Slashdot Mirror
The "Bloody Mess" That Is Intel's Poulsbo Driver
AdamWill writes "Phoronix writes about the mess that is the Linux support situation for Intel's new graphics chipset, the GMA 500 — aka Poulsbo. Near the end they refer to my own post on the topic ('Okay, so after a whole day spent bashing around at this crap, I can very confidently and conclusively say, it's utterly broken'). Intel has a reputation as one of the most clued-up open source-friendly hardware companies, but if they can't sort out the mess surrounding the driver for this chipset — which is already used on the Dell Mini 12 and Sony Vaio P, and will be used on many future Intel-based systems — that reputation will take a serious hit."
I'm noticing the tag 'gonvidia', and it's true... as in terms of hardware, Nvidia does seem to be the best. But as in terms of the linux community, they pretty much create problems for everyone. And yes, I know, to the end user that's not always apparent. But the linux desktop really would be a lot farther along if it weren't for nvidia's refusal to open up to the free software community.
If Intel's new open source graphic drivers suck, then obviously yes, that's shitty. But between them and nvidia, if you're going to praise one or the other in the Linux community, it shouldn't be nvidia. Intel's graphic cards still don't support GLSL and the like, but at least you can run an open source driver and it works.
http://mediagoblin.org/
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. (Wiki quote)
Even if the driver is open source, the chipset documentation might not be. As others have mentioned, it's hard to know how to write a good driver working with nothing more than a bad driver. You need good documentation.
Intel's wireless 3945ABG Linux drivers are pretty good. The firmward microcode is released under a closed-source license, but the drivers themselves are open source (and in fact are part of the Linux kernel). That may be offensive to some OSS purists, but I'd rather have good, open-source drivers with closed firmware than non-functional open-source drivers.
It's the same with my opinion about nvidia's drivers. Sure, they're closed-source. But I'd rather nVidia give us working 3d drivers than be stuck with the crappy open-source 2d-only nv driver. It'd be nice if they were open-source, but I'm not going to refuse to use them out of some misguided idealism.
Put another way, if I'm dying of thirst, and a known thief offers me stolen water, I'm going to drink it - it's not like the water is tainted. Maybe that makes me an accessory to a crime (or, in software terms, maybe it encourages closed drivers) but it's better than dying of thirst (or, better than having no 3d drivers at all). nVidia has no real motivation to give us open-source 3d drivers in the first place, so refusing to use their closed driver won't make them change their minds.
No malice needed; it'd be stupidity for Intel to cave to Microsoft at this point. When the 25 stone gorilla's choking on a fishbone, d'you break out the Heimlich maneuver?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Having spent a lot of time in various beurocracies, I can attest that malice and stupidity work very well together. While one does not guarantee the other, they are often interlinked.
It must be that time of the month for intel....
Crap like this is what will drive companies _away_ from open source. Look at all the flak that Sun gets regarding it's handling of Open Office. Or countless other examples. The community should be grateful that these companies support FOSS at all, instead, it looks like any company that comes to the FOSS table will be eaten when it doesn't do this right, or doesn't do things 'in the spirit' or takes their time with something.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Just to be an asshole, I'm going to correct you too with a car analogy!
GEM is working on Intel because they're the ones who initially wrote it. It's a bit like showing up at a road race with an antigravity mach-1 craft invented in secret, then handing out schematics to it to the other drivers and speeding off over the horizon.
No, this is not OpenOffice, because drivers are only useful to customers who pay for hardware. When I shop for a laptop, I buy something with good driver support by my chosen OS, which is Linux. So if Intel wants me to consider buying something with their chips, they'd better fix the driver problem. The idea of being "grateful" to somebody making something I might want to buy is neither here nor there.
I wouldn't recommend composting on a laptop. If you must compost, I'd place the heap in the furthest corner of the back yard.
Honestly, i am sure this is how many "we have to hit the shelfes before 8am yesterday , because this chipset is now the cheapest one"-drivers for windows are developed. Copy and paste everything into your driver instead of defining the dependencies correctly. After all in the end it is a single dll which may be several megabyte of size, nobody looks into that anyway. Nobidy cares in five year. until that time, recommend to everybody using the recovery CD. If things break by an windows update, it's clearly MS fault, isn't it? BTW. MS never certified the driver, so MS clearly says its the manufacturers fault. Just turn of the acceleration - good luck.
In this game there a now three compnaies involved, all of which want to earn money. And the customers of none of the three companies care right now about this driver issue.
-Dell: Customer is happy with Ubuntu, turned it on, worked. When ubuntu upgrades the kernel, dell will pay the driver developer
-Driver developer: copying and pasting saved some time, specification most likely said: should run on ubuntu. Dell is obviously happy
-Intel: Dell as a customer is happy to buy cheap parts.
Crap like this is what will drive companies _away_ from open source.
Why? If I buy some hardware I expect it to work properly no matter what operating system I'm running (so long as that OS has drivers). It doesn't matter whether you're supporting Windows, Linux, OS X, or whatever - if you release drivers for your hardware and they don't work then you're (quite rightly) going to get flak - people have paid for some hardware which doesn't work as expected.
Or are you saying that companies will also be driven away from supporting Windows because people complain their crappy software doesn't work there (a pretty frequent occurrence)?
The community should be grateful that these companies support FOSS at all
How about the companies being grateful that we're buying their hardware at all?
These days I buy Intel graphics hardware because it generally _does_ work out of the box with Free drivers. The same can not be said about the likes of nVidia. Same goes for 802.11 hardware. Intel seems to be having problems with this driver, but I'm pretty confident that they are working on fixing the problem because they do seem to understand that they don't have some god given right to expect customers to buy their hardware no matter how badly supported it is.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
By all means, offer them constructive criticism. But don't attack them. "Bloody mess"? If someone called the Linux kernel a bloody mess on LKML do you think that his criticism would be heard?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.