seen some decently priced 4850s that ran very cool (either ASUS or MSI heatpipe + fan cooling supposedly c. 35C idle, c. 55C load) and decent performance. I'd buy one of those over a 9800 GTS IF they didn't have such craptastic X11 drivers. (ATI has NEVER been good at writing drivers even for Windows... while nVidia has VERY good linux AND windows AND OSX drivers and releases updates frequently and fixes bugs fairly quickly. ATI always made me fell like they were flipping me the bird after I bought one of their cards which I haven't touched since the Rage days.)
13. Re:Wow by Junta · 2008-12-30 02:45 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  When was the last time you tried them? I have an R500 part and before that an R100 part, as well as two nVidia systems. A while ago, the difference was night and day, nVidia's drivers were much more reliable and featureful.
  Over the course of 2008, that's changed for me. AMD has caught up. Meanwhile, I've started using compiz, and the nVidia systems with current drivers still corrupt the window decorations and contents when I have too many windows open. My ATI doesn't suffer from that.
  nVidida does have something on flexible video decode offload and AMD is only promising something, but as it stands its horribly fragmented. nVidia has their implementation, AMD promises another incompatible one, Intel has yet another incompatible one, and all the while Xorg guys muse about a fourth strategy.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
14. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 04:23 · Score: 0
  
  They both are craptastic for the first half-a-year or so with their new sh1t. Then after ~6 months they release closed source blobs that is kind of usable. So it is a matter of luck in which phase to get to explore your new product.
  I am using both, I see no difference, no point of running from one to another, better stick to what you have already and wait, or next time choose based on price.
15. Re:Wow by scientus · 2008-12-30 04:54 · Score: 1
  
  but at least you will be able to file kernel bugs with the ati drivers now!
16. Re:Wow by ThePhilips · 2008-12-30 06:24 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I'll now try to buy ATI cards where it makes sense
  
  With ATI 48x0 cards, it makes sense anyway: or you want to tank AMD for the OSS work or you want best price/performance ratio GPU available today. It is very hard to be wrong with the cards, unless you are a very demanding pedant with too much money.
  
  --
  All hope abandon ye who enter here.
17. Re:Wow by NoGoodNicks · 2008-12-30 08:15 · Score: 1
  
  My last ATI card (Radeon 800GTO) was a total disaster, the non-free driver was unstable like hell, even the free driver started to kill the kernel (DRM module) few kernel generations later when the X11 glx module was loaded.
  
  And non-free drivers for nvidia are ok, but they lack an important feature: proper support of RANDR 1.2 including scriptable reconfiguration and activation of multihead outputs on-the-fly (attaching them to Xinerama screen, not just cloning). I heard similar things about fglrx too.
  
  ATM I use Nouveau which works pretty good after configuring Xorg screen as recommended by their FAQ, but Nouveau doesn't support XVideo with recent cards. Too bad.
  
  Apparently there is also no decent Nvidia card with passive or semi-passive cooling available,"official" 9600GT solutions are monsters, the only 9800GT is made by Sparkle and its cooling appears not very reliable to me.
  
  Therefore, I am going to give ATI another chance in few months.
18. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 09:02 · Score: 0
  
  I recently purchased an ATI card to upgrade my nVidia card, and the drivers are working so poorly in Linux I am forced to use Windows XP for the remaining lifetime of my computer.
  Keep that in mind. ATI drivers are terrible.
19. Re:Wow by gparent · 2008-12-30 10:33 · Score: 1
  
  But over the long term, we should get free, open-source drivers, which means drivers that actually work.
  Nope. It just means they'll be free and open-source.
20. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 20:34 · Score: 0
  
  Made a mistake of buying an ATI card using
  Linux, no end of problems and lack of 3d support got an Nvidia equivilant and never looked back (again)
21. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-31 02:09 · Score: 0
  
  Eight months ago, I voted with my dollars and got myself a laptop with Intel graphic chipsets. Eight months and several releases of xf86-video-intel later, I still cannot play Warcraft III on it.
  Screw open-source drivers.
22. Re:Wow by plcurechax · 2008-12-31 02:45 · Score: 1
  
  As far as delivering a stable platform, in my professional Linux experience, open source video drivers have been more consistently stable and keep up to date than binary drivers from either nVidia or ATI/AMD.
  We dropped using $1000+ ATI FireGL cards for nVidia Quadra cards because the nvidia binaries drivers were better than ATI's frglx binary drivers.
  Once open source drivers are available, I expect we will again follow reliability and switch "back" to AMD/ATI FireGL video cards, regardless of pricing, because the quality of open source drivers will pay for any purchase price difference. And I'm talking 12-200 graphic workstations with multiple displays using 2 video cards, so up to $200,000 (two $1000 cards in 200 systems) in potential sales could be the results for one small organization. This is just a single case of how this could reward AMD/ATI for their efforts.
23. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-31 08:08 · Score: 0
  
  I run SUSE 11 Linux and my PS3 takes care of the games, thus enabling me to keep the same $50 P4 laptop I've had forever :)
24. Re:Wow by LingNoi · 2008-12-31 11:30 · Score: 1
  
  Well my Nvidia 6800 runs fine, maybe you just have a shitty card because I've never had x-server crash with it.
25. Re:Wow by turing_m · 2008-12-31 13:39 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I don't think the parent should be called a troll; It's a valid opinion. Up until now, nvidia is what you picked if you wanted: better compatibility with recent kernels easier installation better performance
  For sure. Of those who have bought the 780G (HD3200) for ideological reasons, a portion just get a cheap nvidia card to tide them over until the FOSS drivers get up to speed.
  So far I can't be bothered. And unless I develop an interest in running the latest games, my new system could last 10+ years. A year or two of poor performance was not a deal breaker. Having a fairly low wattage, functional system for the indefinite future was more important.
  
  --
  If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I chose ATI because of their open source policy by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 16:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

I chose ATI over Nvidia in my most recent graphics card purchase because of ATI's policy.
Thanks ATI; it's the right thing, and it will help your revenue.
1. Re:I chose ATI because of their open source policy by innocent_white_lamb · 2008-12-29 18:57 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I have done my best to stick with Intel video chipsets, because they "just work" with Linux. However, a year or so back I purchased a widescreen monitor for my main computer (this one) and discovered a very slight crawl in the display. I suspect it's some kind of electrical interference. To solve the problem I purchased an ATI X1660 card with DVI output and installed that and the crawl went away. However, the stock ATI driver that comes with Fedora 8 and 9 wouldn't, for whatever reason, work with my monitor -- it refused to switch to a high enough resolution. So I very reluctantly installed the proprietary ATI driver and that just worked. It automatically set itself up to work with my monitor and all was well.
  
  However, I recently upgraded this machine to Fedora 10 and lo and behold, the open source driver now works with my monitor, so I no longer require the proprietary driver. Which suits me just fine, indeed.
  
  I used to recommend Intel video only when anyone asked for my opinion, but now I'm quite comfortable recommending either Intel or ATI. They seem to be more-or-less equivalent in the open source (hassle-free) driver arena now.
  
  --
  If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
2. Re:I chose ATI because of their open source policy by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 22:31 · Score: 0
  
  Amen brother, a few months back I bought an AMD laptop from HP because of this. My needs would have been met by a much cheaper Intel Atom based laptop... I guess that's what voting with your dollar(or in my case NIS) means.
  The only gripe I had was that there was new driver for the new Xorg for a while, but that's a thing of the past now and I couldn't be happier with my machine.
3. Re:I chose ATI because of their open source policy by Lisandro · 2008-12-29 23:57 · Score: 1
  
  Be warned though, the binary ATI drivers are still quite buggy with newer hardware. I have a system with an onboard Radeon 3200 and, while the system is stable and performs quite fast, i keep getting graphical glitches (OpenGL and xvideo mainly) with regularity.
  I'd like to fault it on my hardware, but in my experience this is typical of ATI drivers, and in this regard nVidia beats them hands down. The OSS drivers are much better but still lacking, atleast for newerd GPUs.
4. Re:I chose ATI because of their open source policy by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 06:32 · Score: 0
  
  Same here, I've always been an Nvidia buyer but my last purchase was a Radeon card because of AMD's commitment to support open source. I think they will quickly become the only choice for a high-end video cards with proper Linux support, unless Intel releases a high-end chip or Nvidia changes their closed-source policy.
  Hopefully, enough of us will vote with our wallets that it will make a noticeable difference in their sales (and gets correctly attributed to this policy change). Nvidia would then be forced to reconsider their position on this as well.
5. Re:I chose ATI because of their open source policy by mounthood · 2008-12-30 06:49 · Score: 1
  
  Me too.
  
  --
  tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Very nice of them. by LoRdTAW · 2008-12-29 17:00 · Score: 5, Informative

I am looking forward to see what this means for Linux, OpenCL and other GP-GPU goodies. With OpenCL working along side OpenGL, a tightly integrated kernel ATI driver that handles the GP-GPU/OpenCL stuff we will really see some interesting stuff come our way. To my understanding OpenCL allows someone who is writing an algorithm to implement it in OpenCL and let OpenCL take care of diving up the work load between GPU's and CPU cores. Damn I am really excited to see the OSS community tie all this stuff together and release the computing power of the GPU to more general yet compute intense applications.
A system with a quad core CPU and four ATI cards would be a force to be reckoned with! Fast trans-coding/cracking of Blu-ray, rapid key sniffing for air crack, even networked applications could be sped up like IPsec and SSH. We could have fast rendering in blender and ray tracing can be done with high precision as well as speed (maybe even real time!). Gimp plug-ins can be given a boost in speed and video editing a breeze. Even a laptop with a slower dual core could benefit from its on board GPU's number crunching power. Useful for cracking WEP/WPA keys.
And AMD/ATI arent the only ones getting on board the OpenCL bandwagon, Apple developed it, and Intel along with Nvidia are also going to support it. So OpenCL will allow us to run our apps on the hardware of our choice.
1. Re:Very nice of them. by nschubach · 2008-12-29 17:39 · Score: 1
  
  I'm personally cheering on raytracing for the near future, but I have to agree. If it's not used for gaming, you may be able to download a movie and have it rendered for you in real time. Being able to pan the camera around and view it literally from another angle or have more complex movies with multiple things going on. Being able to focus on a couple's drama or watch a car chase on the other side of town (all within the same "movie".)
  
  --
  Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
2. Re:Very nice of them. by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 18:59 · Score: 0
  
  Holodecks here we come!
3. Re:Very nice of them. by tyrione · 2008-12-29 22:42 · Score: 1
  
  I am looking forward to see what this means for Linux, OpenCL and other GP-GPU goodies. With OpenCL working along side OpenGL, a tightly integrated kernel ATI driver that handles the GP-GPU/OpenCL stuff we will really see some interesting stuff come our way. To my understanding OpenCL allows someone who is writing an algorithm to implement it in OpenCL and let OpenCL take care of diving up the work load between GPU's and CPU cores. Damn I am really excited to see the OSS community tie all this stuff together and release the computing power of the GPU to more general yet compute intense applications.
  A system with a quad core CPU and four ATI cards would be a force to be reckoned with! Fast trans-coding/cracking of Blu-ray, rapid key sniffing for air crack, even networked applications could be sped up like IPsec and SSH. We could have fast rendering in blender and ray tracing can be done with high precision as well as speed (maybe even real time!). Gimp plug-ins can be given a boost in speed and video editing a breeze. Even a laptop with a slower dual core could benefit from its on board GPU's number crunching power. Useful for cracking WEP/WPA keys.
  And AMD/ATI arent the only ones getting on board the OpenCL bandwagon, Apple developed it, and Intel along with Nvidia are also going to support it. So OpenCL will allow us to run our apps on the hardware of our choice.
  Amazingly, with all this cheer and mention of OpenCL you don't even bother to thank Apple for making it happen. I use Linux and OS X for daily consumption, and this is the time when one should be glad Apple innovates for all.
4. Re:Very nice of them. by powerlord · 2008-12-30 04:24 · Score: 1
  
  And AMD/ATI arent the only ones getting on board the OpenCL bandwagon, Apple developed it, and Intel along with Nvidia are also going to support it. So OpenCL will allow us to run our apps on the hardware of our choice.
  Amazingly, with all this cheer and mention of OpenCL you don't even bother to thank Apple for making it happen. I use Linux and OS X for daily consumption, and this is the time when one should be glad Apple innovates for all.
  Well, he didn't explicitly thank Apple, but he DID acknowledge that they created the standard.
  
  --
  This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
5. Re:Very nice of them. by JonLatane · 2008-12-30 04:40 · Score: 1
  
  While I agree with most of your points, a bunch of extra graphics cards won't really be helpful for ray tracing because of the amount of recursion required. It can be done iteratively with some modifications so it would actually run on GPU hardware, but the overhead in doing this is greater than the performance boost parallelism grants the user.
  Besides, ray tracing pretty much sucks compared to modern rasterization techniques until you add in radiosity, caustics, distribution, and other extensions. And if all that's added in, I don't care if you have 12 cores, it will not run in real time.
6. Re:Very nice of them. by electrosoccertux · 2008-12-30 06:41 · Score: 1
  
  This is truly exciting. While for a desktop I may be more interested in having the most powerful CPU, in a laptop the important thing is the whole package. And in that area AMD wins hands down. Now that AMD has 45nm chips (better battery life!), there's really not much that Intel has on them (besides wireless maybe) that would make me want to pick an Intel laptop. AMD has perfectly-fast-for-everything-I-need-to-get-done processors, and they've got Intel beat in the graphics card department, heck they had Intel's chips available today beat with ATI/AMD GPUs made 5 years ago.
  This is why I just don't see Windows surviving on the desktop. And especially not the laptop. This opening of 3d GPU drivers is going to bring a whole new kind of integration between programs and hardware; and it's going to happen a lot faster on Linux (simply because everything is open and available for immediate change) than on Windows. Can't wait!
7. Re:Very nice of them. by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 15:17 · Score: 0
  
  Intel have Apple, and Apple consistently gets quite a few hours of battery time out of the box.
  My 20 month old Macbook is down to 3h 45m when surfing, chatting etc.
  When it was somewhat new, I watched 4 episodes of Heroes, in HD, and a few episodes of Scrubs until the battery went flat.
  I'm sure I'd get decent mileage out of a Phenom as well, but so far I'm not complaining about Intel reclaiming the throne.
8. Re:Very nice of them. by electrosoccertux · 2008-12-30 17:50 · Score: 1
  
  And my AMD cpu+GPU laptop gets 5h40m doing the same...
9. Re:Very nice of them. by argiedot · 2008-12-30 19:25 · Score: 1
  
  OT, but what are you guys doing to get such high battery life? My less-than-a-year-old Dell XPS M1330 gives me only 2 hours on a 57.7 Wh (now down to 40 Wh) battery. Maybe I made a bad purchase, but surely you can't be getting such good performance out of the box?
10. Re:Very nice of them. by electrosoccertux · 2009-01-04 11:07 · Score: 1
  
  I had a 12-cell battery, this battery life is with screen brightness all the way down (but not off), not running Vista, and forcing the CPU to run at the lowest speed all the time (because if I'm reading a PDF I don't care about performance).
  Depending on your processor one can also undervolt it using RMClock and extend battery life ~45m.
11. Re:Very nice of them. by argiedot · 2009-01-10 08:43 · Score: 1
  
  Ah, I see, thanks. I often find it hard to read with screen brightness all the way down because the screen reflects everything and when you're outdoors that's hard.
  
  I should try seeing if I can undervolt my processor, just as soon as it falls out of warranty - I don't think it's covered.
Now we need some to make mac os x dirvers for the by Joe+The+Dragon · 2008-12-29 17:06 · Score: 1

Now we need some to make mac os x drivers for the 3xxx and 4xxx cards that work with all 3xxx and 4xxx cards and ones with bios roms.
One of the best FOSS-related news recently! by nadabg · 2008-12-29 17:14 · Score: 1

Finally! Congratulations, AMD, I always preferred your CPUs and GPUs due to their sane price/performance ratio and great features, but now I think you won me for life. I hope that more and more vendors will follow AMD's steps and start releasing code and documentation.
1. Re:One of the best FOSS-related news recently! by hilather · 2008-12-29 18:04 · Score: 1
  
  I for one will be taking this into account when purchasing a new laptop in the next year. It would be nice to have more selection, perhaps I will in that amount of time. This is a HUGE priority in my selection process, I dream of a day when my laptop flawlessly works with external displays, and intuitive programs to drive it.
  One a side note, does anyone know if this will affect the VM environment for gaming? Would a powerful open source driver be of any use without open source specs on the hardware itself? Virtual box has an option to emulate a soundblaster 16 card.
2. Re:One of the best FOSS-related news recently! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 18:15 · Score: 0
  
  Finally! Congratulations, AMD, I always preferred your CPUs and GPUs due to their sane price/performance ratio and great features, but now I think you won me for life.
  For life? What if they revert back to their old ways in a few years?
3. Re:One of the best FOSS-related news recently! by Wescotte · 2008-12-30 01:33 · Score: 1
  
  Finally! Congratulations, AMD, I always preferred your CPUs and GPUs due to their sane price/performance ratio and great features, but now I think you won me for life.
  For life? What if they revert back to their old ways in a few years?
  Suicide! It is clearly the only option for such an instance.
Feeling a little more confident... by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 17:21 · Score: 0

...about my decision to buy an ATI card. I did buy it because of their willingness to release documentation hoping that I would be able use an open-source driver one day, but so far the radeonhd driver still lacks decent 2D performance and Xvideo. So I kind of got stuck with the binary driver after all, which was not always without issues.
1. Re:Feeling a little more confident... by Dan+Ost · 2008-12-30 04:33 · Score: 1
  
  Make sure you let them know why you chose to purchase their product. If they get lots of feedback saying that the decision to opensource their stuff made a difference, they'll be more likely to make similar decisions in the future.
  
  --
  
  *sigh* back to work...
Will buy whatever card works best with GNU/Linux by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 17:34 · Score: 0

And by buy, I mean spend hard currency. I believe that is the language most business speak.
Absolutely cool! by canuck57 · 2008-12-29 17:49 · Score: 1

This is fantastic news, I applaude the ATI management for realizing this is a good thing to do. I stopped buying ATI in about 2000 because of the issues in getting driver support for Linux. Now that ATI is stepping up to the plate, I am adding ATI products that use this driver to my buy list!
FAQ by MostAwesomeDude · 2008-12-29 17:50 · Score: 5, Informative

Based on what's been on IRC in the past few hours.
Q: Wait, what?
A: Code for radeonhd and the kernel providing acceleration for Radeon HD 2400 and newer. Kernel parts are already pretty much integrated; radeonhd is integrated as well, although stuff still needs to be copied to radeon.
Q: So what does this mean for the user?
A: EXA means faster GUI responsiveness. Xv means fast video. Kernel DRM is the basis for all acceleration unification (OpenGL, etc.)
Q: Speaking of OpenGL...
A: Lawl, no. Not for another few months. Most of the code we're gonna write will target Gallium, so--
Q: Gallium?
A: Gallium is the next generation of GPU acceleration. Once we get drivers ready, it'll be awesome. Linky to TG: http://www.tungstengraphics.com/wiki/index.php/Gallium3D
Q: So this is just docs and some basic code?
A: Nope, no docs. AMD couldn't agree on docs before their vacation time, so I guess we'll see those in a month or so. On the other hand, we've got enough here to do a lot of stuff. It'd be nice if we had more devs, though. :3
Q: So why is there only code for radeonhd? Will radeon support this too? Why two separate drivers?
A: The reason for two separate drivers is a very long and largely silly story. I don't feel like repeating it, and I probably couldn't tell it fairly anyway.
I'll get radeonhd code ported over to radeon once my vacation's over, assuming nobody does it sooner. I can't do the HDMI audio setup without testing hardware, though; does anybody want to donate an HDMI audio-enabled monitor? :3
~ C.

--
~ C.
1. Re:FAQ by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 18:29 · Score: 0
  
  Since you're a Mesa/X.org dev, maybe you can answer this.
  Why has there apparently been no interest in implementing XvMC?
2. Re:FAQ by Kjella · 2008-12-29 22:49 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Since you're a Mesa/X.org dev, maybe you can answer this.
  Why has there apparently been no interest in implementing XvMC?
  XvMC only supports MPEG2 acceleration, it was designed around that waaaaay back and would have to undergo major changes to support anything else. Since pretty much every computer can do MPEG2 with both hands tied behind their back, even HD MPEG2 as in ATSC, HDV and a few HDDVD/Blu-Rays, there's very little interest. What everyone wants is H.264 / VC-1 acceleration so you can play back modern media like Blu-Ray, AVCHD and almost everything off the net.
  So far Intel has talked a little about extending XvMC, someone made VA API that lacks implementation, AMD has been mumbling about XvBA which is a copy of the DirectX video acceleration support for their closed driver and no agreement on whether it'll be supported in open source at all, some effort to implement it as generic GPGPU algorithms, but in the end the only way you'll have full working video acceleration under Linux today is having a nVidia card and the proprietary drivers which support VDPAU. They've gone from zero to hero on this in no time, but it's now in varying degrees implemented on mplayer, ffmpeg, MythTV, xine and VLC. Shortly all of these will support it in an official release, the 180.xx driver introducing this still doesn't have a stable release either.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
3. Re:FAQ by MostAwesomeDude · 2008-12-30 02:20 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Since you're a Mesa/X.org dev, maybe you can answer this.
  Why has there apparently been no interest in implementing XvMC?
  XvMC requires very specific hardware support (which AMD hasn't been able to get legal clearance for) or complex shaders. The latter is already in the Gallium tree, but we don't have a working driver that can run it yet.
  Also, each of the big three has gone ahead and crafted their own goddamn standard. Intel's VAAPI, AMD's XvBA, and nVidia's VDPAU. Eventually, at least one of those will probably be added to Gallium. (Probably Intel's pick, since they put so much money into this.)
  ~ C.
  
  --
  ~ C.
4. Re:FAQ by Jorophose · 2008-12-30 10:28 · Score: 1
  
  The thing is, by the time you get it implemented and working properly, CPUs will be able to decode h.264 and VC-1 in software just fine.
  I'd prefer to see OpenCL implementations. I don't mind having my CPU sit at 80%, if it's the right CPU (like a miniITX-integrated one).
  CoreAVC can let you playback bluray-quality h.264 on an Atom 330 without too much stress (I assume a 230 and the Nano can handle it just fine too). I'm guessing VC-1 is that easy to work on too. Do we really need an XvMC for h.264/VC1/etc.? What happens when they're "old shit" like MPEG2?
5. Re:FAQ by Kjella · 2008-12-30 13:15 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  CoreAVC can let you playback bluray-quality h.264 on an Atom 330 without too much stress (I assume a 230 and the Nano can handle it just fine too).
  1. No, it doesn't.
  2. No, it doesn't.
  I had to check it out since you claimed it... the 330 can barely decode a 1080p RIP with about 20-25% the bitrate of a Blu-Ray. Furthermore, CoreAVC is well threaded so with about 50% of the power the 230 wouldn't even be able to decode the rip without stuttering. In short, there's still a very good market for hardware decoders for many years to come.
  
  What happens when they're "old shit" like MPEG2?
  Well, there's been no significant new codec for the last five years and as it's now heavily entrenched in Blu-Ray and many HD broadcasts that will take a very, very long time to replace. Probably much longer than DVD, maybe if you're talking in a 20+ years timeframe something new and better will appear but for now it seems fairly close to optimal, close enough that a revolutionary improvement is highly unlikely.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
6. Re:FAQ by Jorophose · 2008-12-30 13:21 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry then, I guess I was misinformed.
  Thanks for helping me justify the cost of an 8400GS though. ;)
  I just hope quickly enough linux GPU-based video playback will become standardised. One API per vendor is no good; we definately need VA-API supported by AMD and nVidia. (from what I can understand it was actually finished up a few days ago!)
recommended AMD card? by Eil · 2008-12-29 18:13 · Score: 3, Interesting

It's been about 8 years since I last immersed myself in the world of video cards and of course everything has changed since then. (Except that nVidia and AMD (was: ATI) are still on top.) Since then, whenever I've needed a video card, I've just gone to newegg and bought whichever nVidia card was priced around $50.
But pretend for a moment that I want to congratulate AMD on their open source stance and buy one of their cards. I don't need eye-blistering speed, but I want something that's going to be able to acceptably play a game released a year to six months ago. And obviously it has to work well on Linux. Would be nice if it was under $100 and dual-head, but I'll take any suggestions I can get. Is there such a card? If so, which drivers does it use?
1. Re:recommended AMD card? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 18:41 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Radeon HD 4670 is ~$80 and will play most games, period.
2. Re:recommended AMD card? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 19:19 · Score: 0
  
  I don't know about the games part but I recently bought a R500 series PCIe card (X1650 - http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_e?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=x1650+pcie&x=0&y=0 ) and it works great for my needs - dual head, decent 2D and 3D accel, working suspend/resume and on Fedora 10 it even gives me kernel mode setting which means high resolution, flicker free, flashy boot - Yay!
3. Re:recommended AMD card? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 21:54 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  AMD offer very competitive bang for the buck these days. Even better (as far as I'm concerned) they have excellent bang per watt.
  I have bought nVidia exclusively since my Riva 128, until I recently bought my son a low-end AMD card (4650). I was very impressed with its performance and low power consumption compared to what nVidia were offering.
  The only issue I had was lack of Linux 3D support, but this was fixed recently. I'm even more confident in my purchase after this news.
  For around US$160, this 4850 would be a good choice, IMHO.
4. Re:recommended AMD card? by Vacuous · 2008-12-30 00:14 · Score: 1
  
  The Radeon HD 3650, 4650, or 4670 should all suit your needs. Cards are in order of slowest to fastest.
5. Re:recommended AMD card? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 01:30 · Score: 0
  
  ATI cards do not work that well on Linux but, with the recent news, this is likely to change within a year or so. ATI drivers for Linux are still a pain in the ass.
  However, for playing even recent games in XP or Vista, you probably won't find better price-performance than a Radeon 4830 or 4850. Both of these have dual-monitor support. Google for some reviews & benchmarks.
  Here in the UK, you can get a 4830 for around Â£82, so these might be out of your price range. If so, you'll want the highest-numbered card in the 4600 series (4670?).
6. Re:recommended AMD card? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 02:06 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  Check out http://free3d.org/
  They have a list of the fastest video cards supported by open source drivers (mostly dominated by ATI). Yes, they use glxgears to benchmark which isn't much of a benchmark, but it's good enough.
7. Re:recommended AMD card? by RMingin · 2008-12-30 02:17 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Dual-head is generic and a freebie on all current cards.
  Under 100$ would have you looking at the Radeon HD 4670. Lots of them on Newegg for between 60-80USD. Very respectable performance, especially for the price and given the featureset.
  For just a hair over 100$ you can snag a Radeon HD4830. It's just like the top end cards, just some shader units disabled and the clock speeds dropped a bit.
  If you really want to show your support, however, I'd suggest pinching one or two additional pennies and grabbing one of the top end Radeon HD 4870s. They're as good as a single GPU gets in AMD-land lately, and a vast selection are available at the 200$ mark. Even the 1GB versions are available for about 20-30$ more, and those ought to remain future-proof for quite a while to come.
  There're plenty of options.
  
  --
  The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
8. Re:recommended AMD card? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 03:46 · Score: 0
  
  The 4670 is perfect for you
9. Re:recommended AMD card? by zigfreed · 2008-12-30 04:05 · Score: 1
  
  I'm finding it hard to see how the drivers are garbage. Both OpenSuSE & Ubuntu have the work done for you.
  
  Hardware-wise, AMD uses crossfire to hit the high-end, and aims for mainstream. See Anandtech's article on the RV770 for more info.
  
  I wouldn't spend the money for something made by Intel or nVidia unless I knew it was a good value. The trophy for making the fastest creates quite the money pit.
10. Re:recommended AMD card? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 10:43 · Score: 0
  
  Radeon HD4670 512 or 1 gig
  PCIe 2.0 x16 priced between 70 and 120 dollars depending on 512 or 1 gig models (some one gigs are dipping below 100 on newegg, look around!)
  *OR* a Radeon HD 4830 512 meg for ~110 on newegg (cheapest price, they range up to ~130, with a 1 gig model running ~150. Although at that price 4850's start coming into range)
  Currently either card will require the fglrx drivers, which seem to have been improving steadily in recent months. Otherwise you need to find an R500 based card, but the price->performance for them isn't worth it compared to the R700 based stuff.
11. Re:recommended AMD card? by LingNoi · 2008-12-31 11:45 · Score: 1
  
  It won't if you're trying to play games on wine. Stop lying to people to further your open source agenda.
Always loved amd by Dyinobal · 2008-12-29 18:59 · Score: 2, Interesting

I've always liked AMD ever since I started building computers. I'm not really a fan boy I guess I'm just their target consumer. I prefer a low cost processor that I can squeeze every dollar worth out of than an expensive one that is really fast but will be worth one hundred or two hundred less in a year when Intel pushes out their next bleeding fast processors. I've always bought Nvidia though I just have better experience getting them to work in Linux and they seem to run games better in windows at the time as well. Well about 2 months ago I gave my friend my existing Nvidia 8800gts as a birthday gift and got myself a 4850 Raedon card. I'd been meaning to buy an ATI card ever since AMD bought them but I was apprehensive. Bringing it home though I notice a huge difference in games especially my source engine games. The only issues I've had with it was some minor flickering in Linux (thanks to compiz and the drivers) and some issues with older games which were easy to work out. I honestly don't see myself buying Nvidia after this. The fact I have CrossfireX makes the deal even sweeter. This is a slam dunk for AMD.
1. Re:Always loved amd by Jorophose · 2008-12-30 10:33 · Score: 1
  
  I'm tired of hearing the whole "Compiz+video doesn't work bawww fix it AMD!" crap, so here's the downlow: it seems until DRI2 is implemented you're not going to be able to fix this problem. Right now only one thing can be GPU-bound at a time, and for that reason it seems you run into a whole slew of nastyness when you try to run a video while compiz is on or something similar.
  The way nVidia "solves the problem" is by more or less bypassing Xorg, so they don't have to deal with this. Intel and ATI, on the other hand, use the normal Xorg infrastructure and so are stuck with this problem.
  I think DRI2 has been accepted into the latest kernel, or will be in the upcoming one, so these sort of problems will hopefully be a distant nightmare in about six-month's time (if you're lucky, in time for Ubuntu 9.04).
  (Sorry, I didn't mean to target you at all; I just get unnerved sometimes and wanted to add this in for the lurkers)
Story by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 19:04 · Score: 0

Hi ambiguous and extremely obvious keyword guy here. Do you ever find yourself wondering how to search for that story you saw on slashdot? Well worry no more I've gone to the liberty of tagging every single article with the keyword story so when you need to find that story on slashdot that has only articles/stories you know what to type in.
1. Re:Story by LingNoi · 2008-12-31 11:50 · Score: 1
  
  Not everything on slashdot is tagged "story" dickwad. There is idle and people's journals, hence why stories are tagged story to separate them from other people's crap.
IMHO: Some common misconceptions. by drolli · 2008-12-29 19:26 · Score: 1

-the consumer forced it; reality: if i manufacture a netbook containing Ubuntu and everything on it is open source my software distribution and update infractructure/legal costs are: 0. In a time when hardware gets cheaper and cheaper, and support get more expensive in comparison it is a good thing to collaborate on that.
-The hard core gamers define the market. No. It's about netbooks, mobile phones and other devices. Given the exponential rise in computational power/dollar in a few years real time raytracing will take over. Bringing your own hardware interfaces/distribution infrastructure to the component market now give companies a better starting point to deliver a reliable platform. In the best case you promis the HW developer that he never has to touch the software (ok, may submit the pci id to the generic linux driver).
-Linux wins; maybe, but its more general: In the market of set-top boxes, GPS devices, mobile phones, media players etc. Widowns lost. If its linux or something else has to be seen (although the best news for linux in the recent reas was that Windriver is interested in it). Microsoft has no power to punish anybody any more.
1. Re:IMHO: Some common misconceptions. by Belial6 · 2008-12-29 20:24 · Score: 1
  
  "Widowns lost."
  
  That has been the story of the personal computer since the beginning. MS never "Won". They were just the company that shot themselves in the foot the fewest times...Until now anyway. They still haven't bled out yet, but they are also not in top shape.
This is neither by symbolset · 2008-12-29 19:41 · Score: 1, Interesting

When your company has an 80% margin and you donate stuff that costs you nothing, like "the right to use your software" and record the gift at retail price, you net a greater tax benefit than it costs you to make the gift. That's net profit for giving, which is not generous -- it's just good accounting. If, from your profits for giving stuff that costs you nothing, you also give "medicine" that's generous because it's not required. Still, if you net a profit from giving, your giving can't be considered anything more than an accounting trick because some good no matter how unlikely, might have been served by paying the tax - some tax money is spent generously or well and wisely after all.
It's not really philanthropy unless you give more than you got. This is charity. Here's my money. Give it away in the best way you can. That's also trust. They say trust is earned. Let's hope BillG deserved Warren Buffet's trust because the ill that can be done with that much gelt is serious.
Nearly all of the African continent is inflamed with horrors beyond imagining. Terror rules more of the modern world than it has for a very long time. The fate of South America is uncertain. Maybe the best use of the Gates Foundation would be to husband their resources well until such a time as they might have some hope to turn the tide. Now is not it. This groundbreaking of the $500M Gates Foundation Campus is definitely not it. You can do a lot of philanthropy for half a billion dollars.

--
Help stamp out iliturcy.
1. Re:This is neither by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 01:04 · Score: 0
  
  It's not really philanthropy unless you give more than you got.
  No actually thats called being in debt. Besides that I agree with everything else you are saying in your post. Also tax breaks and good accounting is the only way most rich people and especially corporations can and will comfortably donate any money. There always has to be an angle. That's not true philanthropy but then again how many people will take a majority loss on their money to help a bunch of people they don't even know.
2. Re:This is neither by plover · 2008-12-30 09:49 · Score: 1
  
  I see many responses in this thread, all with the same kind of complaining about Microsoft having made too much money, or not deserving the money that they made ("skimming"). It's very much the same as the argument for piracy that the RIAA / MPAA charges "too much" for their product. You've all established some mental threshold of bits per dollar, and because Microsoft / RIAA / MPAA charges more than you think it's worth, they're somehow overcharging or that it costs them nothing.
  The real answer in a free market economy is "the value of X is whatever people are willing to pay." If some people are willing to fork over $399 for a copy of Office, then Office is worth $399 to them. It is not up to you to pay only what you think it's worth, nor is it up to you to judge what others think it is worth -- if I think it's worth $199 and buy it on sale for $199, at no point does your opinion of the price matter in that transaction. And if you think it's only worth $20, well, Microsoft begs to differ, and they are under no obligation to sell it to you for that price.
  You may complain that the price is too high -- then don't buy it. Download a free alternative. Go without. Buy a Mac. Write your own. But that does not change the value to me, nor to Bill Gates, (unless enough people find alternatives, at which point the whole demand curve thing kicks in.) Microsoft earned the money they have, despite your opinions about the manner in which they earned it.
  If you think they earned it illegally, that's a different issue, and one our society is well-suited to solve. You have every right to file a lawsuit against them, claiming that they overcharged for their products, or that they did something unethical that caused them to make more money than they should have. Even then, you do not get the right to judge that trial yourself. That goes before a judge and jury, who make the decision on behalf of all of our society. And even then, the punishment or remuneration will be handed out by the court -- you may say that Office is only worth $0.50 for the disk and box, but the court may say it's worth something else. But the trials have been held all around the world, and Microsoft still has swimming pools filled with money. It all seems very legitimate to me.
  Bottom line: it is not now, nor will it ever be your decision that counts whether or not he made or deserves the money. He has already made it. It's done. Now, if he wants to spend a truckful of it in Africa, that's also his choice. Whether he wants to clean a guilty conscience, buy himself a place in the history books, get a giant statue out of the deal, or whatever, that's also up to him and not you. The rest of the world calls that philanthropy. Just because you don't agree because it doesn't fit your situational definition doesn't invalidate that claim either.
  
  --
  John
Lawl? by dangitman · 2008-12-29 20:32 · Score: 1

A: Lawl, no.
Seriously, Lawl?

--
... and then they built the supercollider.
1. Re:Lawl? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 21:48 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  Only slightly worse than "linky".
  
  Not clever, not cute, and stuff like this tends to make me ignore whatever the point of message was.
2. Re:Lawl? by MostAwesomeDude · 2008-12-30 02:24 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  But how can I be the youngest X.org member if I don't act cute?
  Or, on a more serious note, why complain? I'm the only X.org member to actually comment here, and with a nice, big, juicy, informative FAQ, no less.
  
  --
  ~ C.
3. Re:Lawl? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 11:08 · Score: 0
  
  ok, ok.
  
  All is forgiven.
  
  How about a comprimise:
  Keep linky, and drop lawl or vice versa.
4. Re:Lawl? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 21:30 · Score: 0
  
  A YOUNG X.org member?
  Isn't it a violation of human rights to make people under the age of 25 look at the X.org source code?
  -AC
5. Re:Lawl? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-31 03:06 · Score: -1, Flamebait
  
  :3 and "lawl" are fricken retarded. Enjoy your fail.
Linux is good lately -- Windows is worse by CarpetShark · 2008-12-29 21:01 · Score: 1

Hardware support in Linux works well if you build your own machines, or happen to get one with supported hardware. How do you find a system that is fully supported and for which distributions?
That was true --- in the past. If anything, I find that the opposite to be true these days: installing linux on a machine tends to make it just work. Installing windows, on the other hand, is a nightmare... occasionally, I find that my network card is unsupported without drivers, which is a real hassle by the time you get windows or some app to tell you what chip's involved, download drivers on some other machine and transfer them etc. Then you have printers, mice, graphics cards, etc. which are often unsupported by the standard drivers, or have limited features. Instead, they come with something that installs services, tray icons, etc., all with horrible UIs and advertising, together with scary warnings about the driver being unsigned. Granted, HP printers on Linux are just as regarding their use of using a non-standard UI, but most Linux stuff works much more nicely, with much less hassle, and bugs actually get fixed, keeping up with the rest of the OS.
1. Re:Linux is good lately -- Windows is worse by domatic · 2008-12-30 03:53 · Score: 1
  
  DriverPacks (driverpacks.net) are your friend here. It is a fairly easy to use utility that will let you slipstream a wide range of network, chipset, mass storage, sound, and video drivers into XP, Server 2003, and (maybe) Vista into a Windows XP install CD. I also use nlite and another utility to slipstream SP3, IE7, and WMP11 into an XP install disc. What I wind up with an 850MB iso that requires a DVD but it is very very convenient. The biggest PITA right now is newish laptops with SATA chipsets that old XP install discs don't have drivers for. DriverPacks helps immensely with that. It also helps by lighting up most wired and wireless interfaces up off the bat so you can get the machine on the net for any devices the DriverPacks didn't light up.
Me too by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-29 23:38 · Score: 0

I did too, and I want them to know it. It's been a bit of a slog - their Linux driver caused endless difficulties with X over two monitors, but whereever I can, I support companies who make it easier to use their products with open source.
I urge anyone else who has bought ATI because of this policy to say so here. It's useful to underline to ATI that it's a successfull policy.
Useless.. by Khyber · 2008-12-29 23:41 · Score: 1

"AMD will be releasing sanitized documentation for these new ATI GPUs in the coming weeks."
And as we know sanitized documentation generally tends to lead to under-developed code, thus rendering this somewhat useless for some things.

--
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
1. Re:Useless.. by piquadratCH · 2008-12-30 01:53 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Well, the sanitized docs for the R300/R500 chips lead to very usable opensource 2D/3D drivers in less than half a year. Let's give AMD the benefit of the doubt here, they've proven to deliver useful documentation in the past.
2. Re:Useless.. by not+already+in+use · 2008-12-30 02:24 · Score: 1
  
  very usable opensource 2D/3D drivers in less than half a year
  I seem to recall an article maybe two years ago about Intel open-sourcing their video card drivers, and everybody said they'd be moving to Intel cards. People gotta realize that open source isn't some magical philosophy where the code opens up and then starts writing itself. Is it a coincidence that the best supported graphics hardware on linux is powered by closed-source drivers? I guess we'll find out.
  
  --
  Similes are like metaphors
3. Re:Useless.. by fudoniten · 2008-12-30 09:07 · Score: 1
  
  I've been on Intel ever since, and it's been rock solid. I don't to much 3d gaming, but Intel cards aren't any good for that anyway.
  My desktop (Ubuntu, with compiz) is great looking, smooth, solid, and in the last year or so, I haven't had any problem whatsoever with the drivers. That's much better than having to remember to manually upgrade the NVidia drivers every time the kernel updated, or fiddle with X configuration parameters to try to get XV working with ATI. A couple years ago, I spent hours and hours (and hours) tweaking and fooling with video drivers, and I had scripts to reboot the computer in different modes in order to play games or watch videos.
  Intel's open source drivers are great. If I can get that, and good OpenGL performance too... Well, I'm biding my time before buying an ATI. For now, I just want a working desktop.
  (And the OS drivers for ATI cards has gotten noticeably better since they released the docs a year ago)
  So, yeah, it's not a cure-all, and the drivers don't write themselves. But somebody, somewhere is doing some coding.
4. Re:Useless.. by Kjella · 2008-12-30 10:53 · Score: 1
  
  And as we know sanitized documentation generally tends to lead to under-developed code, thus rendering this somewhat useless for some things.
  "Sanitized" in this context means "removed any reference to DRM-related functionality, future products and other internal secrets". It is supposed to unlock the full power of the hardware though, it's not supposed to be crippled from achieving equal 3D performance. A lot of the "how should you use this hardware" might be lost though, so it's a bit like saying "here's the assembler instructions, here's the expected accelerated output, you fill in the blanks". AMD is releasing documentation and providing some help, but they will not be dropping frglx or push serious resources into replicating frglx as open source. That the community will have to do.
  Hopefully though, there will be less card-specific work to do on the hardware-specific side. With graphics cards approaching general programming units, most of the work is now targetting Gallium3D - a very low level API to expose shaders and other basic computing units in a hardware-neutral way. On top of that sits various application API layers like OpenGL, DirectX, OpenCL that translate those to Gallium3D calls. At least that's the big master plan, we'll see how it works out as this is very much work in progress...
  
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X-Hallejulla! by Ostracus · 2008-12-29 23:53 · Score: 0

Or it could be cash-strapped ATI/AMD pushing the thankless task of writing their next drivers* upon the community. Someone doing their job for free? Now what business could turn that down?
*Let's not also forget ATI's reputation when it comes to drivers. As well as the fact that these documents will be sanitized.

--
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
1. Re:X-Hallejulla! by pdusen · 2008-12-30 00:26 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  True or not, they're still giving the Linux community exactly what they've been asking for: documentation to write good drivers for their devices. It's win-win for everyone.
2. Re:X-Hallejulla! by the_brobdingnagian · 2008-12-30 00:37 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I get the impression that the most vocal group asks for "Linux drivers", even less ask for "open source Linux drivers". Just a few ask for documentation. I'm glad they released the documentation. There are more OS's than Linux and maintaining an undocumented driver will probably be a hell.
3. Re:X-Hallejulla! by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 01:29 · Score: 0
  
  So what! We don't need CPU manufacturers to maintain kernels or compilers. Just give us the damn specs and the community will turn your product into a powerhouse. This is a great cost saving and value-improving step for ATI/AMD. Hopefully other companies will follow suit. We want hardware to be a commodity: the competition leads to both better products and lower prices.
4. Re:X-Hallejulla! by Dan+Ost · 2008-12-30 03:25 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Whatever their motivations happen to be, they are doing exactly what the kernel developers have been asking them to do.
  If it saves ATI/AMD money, even better. Maybe other companies will see the light and follow suit.
  
  --
  
  *sigh* back to work...
5. Re:X-Hallejulla! by msuarezalvarez · 2008-12-30 03:27 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Well. The few who ask for documentation want to write open source drives which will provide drivers to the first group.
  You present the last group as a fringe group of fanatics... It is quite understandable that very few people will want documentation on graphic cards, for there are in fact very few people in the world who can understand it. And youseem to imply that because they are few, they are mostly negligible: that's a pretty absurd position.
6. Re:X-Hallejulla! by Wdomburg · 2008-12-30 03:40 · Score: 1
  
  There have been closed source drivers for a couple years already.
7. Re:X-Hallejulla! by bored · 2008-12-30 18:23 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Maybe more people would understand it, if it were available. I know I didn't understand the virge manual when I first received it, but after extensive study it made more sense. Now it all seems pretty obvious when I pick it up. Frankly, I find the hardware register documentation to often be the most concise method of understanding a piece of hardware....
Hallejulla!-Happy Fanboy Day. by Ostracus · 2008-12-29 23:59 · Score: 1

Hate to tear you away from your fanboyism but you can indeed install just the drivers, and instead of using the catalyst control center (the part that requires .NET). You can use the ATI tray tools to do the same.

--
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Proof that stream competition is good by Ostracus · 2008-12-30 00:16 · Score: 1

Also Nvidia's ahead in stream computing. As well as being easier to work with.

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Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Very nice of them-Storytelling. by Ostracus · 2008-12-30 00:24 · Score: 1

Then it wouldn't be a "movie".

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Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
ends justify means? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 01:28 · Score: 0

Why can't it be both? I'd say the Gates Foundation has been far more successful at promoting Microsoft than some of their more direct efforts. [slashdot.org]
We all joke about his billions of dollars, but to see them put to use attempting to vaccinate an entire continent, I gotta tell ya that is a pretty damned impressive thing to do.
And was how the money made have any moral consideration?
Alfred Nobel made his fortune by selling munitions and other explosive substances which caused much death and suffering in his time. However he wanted to have a more noble (no pun intended) legacy than being remember as an arms dealer, so he created the Nobel Prize.
Does the fact that the money that created the prize was basically blood money make a difference?
Now Gates is obviously a different situation, but given that the operating system he was instrumental in making has historically (!) been so craptastic compared to alternatives available make his fortunate any less deserving? He may be trying to help the world in many ways, but he's also in affect whitewashing his name to a certain extent.
Buffett is also rich, but he did it by building solid companies selling solid products he believes in. Gates built a fortune on a historically crappy OS (recent versions have improved), and through various monopolistic practices that illegally killed competition. ("DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run.")
More developers needed? by gbutler69 · 2008-12-30 02:16 · Score: 1

What's the best way to become involved? IRC? Website? Where? What?

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Will eventually switch from NVidia to ATI by LurkingOnSlashdot · 2008-12-30 02:25 · Score: 1

I am a Linux user who also likes to play 3D games, so it's been nvidia only for me for a long time. Now that we will hopefully start seeing some good open source 3D drivers coming out for ATI, I am definitely switching! I just hope nvidia realizes this and follows. So many times after a system software or kernel upgrade, poof, the closed nvidia driver stops working... causing me to have to CTRL-ALT-F1 to a root shell and modify xorg.conf just so I can get into X11 again to be able to fetch the newest driver. What a pain. Having open source 3D drivers for both would be awesome and a complete win for the Linux community.
Joy and gratitude by Tenebrarum · 2008-12-30 02:49 · Score: 1

After having built a Nehalem system with HD4870 last week, all I can do is extend my joy and gratitude.
The moral of the story is; It pays to support those who support free software.
1. Re:Joy and gratitude by earthforce_1 · 2008-12-30 04:18 · Score: 1
  
  Same here - I was wavering between the top NVidia card and the HD4870x2 for my new linux box. I am glad I finally decided to go with the ATI GPUs.
  
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  My rights don't need management.
IP by wonkavader · 2008-12-30 03:00 · Score: 1

Huh? "The entire vaccination program is about intellectual property - countries have to forgo local pharma factories"?
Can you post a link about this?
1. Re:IP by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2008-12-30 13:05 · Score: 1
  
  I never bookmarked where I originally read about it, but here is one paper discussing the issue within the larger context of TRIPS:
  http://www.aids-freeworld.org/content/view/162/71/
  Here's reporting on the "chilling effect" of the foundation's funding:
  http://www.aegis.com/news/wsj/2002/WJ020509.html
  Implied impact on canadian proxy manufacturing:
  http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/3731
  
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  When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Certifiable Work by CompMD · 2008-12-30 03:01 · Score: 1

Until OpenGL support is included in the driver, no enterprise linux graphics application will support ATI cards. I'm talking about the $30,000/seat graphics programs for linux that *only* support nvidia Quadro cards with nvidia drivers, because they conform to the OpenGL standard. OpenGL is still in use in a lot of places, and its not free or open-source.
Current ATI Support by wonkavader · 2008-12-30 03:04 · Score: 1

Ignoring todays news, what's the state of support for the 4850 right now? Does it work flawlessly? I have some 3 year old ATI hardware and some older stuff. None of it quite works right with X. Running games is really hit or miss. Is the 4850 sort of semi-there on the Linux drivers, or is it working almost perfectly?
DRI compatible with power management? by jholster · 2008-12-30 03:42 · Score: 1

I assume the OpenGL/DRI code doesn't conflict with ACPI power management, i.e. you are still able to suspend/hibernate/resume?
MOD PARENT UP by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 04:06 · Score: 0

You know what you're talking about. Thank you. To GP, shame on you for repeating conventional wisdom from 2000.
1. Re:MOD PARENT UP by Hurricane78 · 2008-12-31 03:42 · Score: 1
  
  As I said: I wrote the post to catch other who think like I do, in order to gain up-to-date infos on the subject.
  I succeeded thanks to KovaaK.
  The only one who has the shame on him, is you, for attacking me for it. ;)
  
  --
  Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
And what exactly is nVidia doing? by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 04:09 · Score: 0

and Nvidia has been opening up.

In what bizarre universe that is nothing like ours is nVidia opening up? We have not seen a single specification from them. We have not seen a single code dump from them. The only thing we've even partially been "gifted" recently is yet-another-multimedia-acceleration-API, which would be totally useless to us if we had the means to implement one of the half-dozen or so other APIs that already exist (OpenMAX, XvMC, VA-API, etc).

As it stands, there's very little (read: not a single) chance that their gift API will ever be reimplemented, so it will only ever be useful for nVidia users who happen to build patches for their respective media players. Boy, what a great gift.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world moves to being more open, while Apple and Khronos are inventing OpenCL which will allow anyone to write code for any GPU, ATi's dumping code and specs as fast as their engineers can clean them up and ship them out, we've got people in the community porting the ATi drivers to the new memory managers (TTM right now, but GEM support is coming), other community members getting Mesa-LLVM building for the first time, and Intel's hired in even more Linux developers to hack on their drivers and to pull GEM into the mainline kernel.

nVidia sure is doing a lot for us these days.
Oops. Sorry. by symbolset · 2008-12-30 04:12 · Score: 1

My mistake.

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Help stamp out iliturcy.
Nvidia 8600 by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-30 04:58 · Score: 0

Like the man said, it's a legacy best forgotten.
Me, too, but... by rajafarian · 2008-12-30 05:49 · Score: 1

My current card is an ATI 3850, which I bought because of promising open-source 3D but I just upgraded to KDE 4.1 and I got tired of waiting for open source 3D drivers (since the fglrx drivers suck, they crash my system) so I just ordered an nvidia 9600GT card since their closed source drivers were pretty good.
My next card will probably be an ATI again, assuming I can get open source hardware acceleration by then.
Since 1995 I have bought:
1 S3
1 Tseng Labs
3 Matrox
~8 Nvidia
1 ATI
I want AMD's CUDA-equivalent by synthespian · 2008-12-30 07:29 · Score: 1

That's nice. But what I need is something like CUDA (form NVIDIA).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA

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AMD/ATI is two-faced still by NuShrike · 2008-12-30 11:40 · Score: 1

While they revel in open-sourcing drivers for Linux, they still take away on the other hand any form of support for their Imageon processors.
Imageon GPUs are implemented in many phone and pda based embedded devices, and supposedly offer hardware 3D acceleration for such devices.
However, AMD/ATI has completely refused to give out any non-NDA documentation to let 3rd-party developers write apps against their ATI Handheld Interface (AHI), or to support the specific ATI extensions in the available OpenGL ES drivers.
3rd-party developers can't even create alternative 3D drivers to get past Qualcomm's current inept implementation
AMD/ATI is not as nice as you think they are.
Don't get me too far wrong... by symbolset · 2008-12-30 15:58 · Score: 1

I'll give the guy some recognition for spending his own money to do good. It's not like I have a billion dollars to spend eradicating malaria. Good on him.
But when his company uses sham "donations" of software licenses to reduce their tax liability, I have a problem with that. That means I have to pay some of their share. And when they do it to try to get a lock on the software market in the third world I have a problem with that too because now they're taking my money and spending it to harm people. That's the opposite of philanthropy.
If they care so much about Vista Licensee counts, sure, ship 8 million Vista licenses to people in Zimbabwe who have neither computers nor electricity but put each license in a box with a case of MREs and a few water purification tablets (or at least an edible box) so they actually get something useful out of it, ok? Is that so much to ask?

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Help stamp out iliturcy.
1. Re:Don't get me too far wrong... by plover · 2008-12-30 17:20 · Score: 1
  
  But when his company uses sham "donations" of software licenses to reduce their tax liability, I have a problem with that.
  That's the same thing. YOU think Microsoft's donations are a sham tax dodge. So do I, but as I'm trying to point out, our individual opinions are irrelevant. That's up to the IRS and the courts to decide, and if it's wrong, there will be repayment with penalties and interest. If it's judged OK by society, then there is nothing wrong with it, and we simply have to accept it. It's just not our individual choices that count.
  Besides, if Microsoft saved half a billion dollars in a shady tax dodge and billg gave away a billion, his foundation will probably spend the difference more effectively than Congress ever would.
  
  --
  John
2. Re:Don't get me too far wrong... by symbolset · 2008-12-31 20:00 · Score: 1
  
  If it's judged OK by society, then there is nothing wrong with it, and we simply have to accept it. It's just not our individual choices that count.
  
  Maybe you feel fine with accepting it, with choosing to let it go. That's fine. I don't think less of you as a person for doing so. But for me, when I see stuff that's not right and I can at least do so little as post on a blog that I don't approve of it, I'm going to do that.
  
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  Help stamp out iliturcy.
open source policy by symbolset · 2008-12-30 19:44 · Score: 1

I agree. I'm buying four ATI in the next few months personally, and I'll be influencing technology purchasers for many thousands of units a year. NVidia can come open or go home now for all of me. I don't even care that the vast majority of those PCs will run Windows. I can't in good conscience help people choose a lock-in. I can't do it.
I've been favoring nv for their early proprietary Linux driver support for a long time. I really thought they would have been first with this.

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Help stamp out iliturcy.
1. Re:open source policy by LingNoi · 2008-12-31 11:34 · Score: 1
  
  If they are all using windows they will be using binary closed source graphics drivers. Pull your head out of your ass, you are doing nothing for open source, all you're doing is purchasing hardware.
2. Re:open source policy by symbolset · 2008-12-31 15:40 · Score: 1
  
  You're right I'm not doing anything for open source -- I'm choosing for myself what I think is best. Two years from now when there's good open source drivers for ATI hardware I will have good open source drivers for the ATI hardware I'm about to buy for my linux boxes. I'll have good hardware for my Windows boxes too, and if I decide to migrate them to OSS I will have the option. That might be especially handy if W7 turns out not to be a platform I want to go forward with because by then XP will be too old to maintain and there's no way I'm installing Vista again in anything but a virtual machine.
  If I chose nVidia hardware and they choose not to follow suit I'd have neither the open drivers nor the option.
  You choose for yourself. You have free will.
  
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  Help stamp out iliturcy.
How would money be "re-invested" by Dilaudid · 2008-12-30 22:36 · Score: 1

How much of the world's GDP has microsoft skimmed off the top? Money that would have been re-invested into the domestic economies all around the world, resulting in improved economic and living conditions without having to go through all the fat-cat middlemen, each taking their cut of that money before it eventually comes back around in the form of a "charity?"
The actual cash that gates has comes from people who want to buy his shares - they are quite happy to buy them. The increase in the share price is caused by the ability Microsoft has got to make $25 billion a year (0.03% of world GDP) selling windows and office - open source alternatives exist for both of these, so what I'm wondering is, if people need this investment for valuable investment, why don't they choose a free alternative?
The fat cat middlemen that you speak of are the people that buy microsoft products - and most of them give far less to charity than Gates does - so why do you prefer that they keep the money (and what right do you have to comment on how they spend it anyway?)
Interesting stats - Gates Foundation's spending accounts for 2.6% of global development aid ($2.6bn / $100bn) , compared to Microsoft total revenues which are 0.06% of global GDP ($60bn / $100trn). Don't you think it seems like you get a lot of charity bang for your windows buck?
1. Re:How would money be "re-invested" by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2008-12-31 00:29 · Score: 1
  
  if people need this investment for valuable investment, why don't they choose a free alternative?
  Arguments like that are a dime a dozen. They all have one critical flaw - they assume the world and the markets in the world are all static and working at optimum efficiency. (A) The world is not static (B) no market is perfect and to answer your question directly (C) inertia.
  
  The fat cat middlemen that you speak of are the people that buy microsoft products
  Those might be the fat cat middlemen that you speak of, but not the ones I am speaking of. I refer to distributors, marketing/advertising PR people, tariff and bribe collectors, etc, everybody who gets a piece of the pie as the money goes up the chain to MS and those who also get a cut of the pie as it comes back down the chain in the form of "aid" dollars.
  
  Don't you think it seems like you get a lot of charity bang for your windows buck?
  No. Anyone can cherry pick statistics of dubious merit. Why haven't you taken into account the efficiency of that spending? Do you honestly think that a command-control allocation system from the nearest thing there is to a monopoly in the business of "global development aid" is anywhere near as effective as local development spending by people with a vested interest in both the dollars spent and the community in which they are spent?
  
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how much does it cost to buy moderators? by drinkypoo · 2009-01-01 02:12 · Score: 1

Is there some kind of website where I can use paypal?

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"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"