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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."
It must be that time of the month for intel....
I thought the intel video chipset reputation was already something like "it sucks, ATI or nvidia are much better choices".
Caveat Utilitor
Microsoft threatening Intel unless they knock off the Linux integration. Now, all of a sudden, Intel is having all kinds of problems with their Linux drivers.
Coincidence or anti-competitive behavior in action?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Intel graphics chips are not for games. However, if you don't play games and you want a solid graphics card with enough 3D performance to run compiz or Quake with fully open source drivers, then Intel is what you want.
Or, it used to be. I don't know what the deal is with this new chipset.
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/
You mean you're not using open source chips?
If the Linux community wants open driver development, then, it should write them. Intel made an open source driver, and now the author is condemning the code? Geez, how about fixing it! If you want something to be community owned, well that community has to step up. It's not Intel's responsibility.
This is my sig.
Possibly because your friend is an idiot who has no idea what he's talking about? Intel release huge amounts of documentation, freely, they were one of the first companies to write and push their own drivers into the Linux kernel tree and almost all of their hardware is well supported with OSS drivers.
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.
I'd agree. I had a rather nasty return on a DV6990 HP laptop. It was trash, but that's aside the point.
I went and bought a T61, all intel down to the graphics card. Better wattage drain and complete open source drivers. Ubuntu detects everything on here, with exception to the HD APS system, which I can do without (it drains batt 2w extra).
And then, I find out that Intel releases everything about their 3d system.. And because of that, Linux devs are working on a Graphical Memory Manager, called GEM. Come to find out, it only works for Intel because they're soo open. They know they sell hardware, not their drivers.
Hopefully, AMD/ATI will follow and do the same. Wonder where that leaves nVidia...
You got modded up, so I get to correct you.
GEM (Graphics Execution Manager) is only working for Intel because they have more people working on it. There's only around four or five people working on Radeon stuff, and of those, only two of us are dedicated to ATI work, and we're both students.
If you grab development snapshots, you can see Radeons working with DRI2, GEM, KMS, and all that fancy stuff.
~ C.
The firmward microcode is released under a closed-source license
That'd be because it contains the code to physically setup the device and any variation to it would cause it to break its FCC certification.
There's a fuzzy line between device level firmware which nobody ever wants to change (because it could cause your machine to literally blow up) and the driver code which, of course, we want to be free. Apparently it's because hardware manufacturers have shifted away from having firmware on a ROM and instead started distributing the microcode with the driver instead. It cuts manufacturing costs and makes microcode updates less dangerous.
I can't be arsed finding a link but even RMS accepts that it's OK for such microcode to stay as a blob.
Nick
Compositing doesn't take a lot of power, despite how Linux has struggled with it. I mean, come on, at worst it's two triangles per window, with textures and alpha-blending. Maybe an extra four tris with colour and an alpha map for shadow. My 2001 ibook could do it in OS X, and that was running a Rage Mobility M3. I think it's 16MB.
Funny story really... originally, everyone was working on something called TTM, which did much the same thing as GEM does now, and was designed to be suitable for all graphics cards. Progress was slow (mostly volunteer developers) but steady. Then the Intel driver's developers decided they wanted to go their own way, and ripped it out in favour of their own simpler solution, GEM - which only worked for Intel graphics hardware. Since Intel was the only open hardware at the time, they got their way. So the real reason that GEM only works for Intel hardware is because it was designed to support Intel graphics and Intel graphics only.
(This also set development of the equivalent functionality for other hardware back a bit, since the developers were set on TTM, and GEM was useless to them as it stood.)
I fell in love with the Poulsbo based Panasonic CF-U1 ruggedized MID. Once I saw Intel did the graphics hardware and that they had a Linux driver, I bought the thing. Knowing Intel has been doing such a great job maintaining their desktop Linux stuff (i810 driver, etc) I just trusted them, and as you can see by this article, what a mistake that turned out to be.
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.
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.