AMD Publishes Open-Source "ATI Evergreen" Driver

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AMD Publishes Open-Source "ATI Evergreen" Driver

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 1, 2010 @11:28AM from the still-watching-and-waiting dept.

Several readers have written to tell us that AMD has published their code to support the Radeon HD 5000 "Evergreen" graphics cards on Linux in an open-source driver. Unfortunately the driver isn't quite as complete as some might hope. The current offering doesn't promise 2D (EXA) acceleration or 3D support. "The DDX driver supports mode-setting on the Evergreen/R800 series GPUs with VGA and DVI connectors while the DisplayPort connectivity is still not working right, according to AMD's Alex Deucher who had written most of this code. These new AMD graphics cards have been around since September while there was no open-source support at that time. In December just before Christmas there was Evergreen Shader documentation that was made publicly available and around that time it was confirmed via our forums that initial VGA mode-setting was working with Evergreen internally on unreleased code. Since then the digital connector support has been added in and this code has finally cleared AMD's legal review. The revised target was to publish this code by FOSDEM, which is this weekend so AMD did hit the target this time."

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Baby Steps by mystikkman · 2010-02-01 11:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

Atleast they have released the specs out to OSS developers and are working towards a accelerated solution. There used to be a time when only Nvidia cards used to run at full power on Linux. Go AMD!
1. Re:Baby Steps by XPeter · 2010-02-01 11:35 · Score: 1
  
  There used to be a time when only Nvidia cards used to run at full power on Linux. Go AMD!
  We still are in that time, as TFA states: "The current offering doesn't promise 2D (EXA) acceleration or 3D support." Well what IS the driver going to do, then?
  Hopefully due to the profitable quarter they just had, AMD/ATI can hire some Linux devs to get the ball rolling faster.
  
  --
  "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
2. Re:Baby Steps by goldaryn · 2010-02-01 11:39 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Well what IS the driver going to do, then?
  Run Nethack at 120fps?
3. Re:Baby Steps by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 11:46 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  For the last decade (almost), it was always "free the specs and the community developers can do it". It's interesting that now it's "You've freed the specs, but now you need to hire the devs".
  The community is no closer to having community maintained drivers. If the IHVs move out of supporting the drivers, where will that leave the community? The specs are there for Intel and AMD, but there doesn't seem to be a large non-vendor set of developers out there.
  Sure there are a set of core developers (airlied, ajax, MostAwesomeDude, etc), but they will always be undermanned, no matter über their code-fu is.
4. Re:Baby Steps by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2010-02-01 11:59 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  A 16550 doesn't really count as a graphics card anymore...
5. Re:Baby Steps by ak3ldama · 2010-02-01 12:10 · Score: 1
  
  Badly supported 5xxx series cards merely means people will utilize cheaper older cards for Linux. I have a 4670 card with Fedora 12 and the experimental open source drivers enabled. Linux overall, and the drivers work great. Super cheap systems with ATI graphics and AMD processors with Linux is a decent proposition. Not perfect on the desktop, but taken with a few salt shakers it's ok.
  
  --
  "but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
6. Re:Baby Steps by MrHanky · 2010-02-01 12:16 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The driver is functional for your regular 2d needs. Browsing the web and moving windows around is fast enough. It doesn't crash all the time (only tried it for a few hours, and no problems so far), but it does lack video overlays, so it's not quite ready for media use just yet.
7. Re:Baby Steps by babblefrog · 2010-02-01 12:59 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  You kids with your fancy-schmancy hardware. In our day, we had 8250s and we liked it.
8. Re:Baby Steps by jedidiah · 2010-02-01 15:26 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  ...you can always add a cheap nvidia card to it later and have a remarkably better setup.
  
  --
  A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
9. Re:Baby Steps by zill · 2010-02-01 17:24 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I mean, it's kinda like GM dumping a crate of parts in your driveway and calling it a car, but really, would your rather build it yourself, or have some wage-slashed government worker do it?
  I'd file a police report against GM for trespassing and then report them to the city hall for illegal dumping. Then I'd go and buy a real car.
  
  Unfortunately that alternative does not exist in the graphics world because Nvidia's Fermi won't show up for a few more months. None of Nvidia's current offerings can stand up to the Radeon R800 series. Even if Fermi shows up it'll be useless for me personally because it will not support triple displays, just like all other Nvidia cards (not counting dual GPU cards).
10. Re:Baby Steps by thsths · 2010-02-01 21:07 · Score: 1
  
  > At least they have released the specs out to OSS developers
  Did they? Or did they only release the specs for 2D? And why is there no word of kernel based mode setting? It seems a bit silly do develop a new driver without it - after all it is clearly the correct solution, and everybody else is moving that way.
  > and are working towards a accelerated solution.
  Not good enough. At least 2D acceleration (Xv etc) is essential, and with a modern desktop you want at least some 3D functions, too.
  > There used to be a time when only Nvidia cards used to run at full power on Linux.
  Yes, and how is this different? Nvidia has complete acceleration support on a number of Linux architectures, while AMD has barely started working on it. Open source is certainly nice, but it has to work.
11. Re:Baby Steps by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 23:43 · Score: 0
  
  The community needed to rewrite large part of the graphics infrastructure.
  Xorg, Linux, Mesa, Gallium3D, and so on.
  The infrastructure for writing and maintaining graphics drivers is getting closer to reasonable.
  It is similar to the work that was needed for WLAN, webcams, and other infrastructures rewritten the last years.
12. Re:Baby Steps by Stele · 2010-02-02 01:22 · Score: 1
  
  Or just use an nvidia card from the start. Then you get all the features.
  You weren't REALLY going to screw around with the source code anyway, right?
13. Re:Baby Steps by ak3ldama · 2010-02-02 02:44 · Score: 1
  
  ...you can always add a cheap nvidia card to it later and have a remarkably better setup.
  ...and go back to having to compile closed source kernel modules just to get it to work after kernel updates? No thanks. Had to do that previously - it sucked. Also hate to wonder if it will work on the latest version of X. That is not my definition of better.
  
  --
  "but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
14. Re:Baby Steps by sirinek · 2010-02-02 02:54 · Score: 1
  
  A 16550 doesn't really count as a graphics card anymore...
  That was the funniest comment in this entire thread. But it flew right over most of these lil whippersnappers heads.
15. Re:Baby Steps by marcosdumay · 2010-02-02 03:12 · Score: 1
  
  Or they could just release te specs...
  For a while I hoped AMD would play nice with FOSS. Hell, it looks like it is their only chance of surviving, but still, their CXX people doesn't seem to agree.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
16. Re:Baby Steps by halltk1983 · 2010-02-02 11:10 · Score: 1
  
  AMD / ATI has some very nice closed source drivers. Been using them for a goodly time now, and they've vastly improved over the years. Now my dual monitors work, with full 3d acceleration, and comparable framerates in Doom 3 for me.
  
  However, this is about the open source drivers that were just released in their absolutely initial form. If you'd have liked them to withhold their opensource project from outside eyes and outside hands until completion, so that there was no chance for community input, then I'm sorry that they weren't so close minded. I eagerly await what the community is able to turn this into. Until then, I'll keep using my closed drivers.
  
  --
  Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
17. Re:Baby Steps by mikechant · 2010-02-02 22:52 · Score: 1
  
  and go back to having to compile closed source kernel modules just to get it to work after kernel updates?
  At least in some distros, the nvidia closed driver is handled in a completely transparent manner (e.g. in Ubuntu once you've checked the 'activate' box you never have to perform any manual operations, unless you need a newer version of the drivers than the packaged one).
So what does it do? by Darkness404 · 2010-02-01 11:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

The current offering doesn't promise 2D (EXA) acceleration or 3D support.

So if it doesn't offer 2D acceleration or 3D support... what does it do? Framebuffer mode? Seriously why would ATI even release a driver in this pathetic of state, at least when I can buy an nVidia card for the same amount and have 100% of features work just fine.

--
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
1. Re:So what does it do? by Jurily · 2010-02-01 11:42 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  why would ATI even release a driver in this pathetic of state
  To gather developer attention. At this stage, it's not about the features, it's about the mindshare.
2. Re:So what does it do? by Jorl17 · 2010-02-01 11:44 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  More than that, it's about manipulation of the media. It's about image. It's about making stupid people like some of us believe that this actually is a great leap forward. Even if this ever goes somewhere, it will always have started with this objective and this purpose.
  
  --
  Have you heard about SoylentNews?
3. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 11:44 · Score: 0
  
  Why? To find new talent among the Linux coders and then offer them a nice job at ATI. That way the main developers will be employed there, so ATI will have better control over the drivers and any future drivers will be of great quality and they will get the seal of approval from the Linux communities, so this is clearly a strategic move by ATI.
4. Re:So what does it do? by Sycraft-fu · 2010-02-01 11:45 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Well they have a working proprietary driver. This is just the OSS one. ATi is attempting to make nice with the "OSS only" crowd. The problem is they can't just open up their normal driver, it contains licensed, patented code from other companies they can't hand out. As such you get a very different, stripped down, driver for the OSS community to work on. How useful this is is something up for debate.
  nVidia's approach is that they only want to release the proprietary, fully working driver. They aren't interested in releasing a semi-broken driver just to be OSS. As such you only get their binary download.
  Now in either case, the nVidia drivers are superior quality wise. They've always been good at drivers on Windows, and it translates over to Linux it seems. However ATi does have an open option that nVidia doesn't. For some people, this is important as they won't run closed code at all, even if it means a better experience.
5. Re:So what does it do? by zyklone · 2010-02-01 11:46 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Please tell me where nVidia has an open source driver with 100% features working?
  This is about the AMD open source driver, not about the AMD closed source drivers, which supports Evergreen just fine.
6. Re:So what does it do? by Darkness404 · 2010-02-01 11:49 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  It doesn't matter. Drivers should be -standard- unless I'm screwing with something seriously experimental, drivers should be expected. The 5000 series has been out since last year, so drivers should be standard on the day they ship.
  
  --
  Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
7. Re:So what does it do? by Yaa+101 · 2010-02-01 11:50 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Please tell me where AMD has any good Linux driver? Their closed source driver is such a piece of crap.
8. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 11:54 · Score: 0
  
  sorry, when have nvidia _ever_ released an open-source driver?
9. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 12:03 · Score: 0
  
  It will matter in 5 years when you want to use Linux on a computer and you discover that the proprietary driver hasn't been updated in two years. So then what do you do? Use a 2 year old version of Linux?
10. Re:So what does it do? by Draek · 2010-02-01 12:15 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Well they have a working proprietary driver.
  For varying definitions of "working". As an ATI user I must say, the propietary driver is the single worst piece of software I've ever had the displeasure to run on my Linux system, and the only thing besides faulty RAM and a dying HDD to ever cause Linux (yes, the kernel, not just X) lock up on me. It sucks so badly that ArchLinux even removed it from their repositories, prefering to not give it as even an option rather than deal with the support nightmares it causes.
  The Open Source driver on the other hand is excellent, stable and completely hassle-free (something I can't quite say of NVidia's propietary driver, though it wasn't nearly as bad as ATI's), and even supports 3D acceleration on older chipsets. My guess is that it won't be long until 3D is also supported on the HD5x00 series as well, development is quite fast on it.
  
  --
  No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
11. Re:So what does it do? by zippthorne · 2010-02-01 12:16 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Good point. Let's take this opportunity of AMD doing something for the open source community to bitch about all the stuff they didn't do yet. Way to play right into nVidia's hands, smart guy.
  
  --
  Can you be Even More Awesome?!
12. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 12:21 · Score: 0
  
  >nVidia's approach is that they only want to release the proprietary, fully working driver. They aren't interested in releasing a semi-broken driver just to be OSS. As such you only get their binary download.
  That's not true. They also release the nv driver, a free crippled driver.
  ATI release the free driver AND specifications which means that with work the free driver can get out of its crippled state.
13. Re:So what does it do? by Techman83 · 2010-02-01 12:22 · Score: 1
  
  Any direction towards providing working open source drivers to the community is a good one. But they've been promising lots of things for a long time and failing to deliver. My notebook has both intel and ati graphics, currently Intel's oss drivers are fantastic. Who'd a thunk it, slowest piece of crap in the windows world, performs quite well in the F/oss world (admittedly no gaming, but it handles compiz dual screen quite nicely).
  
  --
  # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i cat
  Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
14. Re:So what does it do? by WeatherGod · 2010-02-01 12:23 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  It gives a basis for the community to work around. The entire issue with NVidia has been that developers have been asking for at least some sort of documentation so that they don't have to reverse-engineer everything. Companies have said that they don't want to support Linux or handle bugs, and we reply "you don't have to!". With documentation and a core set of code to work around, AMD has done exactly what we have asked for. Now, it is up to us to take that code and build it up to be a full-fledge graphic driver.
  AMD/ATI has nothing but my fullest appreciation for what they have done.
15. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · 2010-02-01 12:26 · Score: 0, Flamebait
  
  It will matter in 5 years when you want to use Linux on a computer and you discover that the proprietary driver hasn't been updated in two years. So then what do you do? Use a 2 year old version of Linux?
  This is a flaw in Linux/X.org.
  Windows 7 manages to support the same graphics driver interface as did Windows 2000, which is nearly ten years old.
16. Re:So what does it do? by WeatherGod · 2010-02-01 12:28 · Score: 1
  
  What do you mean by "standard"? If you mean "standard across devices of similar type", then different companies have different expectation for what the OS is responsible for and what the device is responsible for.
  If you mean "standard for a particular hardware", the driver still has to interface with the OS, and OSs change over time. Drivers need to be recompiled and modified over time to allow them to continue functioning.
17. Re:So what does it do? by santiagodraco · 2010-02-01 12:34 · Score: 1
  
  Why should drivers be standard for Linux? Considering that it represents a pretty minuscule percentage of their market it seems to me they are going above and beyond by supporting it at all. On top of that they have "standard" drivers for previous cards.
  Seems to me they are doing the right thing.
18. Re:So what does it do? by drizek · 2010-02-01 12:36 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Then explain why my printer doesn't work on Windows 7, when it works in XP, VIsta, OSX and Ubuntu? Out of the box in two of those four(I'll let you guess which).
  I would also like you to explain why my 4 year old Dell laptop doesn't let me pick the appropraite resolution in Windows 7, when it will in XP, Vista and Ubuntu.
19. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · 2010-02-01 12:41 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Then explain why my printer doesn't work on Windows 7, when it works in XP, VIsta, OSX and Ubuntu? Out of the box in two of those four(I'll let you guess which).
  I said graphics, not printer.
  
  I would also like you to explain why my 4 year old Dell laptop doesn't let me pick the appropraite resolution in Windows 7, when it will in XP, Vista and Ubuntu.
  I'm not your tech support.
20. Re:So what does it do? by ppanon · 2010-02-01 12:43 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Your post is either erroneous or misleading - ATI has closed source Catalyst drivers that support Evergreen cards with 2D and 3D acceleration. What the Evergreen cards haven't had up until now is the open source driver support. However, the open source driver support for NVidia cards is much worse because the developers are having to reverse engineer functionality from NVidia's closed source drivers because NVidia hasn't made any open hardware specs available. When it comes to open source driver support for 2D and 3D acceleration, NVidia lags far behind AMD/ATI and Intel. As a post in the above link indicates, in the long run the shared open source code base eventually will be a significant competitive advantage for Intel and AMD and a disadvantage for NVidia.
  I have switched over to the open source AMD R600 drivers because, even though the 3D support is not yet quite as good as the closed source drivers, it should catch up and it's already good enough for what I do. In the meantime I won't have to worry about waiting a number of months for the closed source drivers to become available when a new distro/kernel release requires new binary blobs from the vendor. That also means that my graphics hardware investment is protected and not dependent on the continued support of the hardware vendor if I want to continue to upgrade the O/S in the future.
  
  --
  Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
21. Re:So what does it do? by Flammon · 2010-02-01 12:44 · Score: 1
  
  No it doesn't. Not in real world anyways.
  
  --
  ayottesoftware.com
22. Re:So what does it do? by shutdown+-p+now · 2010-02-01 12:45 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Windows 7 manages to support the same graphics driver interface as did Windows 2000, which is nearly ten years old.
  I don't think this is correct. While Windows Vista and 7 support Win2K drivers for many devices unchanged, video driver model in particular was completely rehashed in Vista. I'm not aware of any video drivers for XP, much less 2K, working in Vista or 7.
23. Re:So what does it do? by Nimey · 2010-02-01 12:46 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  No it doesn't. Try using a WinXP video driver on 7. Won't work.
  I've tried this with the i855 laptop-video driver, because 7 doesn't even include a driver, even one that's limited to 2D accel.
  I guarantee you it wouldn't work with an ATI or Nvidia driver either.
  Now, I /have/ gotten a 3Com 3C905B to work on 7 with a WinXP driver (out of necessity), but only in the 32-bit version.
  
  --
  Hail Eris, full of mischief...
  
  E pluribus sanguinem
24. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · 2010-02-01 12:46 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  No it doesn't. Not in real world anyways.
  In "real world" you can just install an old graphics driver in Windows 7. You can even use the XP drivers for GPUs that have native Windows 7 drivers; of course you are then limited to the features of the old interface.
25. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · 2010-02-01 12:49 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I don't think this is correct. While Windows Vista and 7 support Win2K drivers for many devices unchanged, video driver model in particular was completely rehashed in Vista. I'm not aware of any video drivers for XP, much less 2K, working in Vista or 7.
  Every GPU that doesn't have a WDDM driver uses a 2000/XP driver. This includes chipsets like the GMA 900 (famous for not having Aero support).
26. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 12:49 · Score: 0
  
  Windows 7 manages to support the same graphics driver interface as did Windows 2000, which is nearly ten years old.
  ummm.... not quite. In Vista the graphics card driver interfaces changed to support Vista Display Driver Model Architecture.. They effectively embedded a DirectX graphics subsystem into the kernel (Dxgkrnl.sys) which includes a display port driver, video memory manager, and CPU scheduler.
  Why do you think NVidia had such struggles getting a stable driver at Vista release time?
27. Re:So what does it do? by drizek · 2010-02-01 12:51 · Score: 1
  
  No, the correct answer is that Intel discontinued support for it... and now it doesn't work. It is a DX9 capable chipst too. Runs Compiz just fine on ubuntu.
  I have been tring to turn that old system into a media center, and it has been a disaster.
28. Re:So what does it do? by LWATCDR · 2010-02-01 12:51 · Score: 1
  
  Not exactly. You can not buy an nVidia card for the same amount and have 100% of the features work just fine using FOSS drivers.
  However you can get closed drivers for both ATI and Vidia.
  Just goes to prove that the myth that if you just release the specs great FOSS drivers will get written quickly and by the community.
  
  --
  See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
29. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · 2010-02-01 12:53 · Score: 1
  
  ummm.... not quite. In Vista the graphics card driver interfaces changed to support Vista Display Driver Model Architecture.. They effectively embedded a DirectX graphics subsystem into the kernel (Dxgkrnl.sys) which includes a display port driver, video memory manager, and CPU scheduler.
  A new graphics driver interface was added to enable Aero, but the old "XPDM" interface still works. This is why non-Aero compatible GPUs like the GMA 900 continue to work with Windows Vista and Windows 7.
  
  Why do you think NVidia had such struggles getting a stable driver at Vista release time?
  Intel certainly didn't have as many struggles compared to ATI or NVIDIA. In August 2006 (four months before Vista's retail release), Intel WDDM Aero-capable drivers had better performance than ATI's drivers at the time, even though all of the ATI GPUs were faster...
30. Re:So what does it do? by nadaou · 2010-02-01 12:55 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  ATI release the free driver AND specifications which means that with work the free driver can get out of its crippled state.
  i.e. with time the nVidia binary-only driver will only get worse (binary bit rot has a half-life of say 1.5 years), while the ATI OSS driver will only get better with time and is not locked to yesterday's Linux kernel or X11.
  It is a choice of candy today, or no candy today but candy for the next month.
  
  --
  ~.~
  I'm a peripheral visionary.
31. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · 2010-02-01 12:55 · Score: 1
  
  No it doesn't. Try using a WinXP video driver on 7. Won't work.
  Of course it will work - this is how non-Aero capable GPUs work on WIndows 7.
32. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 13:11 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  A new graphics driver interface was added to enable Aero, but the old "XPDM" interface still works. This is why non-Aero compatible GPUs like the GMA 900 continue to work with Windows Vista and Windows 7.
  True enough... the old interfaces are still there for now. I may have misinterpreted your point as "the driver interfaces have not changed since Windows 2000"... which is different.
  Microsoft does have a vested interest in compatibility. This is both a blessing and a boon at times
  
  Why do you think NVidia had such struggles getting a stable driver at Vista release time?
  Intel certainly didn't have as many struggles compared to ATI or NVIDIA. In August 2006 (four months before Vista's retail release), Intel WDDM Aero-capable drivers had better performance than ATI's drivers at the time, even though all of the ATI GPUs were faster...
  This may just mean that Intel has better access to information than ATI or NVIDIA... or better developers, or much less complex graphics cards. In fact, I suspect it is a combination of the three.
  My point was that the new driver interfaces were not necessarily simple to get right... but it doesn't refute your first point.
33. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 13:16 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  Why should drivers be standard for Linux? Considering that it represents a pretty minuscule percentage of their market it seems to me they are going above and beyond by supporting it at all. On top of that they have "standard" drivers for previous cards.
  Seems to me they are doing the right thing.
  Well, I work in a public organization (no, not in the USA) and when all we buy is specified according to the national laws and internal standards.
  As standard, any computer bought _must_ be supported by Linux (GNU/Linux if you prefer) with FOSS drivers or, if there's no such hardware, by closed source drivers. It doesn't matter which OS will be used, it must support Linux so the hardware won't be an obstacle when the migration occurs.
  
  Most of the machines run Windows XP currently (the migration has been slow-paced), but the spent money went to the ones that support Linux.
34. Re:So what does it do? by Nimey · 2010-02-01 13:19 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  O RLY?
  Explain why my non-Aero i855 laptop doesn't work, or why a 915 won't either.
  I submit that you're full of shit.
  
  --
  Hail Eris, full of mischief...
  
  E pluribus sanguinem
35. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · 2010-02-01 13:28 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Explain why my non-Aero i855 laptop doesn't work, or why a 915 won't either.
  I am not your tech support.
  It sucks that you can't get your hardware working, but your anecdote does not change that Windows 7 supports drivers using the 2000/XP interface.
36. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · 2010-02-01 13:34 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Except it doesn't
  Yes, Windows Vista/7 do support 2000/XP (XPDM) drivers.
  
  whoever modded you up is an idiot.
  It's unfortunate that you can't get your hardware working in Windows 7, but that's no reason to insult anonymous people on the Internet.
37. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 13:34 · Score: 0
  
  They of course don't have to. This is why I only buy nVidia hardware for myself and for the rest of the company I work for. There is no choice between ATI/nVidia. It's nVidia all the way, even with AMD processors.
  Intel and other graphic chips are OK for servers, but desktops, Intel is a little slow compared to embedded nVidia offerings.
  Graphic chip companies don't only produce hardware. They produce solutions. Solutions to enable me to view stuff. If I can't view stuff with one company's solution, then why would I pay for it?
  Finally, "Open Source" is NOT the panacea of ideal hardware support. I have reasonably recent hardware (only 4-6 years old?) that seems to require either older kernel or it can't use the onboard network chip without stalling once in a while. But I guess "it compiles, ship it" strategy doesn't always work...
38. Re:So what does it do? by TheRaven64 · 2010-02-01 13:34 · Score: 1
  
  Last ATi card I had was a Radeion 8500. The Windows drivers came in two flavours, the Microsoft Certified ones that didn't support a recent version of DirectX, and couldn't actually run anything that used the GPU in a nontrivial way, or the ones from ATi which ran software reasonably well until you hit a bug in the driver and the kernel crashed. Sometimes the Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live drivers would crash the machine before the ATi ones had a chance to (same situation there; you could use the MS Certified one that didn't support surround sound or accelerated DirectSound 3D, or the ones that did but crashed the kernel periodically).
  I dual booted the machine with FreeBSD, and both of these pieces of hardware came with open source drivers. Suddenly I could use it for weeks without it crashing. In my experience, ATi, Creative Labs, and nVidia are to blame for most crashes on any NT series operating systems (NT4 had a fun bug where a timer would overflow after 47 days and cause the system to crash, but if you had drivers from one of these manufacturers there was no chance of getting anything like 47 days of uptime).
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
39. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 13:59 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  O RLY?
  Explain why my non-Aero i855 laptop doesn't work, or why a 915 won't either.
  I submit that you're full of shit.
  This is the difference between a programmer and a user. A programmer runs into a problem and says "eh, must be a quirk with my hardware." A user goes "OMG! Windows is teh broke! M$/Vista sux!!one"
  Please do everyone a favor and remove yourself from this site.
  P.S.: Since you can't be bothered to research your own claim, here is a relevant quote from Microsoft (unfortunately it applies to Vista, but 7 didn't change in this regard IIRC):
  MSDN - Graphics APIs in Windows
  
  While new systems shipping with Windows Vista will include video cards with WDDM drivers, and new drivers for a number of popular video cards are included in the box, Windows Vista continues to support the ability to use older XPDM drivers for upgrades and corporate editions. On systems using the old driver model, Direct3D 9 and older interfaces must be used, and the operation of the graphics system is very similar to that of Windows XP (Figure 1). WDDM is required for applications to use Direct3D 9Ex, Direct3D 10, and later versions.
40. Re:So what does it do? by Randle_Revar · 2010-02-01 14:08 · Score: 1
  
  >So if it doesn't offer 2D acceleration or 3D support... what does it do?
  unaccelerated 2d
  It is just like any other code push to upstream. You get a feature working on your local branch, you push it up. Then go on to the next feature. And this is not a standalone driver, it is just new code for the driver that currently handles r600 and r700.
  
  --
  Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
41. Re:So what does it do? by kregg · 2010-02-01 14:23 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, I would be happy if the proprietary driver could play video without flickering.
42. Re:So what does it do? by fdawg · 2010-02-01 14:29 · Score: 1
  
  Have you tried watching accelerated 1080p video on a relatively new nVidia card? You'll soon find the hardware AVC decoder (Xvmc does not equal decoder) available in Windows is not available in Linux. GL works grand, but watching videos at any high resolution (native, not some upscaled Xvid or the like) is totally CPU bound in Linux while HW accelerated in windows.
  It seems only the newest cards support HW video decoding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU
43. Re:So what does it do? by schobes · 2010-02-01 14:36 · Score: 1
  
  The flaw is neither company will release their specs to the open source community, but they will release it to anyone who pays. All they have to do is tell us how the damn parts work and we'll write the driver. Instead they hide behind the need to protect their company from the competitor. What do you think ATI and NVidia do all day. Not reverse engineer each others cards? Right.
  
  --
  CodeRiot! Something new for programming!
44. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · 2010-02-01 15:03 · Score: 1
  
  The flaw is neither company will release their specs to the open source community, but they will release it to anyone who pays
  Microsoft doesn't pay ATI or NVIDIA for hardware specifications; the vendors write their own drivers. And then vendors pay Microsoft to have their drivers tested.
  
  All they have to do is tell us how the damn parts work and we'll write the driver.
  Will you personally take the time to write a driver?
  The vendors probably make more money from working closed-source drivers than they would from assisting third party volunteers create open-source drivers. No one is going to buy a brand new expensive GPU for use in Linux if they have to wait for the community to create a stable driver for it (and potentially wait for their distributor to upgrade packages that include the new driver...)
45. Re:So what does it do? by drinkypoo · 2010-02-01 15:13 · Score: 1, Troll
  
  For varying definitions of "working". As an ATI user I must say, the propietary driver is the single worst piece of software I've ever had the displeasure to run on my Linux system, and the only thing besides faulty RAM and a dying HDD to ever cause Linux (yes, the kernel, not just X) lock up on me.
  ATI drivers have been causing me crashes in various operating systems since they brought out the Mach32. Their subflavors of the Mach64 caused me crashes in Windows NT 3.51, and Solaris x86 2.5.1. The catalyst drivers were amazingly foul and had a footprint I would never have believed had I not installed many, many drivers trying to get their driver to stop cratering Windows XP. ATI has never been able to develop a worthy driver, and their donation of OSS drivers is worse than useless, as they can use it as an excuse not to release the full specifications necessary to develop full functionality without their "help".
  I'd prefer to have a fully Open+Free Linux system, but until someone makes that feasible, I'll be sticking with nVidia.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
46. Re:So what does it do? by totally+bogus+dude · 2010-02-01 15:20 · Score: 1
  
  The text you quoted says "Windows Vista continues to support the ability to use older XPDM drivers for upgrades and corporate editions" (emphasis mine). So if you bought a retail (non-upgrade) copy of Vista or 7 and did a clean install, you wouldn't be able to use the XP drivers?
47. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · 2010-02-01 15:26 · Score: 1
  
  So if you bought a retail (non-upgrade) copy of Vista or 7 and did a clean install, you wouldn't be able to use the XP drivers?
  No, the implication is that new versions will be used with GPUs having WDDM drivers. XPDM drivers work with any version.
48. Re:So what does it do? by ShieldW0lf · 2010-02-01 15:33 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I'd say the relevant section is here:
  
  ... and this code has finally cleared AMD's legal review.
  
  If they released open drivers the same as they release closed source drivers, they would get their asses sued to oblivion. Everything else flows from that.
  
  --
  -1 Uncomfortable Truth
49. Re:So what does it do? by jedidiah · 2010-02-01 15:35 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  A relatively new nvidia card is going to have support for full video decode acceleration in Linux.
  It's the ANCIENT cards that aren't going to have that capability. Although the xvmc on the older
  cards is actually quite helpful while not being a "complete" acceleration solution. Really, the
  only thing xvmc can't help with is high bitrate 1080p h264 or VC1.
  This is why the really ancient nvidia cards are even better than newer ATI cards on Linux.
  Decent hardware + good driver trumps whatever + really crappy driver.
  
  --
  A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
50. Re:So what does it do? by ascendant · 2010-02-01 15:41 · Score: 1
  
  Except that the situation with nVidia = good and ATi = bad has existed for more than 1.5 years in the past, and will likely continue.
  The funny thing is that your analogy is irrelevant anyway because generally you replace video cards between 1 and 2 years anyway. You can pick nvidia now and have good drivers, and in 1.5 years if ATi has good drivers you can switch then. Candy now and forever.
  Unless you don't use them for gaming, in which case both brands and driver variants (ATi, nVidia, binary and OSS) all work fine and it doesn't matter which one you pick.
  
  --
  Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence.
51. Re:So what does it do? by schobes · 2010-02-01 15:59 · Score: 1
  
  You think ATI and NVIDIA write the code for DirectX. Even if they do they are source sharing with Microsoft. Send some the other way. I may not write the drivers, but I guarantee the ones that have been reversed engineered by the FOSS guys will work a hell of a lot better. FYI your link doesn't say that NVIDIA or ATI give Microsoft money, but it wouldn't surprise me, everyone does in some way.
  
  --
  CodeRiot! Something new for programming!
52. Re:So what does it do? by bdwlangm · 2010-02-01 16:00 · Score: 1
  
  [T]he nVidia binary-only driver will only get worse (binary bit rot has a half-life of say 1.5 years), while the ATI OSS driver will only get better with time and is not locked to yesterday's Linux kernel or X11.
  And yet my old laptop with an ATI Xpress still can't handle compiz with the open source drivers. I'd love to support the FOSS solution, but it is not adequate for my needs. In other news, the Windows 7 ATI driver has worked flawlessly for me
53. Re:So what does it do? by Schraegstrichpunkt · 2010-02-01 16:14 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I'll run closed code, but it's bloody well not going to be something as crucial as my video drivers. I've done it before, and I'll never do it again on my main computer.
  How many years did it take for nVidia to add DRI support to their driver? Xinerama support? Not-corrupting-the-virtual-console-when-running-more-than-one-instance-of-X support? Do they support XRandR 1.3 yet? (That last question isn't rhetorical---I've stopped following the status of nVidia's proprietary drivers.)
  The last time I used them, the nVidia drivers exhibited a severe case of Not-Invented-Here syndrome, and they weren't particularly stable.
  I really don't know where all these people come from who say "nVidia's drivers just work". I suspect it's just a lack of experience with *actual* stable drivers. The best X driver experience I've had is with free drivers for hardware that's a few generations old. Super stable and everything *really* just works.
  
  --
  http://outcampaign.org/
54. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 16:14 · Score: 0
  
  i.e. with time the nVidia binary-only driver will only get worse (binary bit rot has a half-life of say 1.5 years), while the ATI OSS driver will only get better with time and is not locked to yesterday's Linux kernel or X11.
  It is a choice of candy today, or no candy today but candy for the next month.
  I've been hearing this since 2000. I even was stupid enough to BELIEVE this back then and spend money on ATI card. Never again. I now have used nVidia only and never had a problem. I actually have 2 displays driven by 2 nVidia chipsets (onboard and discrete graphic card) and they both work perfectly.
  But I guess it is whatever you chose to believe.
55. Re:So what does it do? by Schraegstrichpunkt · 2010-02-01 16:18 · Score: 1
  
  The funny thing is that your analogy is irrelevant anyway because generally you replace video cards between 1 and 2 years anyway.
  I tend to repurpose old hardware, so anything that's not on the motherboard tends to float around for ~ 3-5 years. Free drivers are important on that timescale.
  
  --
  http://outcampaign.org/
56. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · 2010-02-01 16:20 · Score: 1
  You think ATI and NVIDIA write the code for DirectX.
  Of course they do.
  
  Even if they do they are source sharing with Microsoft.
  Do you have evidence for this?
  
  I may not write the drivers, but I guarantee the ones that have been reversed engineered by the FOSS guys will work a hell of a lot better
  Why would community written drivers be any better? How are you so confident? Do you personally write drivers for other companies' hardware?
  More importantly, when would they be better? Drivers written by the vendor will typically:
  be released at the same time as the hardware
  be tested before release on many hardware combinations
  share code with the vendor's drivers for other platforms
  be written by an organization with a financial interest in further hardware sales
  be written by those who can communicate with hardware engineers and teams working on drivers for other platforms
  It is entirely possible that a FOSS team might create a better driver than the vendor, and this does occur. But given the resource advantages, a vendor can create a better driver in less man-hours given competent people.
57. Re:So what does it do? by nxtw · 2010-02-01 16:21 · Score: 1
  
  You think ATI and NVIDIA write the code for DirectX.
  Clarification: ATI and NVIDIA (and other graphics driver authors) write the code to implement Direct3D rendering on their hardware.
58. Re:So what does it do? by smidget2k4 · 2010-02-01 17:07 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed. This is why I also only buy nVidia. Plus, as a programmer who does scientific computing, I'm far more interested in CUDA or whatever ATI's CUDA-like offering is called than in gaming.
  
  If ATI isn't going to have drivers for me to use that capability comfortably in Linux, screw them. There is another company with a similar offering who does support the OS I do my development in.
  
  I understand that I represent a small market, but nVidia seems to still recognize that market, where ATI just barely pays lip service. So I know who my money is going to.
59. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 17:35 · Score: 0
  
  but I guarantee the ones that have been reversed engineered by the FOSS guys will work a hell of a lot better.
  
  Unfortunately your guarantee means all of dick in real life as the FOSS drivers suck dick compared to nVidia's closed-source drivers. Hell even ATI's shitastic proprietary drivers kick the FOSS driver's ass.
60. Re:So what does it do? by Lunix+Nutcase · 2010-02-01 17:39 · Score: 1
  
  You mean other than nv driver they released like 10 years ago?
61. Re:So what does it do? by walshy007 · 2010-02-01 20:04 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I currently have a 9500gt in an old p4 system here running linux, and I do have 1080p video acceleration. It's called VDPAU (video decode and presentation api for unix) works a charm.
62. Re:So what does it do? by Kjella · 2010-02-01 20:06 · Score: 1
  
  I really don't know where all these people come from who say "nVidia's drivers just work".
  I guess people like me - that use distros with driver versions we know work, if nVidia doesn't support the latest kernel I don't upgrade. There are things I haven't been able to get working, but I've never had a crash I could trace back to the closed source drivers. Unlike Catalyst, which I had one really, really bad experience with from back before AMD bought ATI. To put it this way, if nVidia's support was bronze then ATI finished last with a broken leg. Open source is stable yes, but Intel always sucked horrible on 3D and up until now there was no accelerated driver for ATI or nVidia either.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
63. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 20:59 · Score: 0
  
  Well yeah. When they don't provide a working solution (open or closed) there's lots of room to bitch. You can't expect much more at that point. Really, you can't.
  Stable high quality drivers aren't an optional part of a graphics solution. I don't care if they do it with closed drivers, open drivers, or both. They at least need one.
64. Re:So what does it do? by Curtman · 2010-02-01 21:13 · Score: 1
  
  I agree. I'm sticking with my HD3200 and free drivers for the forseeable future. The video playback is beautiful compared to what it looked like with nvidia. The proprietary driver didn't seem to work at all for me, but I had two free drivers to choose from, "radeon", and "radeonhd". Both work great, and I don't even need an xorg.conf unless I want to choose radeonhd over the radeon driver.
65. Re:So what does it do? by HonIsCool · 2010-02-01 22:19 · Score: 1
  
  nVidia doesn't have DRI support. Why? Because DRI is totally broken and they were forced to come up with their own framework instead. Check http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/nitty-gritty-shit-on-open-source.html
  
  --
  "Give me six lines of C++ code written by the most competent programmer, and I will find enough in there to hang him."
66. Re:So what does it do? by Johnno74 · 2010-02-01 22:26 · Score: 1
  
  Except it doesn't, and whoever modded you up is an idiot.
  Don't be a dick. Windows 7 does support XP/2000 drivers, I've used them myself.
  Don't assume it doesn't just because you can't fix it yourself and you can't google for help from someone who can.
  I installed win 7 on my wife's old compaq NX5000 laptop. Video didn't work out of the box. Its got an 855 GMA graphics chipset. There are no WDDM drivers for this POS.
  Yes, lots of people have trouble getting these to work in 7 or vista, but some claim to have got it working, and that should have twigged you in that it IS possible.
  Go to this page: http://www.groundstate.net/855GMWin7.html and download the drivers linked there, and follow the instructions.
  This worked for me, the laptop will sleep and resume perfectly, the panel runs at its native 1650x1050 and I can even watch HD video. No it doesn't support Aero, and my windows experience index is a solid 1.0
67. Re:So what does it do? by BKX · 2010-02-01 23:10 · Score: 1
  
  64-bit? 32-bit drivers won't work with 64-bit Windows and vice versa.
68. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 23:10 · Score: 0
  
  Well, I just did a glxinfo. My free Intel driver supports all those feature he claims only Nvidia supports (okay, not that surprising considering the claims are from mid-2008, nevertheless a more recent rant would be needed to correctly reflect the state of free 3D drivers).
  Philipp
69. Re:So what does it do? by L4t3r4lu5 · 2010-02-01 23:19 · Score: 1
  
  Bottom line: nVidia closed source drivers are better than AMD closed source drivers, and AMD open source drivers are feature-incomplete.
  
  That about right? Or am I "playing right into nVidia's hands" like the GP? If so, nVidia's hands is where I want to be, because their drivers work.
  
  --
  Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
70. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 23:19 · Score: 0
  
  At least ATi's drivers are open source, so they will actually work in newer kernel versions and not cause untraceable crashes. No proprietary crap in my kernel, thank you very much.
71. Re:So what does it do? by ThePhilips · 2010-02-01 23:33 · Score: 1
  
  It's not a "great leap" - nor anybody involved claims that it is.
  But this is nevertheless important statement from AMD/ATI that they are still on the OSS track. What is IMO rather important and significant.
  P.S. Plus it is extremely important to folks who run systems which are not supported by nVidia. Unless you run x86 or x64, nVidia wouldn't even acknowledge your existence.
  
  --
  All hope abandon ye who enter here.
72. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-02 00:04 · Score: 0
  
  No it simply isnt. Ive been using 4 different aticards during the past 3 years (3 desktops and one laptop) and everything you need just works (dual screens, video, etc). 1- 1.5 years ago your statement would have been quite true (their driver was tricky to install, but quite stable). But lately i don't have to bother at all, kubuntu handles all my updates of the driver (even when i upgrade my kernel, this used to be a huge pain) and I've had no issues what so ever with my latest setup, the only 2 things I've done is enabled their proprietary driver and select my primary screen via their config tool.
  So please tell me if a driver just works, why is it crap?
73. Re:So what does it do? by TheRaven64 · 2010-02-02 00:26 · Score: 1
  
  Calling the nv driver open source is stretching the definition. It's completely full of magic constants with no documentation. It looks like someone took a binary-only driver, ran it through a decompiler, and then released the source. If that's the kind of quality of code that is in the blob driver then it's no wonder it crashes so often...
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
74. Re:So what does it do? by GameboyRMH · 2010-02-02 01:14 · Score: 1
  
  As a programmer who does scientific computing (and apparently cares about software/platform freedom), you should be coding for OpenCL rather than proprietary CUDA.
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
75. Re:So what does it do? by cbope · 2010-02-02 01:27 · Score: 1
  
  If you are referring to ATI's proprietary driver, then I'll have to agree with you. I've never been fond of ATI's own proprietary drivers for Windows or *nix, though they have improved greatly over the years. I especially hate the fact that ATI feels it necessary to advertise their own products, inside their drivers. And I'm not talking about "advertising" for the hardware you already have. Add-on TV tuners, latest Radeon cards, etc., have all been advertised within their drivers. No thanks ATI.
  Honestly, I still prefer NVIDIA's drivers for their stability and reliability. I have worked extensively with NVIDIA hardware over the past few years in a professional field, utilizing GP-GPU and CUDA. They may not currently have the fastest hardware at the moment, but it works well. And their drivers are solid. I'm not saying NVIDIA's drivers are perfect, they are not, but they generally work well and I have had few issues over the years. I still believe ATI's drivers are a weak point for their hardware, which is currently very good. The UI for the CCC is also poorly designed and looks amateur-ish, imho.
  Today, I'd much rather have a solid, closed-source binary driver that "just works", than a much less functional OSS one for ideological reasons. Let's see what happens over the next few years.... it could be interesting.
76. Re:So what does it do? by Ant+P. · 2010-02-02 01:30 · Score: 1
  
  So now that DRI has been good enough for a year at least, why does nVidia still have its head up its NIH ass?
77. Re:So what does it do? by HonIsCool · 2010-02-02 01:47 · Score: 1
  
  Still? Did you not understand? They were forced to invent their own because it was impossible to implement the features they required, with DRI. This is not the same as a "Not invented here" attitude.
  As for why they don't use DRI now, well, isn't it DRI2 that's the future these day? Anyway, as I have no association with nvidia I can but venture a guess that their design works well enough for them. As my ancient Geforce 6600GT was a hell of a lot faster in Linux than my last year's new ATI 4830, I kind of see the point :)
  
  --
  "Give me six lines of C++ code written by the most competent programmer, and I will find enough in there to hang him."
78. Re:So what does it do? by Yaa+101 · 2010-02-02 02:12 · Score: 1
  
  It's called critique, and it's supposed to make people who are on the receiving end of that think better.
79. Re:So what does it do? by Lisandro · 2010-02-02 02:58 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, I would be happy if the proprietary driver could play video without flickering.
  Amen to that. The on-chipset Intel adapter on my netbook (using open source drivers) plays video with far more grace than a last generation ATI card using their propietary drivers.
80. Re:So what does it do? by socsoc · 2010-02-02 03:28 · Score: 1
  
  A 4 year old laptop wouldn't make a very good media center. So who are we blaming the problem of your old Dell laptop with Intel video not having proper support in Windows 7? I need to point my finger somewhere.
81. Re:So what does it do? by ifrag · 2010-02-02 05:10 · Score: 1
  
  And then vendors pay Microsoft [wikipedia.org] to have their drivers tested.
  Which unfortunately is a complete waste of money for the vendor because WHQL testing is absolutely completely demonstrably worthless. Whatever they do test (if anything) seems to have missed several key features related to stability. I've seen way more BSOD's using "WHQL" tested drivers than NVidia's BETA drivers. Sometimes after installing the BETA driver I never see another BSOD until the next WHQL release. As things are going now, I wait for the BETA driver because for whatever screwed up reason that is the one that's stable. The WHQL drivers have been absolute garbage as far as my experience goes, and as far as I'm concerned is a warning to avoid the driver at all costs when it comes to NVidia. YMMV, I'm using these on an 8800 with XP and a couple 280's with Vista.
  
  --
  Fear is the mind killer.
82. Re:So what does it do? by BatGnat · 2010-02-02 08:13 · Score: 1
  
  a) you have a wrong version of Windows 7?
  
  OR
  
  b) You buy the wrong hardware?
  
  My 4 year old Dell laptop (Inspiron 6400), my black laser, and my colour laser are all detected perfectly on windows 7, no drivers needed.
83. Re:So what does it do? by BatGnat · 2010-02-02 08:16 · Score: 1
  
  4 years ago, core duo was released, great media centre.
84. Re:So what does it do? by BitZtream · 2010-02-02 08:17 · Score: 1
  
  had the displeasure to run on my Linux system
  The windows drivers are shit too.
  I supported ATI for a good while, but the quality of their drivers is so horrible that I refuse to have anything to do with them anymore. I'd rather use a crappy intel integrated chip with stable drivers than the crap ATI pedals.
  At least the OSS driver may be more stable since others can contribute fixes.
  I'd bet the OSS driver is more useful to ATI for bug fixes than anything else, and wouldn't be entirely surprised if it became the base for their internal closed drivers as well.
  
  --
  Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
85. Re:So what does it do? by Darkness404 · 2010-02-02 09:48 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah because we all know how often the average person goes through their kernel.... Yeah, Open source is nice, but how many people are -really- going to go through the kernel to find -driver- problems? The average user isn't. Yeah, I might debug a python script that fails, but drivers? Unless you are one of the few core Linux developers or working for a company, you aren't gonna use it.
  
  --
  Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
86. Re:So what does it do? by drizek · 2010-02-02 09:50 · Score: 1
  
  Well I have the Inspiron 6000. One generation chipset behind yours, and Intel stopped supporting it.
  The system itself is more than capable of playing back HD video and working as a media center, but it is essentially a file server now because all the actually useful hardware is useless.
87. Re:So what does it do? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-02 22:26 · Score: 0
  
  Except it doesn't
  Yes, Windows Vista/7 do support *SOME* 2000/XP (XPDM) drivers. Good luck.
  There. Fixed that for you.
88. Re:So what does it do? by Schraegstrichpunkt · 2010-02-05 21:53 · Score: 1
  
  Still? Did you not understand? They were forced to invent their own because it was impossible to implement the features they required, with DRI.
  No, they had the source code to the entire X server, kernel, and anything else they might have needed to improve. They chose not to.
  If every video card manufacturer behaved like nVidia, X would never improve and the implementations would be completely balkanized.
  
  --
  http://outcampaign.org/
89. Re:So what does it do? by HonIsCool · 2010-02-05 22:59 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not sure what you are complaining about exactly? DRI is an architecture, and one that couldn't support the features nVidia wanted. So they invented their own and hooked that into X. Is your complaint that they didn't make this achitecture open to all?
  
  --
  "Give me six lines of C++ code written by the most competent programmer, and I will find enough in there to hang him."
90. Re:So what does it do? by Schraegstrichpunkt · 2010-02-06 07:09 · Score: 1
  
  This is what I'm complaining about, exactly:
  
  If every video card manufacturer behaved like nVidia, X would never improve and the implementations would be completely balkanized.
  
  --
  http://outcampaign.org/
Slashdot: where people don't even read the summary by electrosoccertux · 2010-02-01 11:45 · Score: 3, Informative

FTFS:

The DDX driver supports mode-setting on the Evergreen/R800 series GPUs with VGA and DVI connectors
Nightmare by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 11:46 · Score: 4, Interesting

There is some amount of ridiculousness here - perhaps I don't understand something but explain to me if you will, how this works - Every time a new GPU is released, a shit load of new driver code is required to just get it working. And then there a a truck load more of code required to get 2D acceleration working. And then the same for 3D. How come the GPU vendors do not have a freaking portion of their hardware always work the same way, with same driver code - it just does mode setting and sets up the GPU for decent level of 2D acceleration. The you write a per GPU, dynamically loadable module that will deal with that particular family of GPU. I mean there is not a whole lot you can do with modesetting and 2D - no one cares of 2D accel anymore - it should just work the same way with same driver code for all series of GPUs for a particular vendor. NVidia has to drop support for older chips, fork the driver and have it only support newer chips because of bloat that it becomes having to support different families of GPUs each requiring lots of code.
1. Re:Nightmare by schobes · 2010-02-01 14:51 · Score: 1
  
  Its because the nature of the beast. The cards can do whatever they need to basically fill a Width * Height * 32 (color scheme) chunk of memory with numbers. That is the part that never changes. Now how to tell the card to complete this is ever changing. First all you could do was tell the cards to draw lines and fill pixels (pixel shaders). Now you can tell them to do this on 100+ shaders at once. Also you have more and more 3D math occurring on the cards instead of on the processor. This may not seem like a lot, but people on slashdot are still debating 4 line chunks of code from the Quake http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/01/184205 engine. As much as anyone may want to assume about graphics programming, it is still be invented and ever more creative ways of solving problems are being discovered.
  
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2. Re:Nightmare by MostAwesomeDude · 2010-02-01 15:32 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Actually, we're fortunate to be able to reuse most of our code on lots of GPUs -- there are some bits that apply from r100 to r700. The "fun" is in the sheer complexity of the hardware, the inability of the hardware to cope with incorrect programming, and the lack of documentation, manpower, and testing available to assist us.
  Oh, and hardware bugs. You don't wanna know how many there are. Really. Try getting an RS480, or RC410, to do 3D. It ain't fun.
  
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  ~ C.
3. Re:Nightmare by Kjella · 2010-02-01 20:21 · Score: 1
  
  How come the GPU vendors do not have a freaking portion of their hardware always work the same way, with same driver code - it just does mode setting and sets up the GPU for decent level of 2D acceleration.
  Because it doesn't have a 2D engine anymore, it's all treated like a special case of 3D where z is always 0. That is just one example, there's a lot of rewiring going on inside the pipeline. Try for example reading this page on how nVidia is changing their fixed function pipeline and see if you manage not to get a headache. The drivers have to work the new way even just to achieve the old ways, it's not like CPUs where you slightly extend the x86 interface.
  
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4. Re:Nightmare by RAMMS+EIN · 2010-02-01 21:10 · Score: 1
  
  You wrote you need more manpower and testing. How hard is it for, say, someone proficient in C to get into video driver development? Do you have any pointers to materials that would help one get started?
  
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5. Re:Nightmare by squizzar · 2010-02-01 22:19 · Score: 1
  
  "no one cares of 2D accel anymore" - yes they do. Try running your desktop (whatever OS) with the 'standard' drivers. Yes that's right, there is a default way of running most graphics cards, probably VESA or something. How else do you think you can install your OS without the correct drivers from the get-go. Likewise, the bios screens etc. all operate through a standard interface (VGA adapter?).
  2D Acceleration is probably more important that 3D, it just doesn't get noticed as much. Try dragging/resizing windows without 2D acceleration. Try running a command line program in windows that has a lot of rapidly scrolling text. The un-accelerated drivers are so much slower that the text will scroll slower whilst waiting to be drawn.
  2D acceleration is vitally important. And the more people want to watch videos with overlays, resizing, deinterlacing etc. the more 2D is important.
6. Re:Nightmare by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 23:41 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, well, sometimes it seems to me that one important reason for holding software closed is that the companies don't want people to see how crappy their work really is. Kudos to AMD for having the courage.
7. Re:Nightmare by TheRaven64 · 2010-02-02 00:39 · Score: 1
  
  That's not 2D acceleration. The big win in desktop performance is from accelerating compositing. Every app draws to a private display buffer and these are then composited by the GPU. This is basically performing something like a scaled multiply operation, but on every single pixel. It's very slow on the CPU, but the GPU can typically do something like 128 pixels simultaneously, while the CPU can do 4 if you're lucky. If your windowing system doesn't do compositing then every window has to redraw when it's exposed by the window on top resizing, which is very expensive.
  The other place that compositing is used very heavily is in drawing text. In the old days, fonts were bitmaps and drawing them was relatively cheap (just copy the bitmaps into the frame buffer). Now, fonts are stored as bezier curves and people expect them to be antialiased. The antialiasing means that they need to be blended with the background, rather than just copied. The bezier curves mean that you typically want to cache the glyphs because drawing them is expensive. For good performance, you want to store them in texture memory and then composite them on the GPU.
  These operations both use the 3D pipeline, even on older fixed-function cards, and are not available on 2D-ony cards. 2D acceleration refers to things like drawing lines and curves, and generally the CPU is fast enough to do this without any help.
  
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8. Re:Nightmare by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-02 06:33 · Score: 0
  
  VESA is not acceptable in this day - it completely lacks proper mode setting and 2D acceleration support. When I said no one cares for 2D - what I really meant was that 2D is a done deal - no one actually tries to improve 2D accel in hardware and so the 2D engine should be same across all recent GPU families for particular vendor. However it turns out they do 2D accel using 3D infrastructure in the hardware. Oh well. None the less we should have a new VESA = VESA+modeset+2D Accel, that works will all GPUs.
Previous series of cards has good acceleration... by chammy · 2010-02-01 11:54 · Score: 1

The 4800 series of cards have excellent acceleration support with the radeon driver these days (the latest source releases). It's not quite fast enough to play Nexuiz at high settings but compositing runs great and the desktop is stable! I honestly can't remember a time when the proprietary driver wasn't locking up or corrupting the screen, so this makes me pretty happy as an AMD owner.

Hopefully it's only a matter of time until the 5000 series is supported -- the proprietary driver just isn't an option if it's going to be crashy and have poor image quality.
Re:Previous series of cards has good acceleration. by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 12:01 · Score: 1, Interesting

Dynamic power management still sucks for laptop users though. I have a laptop with a HD3650 GPU and it runs terribly hot with the default Fedora 12 and Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha drivers. If I use the "ForceLowPowerMode" it runs cooler, but the radeon driver will corrupt the cursor and radeonhd will slow down. With the Windows 7 driver it never runs hot.
Oh goodie, more Phoronix. by MostAwesomeDude · 2010-02-01 12:05 · Score: 2, Informative

Some reading between the lines is needed.
Any r600 acceleration code *should* work with only minor tweaks on Evergreen (r800). The biggest changes are supposedly in GPGPU-land; r800 supports a lot more shader instructions than r700 or r600.
I don't have one of these yet, but I'm sure Cooper and Richard, the AMD 3D devs, are furiously coding away to make stuff run.

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~ C.
1. Re:Oh goodie, more Phoronix. by MrHanky · 2010-02-01 12:20 · Score: 1
  
  It worked after a git pull and make for me, no tweaks necessary.
Uhm... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 12:07 · Score: 0

This was written by AMD's Alex who??
Legal Review? by markdavis · 2010-02-01 12:24 · Score: 3, Funny

>and this code has finally cleared AMD's legal review.
Has nothing in it that we feel might be secret or licensed....
Doesn't do 3D CHECK
Doesn't do 2D CHECK
Passes our legal review- let people enjoy it now!!!!
1. Re:Legal Review? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 12:40 · Score: 0
  
  Doesn't do XYZ? _Will_ do. And will keep doing it's job in a stable, secure manner long after nvidia has moved on and left your unprofitable "legacy" card behind with unfixed and unfixable security problems AND without any support for newer features that cannot be implemented without partial driver rewrites.
  And before you try, no, reverse engineered hacked up drivers are no substitute for real drivers written from specs.
As long as it's "opensource" by paxcoder · 2010-02-01 12:29 · Score: 1

'The driver doesn't offer 2D or 3D acceleration' -- o.O
0D by sammcj · 2010-02-01 12:38 · Score: 0, Troll

Yay, no 2D or 3D support! I wonder, in what dimension does this driver work?
Re:Name Says It All by Daffy+Duck · 2010-02-01 12:38 · Score: 5, Informative

Wow, attack the guy's name. Nice. Maybe he should go by "Anonymous Coward" like all the cool kids.
In fact, Alex has been developing open source drivers for ATI cards for years on his own dime, and AMD only relatively recently hired him to do the same thing for money. Would a little gratitude to either of them kill you?
Alex, the only reason I could see anything from my Radeon card for the last six years was because of your work. Thank you!
Re:Slashdot: where people don't even read the summ by TJamieson · 2010-02-01 12:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

Also important: it supports userland mode-setting, *not* kernel-based mode-setting yet.

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Intel by johnny+maxwell · 2010-02-01 12:57 · Score: 1

Thats why I stay with Intel graphics, they may not be the fastest graphics card in the world
but their Linux drivers never made any problems. Be it mode switching or dual-head, everything *just works*.
And that by using existing Xorg standards (XRandR, etc.), e.g. no nightmare "nvidia-settings" program as in the case for "the other" manufacturer.
And yes, for most models the drivers are open source, IIRC.
1. Re:Intel by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 17:54 · Score: 0
  
  The nvidia-settings program is the *only* program I have ever used on Linux that has allowed me to change all of the display properties in the GUI and have it actually work properly without ever having to touch the blasted xorg.conf file. This includes resolutions (all of them, not just 1024x768, 800x600, and 640x480), color depth, multi-monitor, individual display settings, etc etc. Multi-head, especially, is a bear to configure without nvidia-settings. And how many times have I gone into the default display config app in GNOME only to find that 1920x1200 is not in the list of options and I have to manually add a fucking mode line to my xorg.conf??? It is so nice to have a gui app for changing graphics settings that is almost as good as one of the ones in Windows.. I don't know why the gnome/kde devs have not come up with something as good, but I suspect they don't care about usability (seems pretty typical across the board with Linux) and they want you to experience the pain of fucking with xorg.conf manually until you get it right. Running Linux without nvidia sucks, IMO, but it does not need to be so.
2. Re:Intel by TheRaven64 · 2010-02-02 00:43 · Score: 1
  
  The xrandr command-line tool will let you change the resolution, refresh, rotation and number of screens for any driver that supports these things (e.g. the Intel ones). It uses a standard X extension to tell the X server to make the changes and so any app can do the same thing. I think GNOME and KDE include programs to do so, but I'm not sure.
  
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3. Re:Intel by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-02 12:25 · Score: 0
  
  xrandr sounds most excellent.. I wonder why I have never heard of it all these years using linux. lack of such a program has always been one of my top annoyances with X, and no one ever told me about this before. I was always told to edit xorg.conf, restart X, and pray..
  it's just too bad only one of the three major graphics card vendors actually support it.. kinda limits its effectiveness as a standard..
  time to fire up the eeepc and play with xrandr.... thanks!
Re:Name Says It All by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 13:09 · Score: 0

hey, dick, put up or shut up.
In other words, do better yourself.
Re:Name Says It All by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 13:16 · Score: 3, Funny

i am the troll. thank you so much for feeding me. trolling would be SO DAMNED BORING if no one did that. thanks again, by showing that they will get responded to you have inspired me to troll some more. i might have gotten discouraged without you!
Hurrrrr Durrrrr by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 14:27 · Score: 0

I am not your tech support.
Then quit posting in this thread, you dumbfuck Jew piece of shit bitchass nigger.
Theater 300+ for linux? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 14:27 · Score: 0

It seems nobody wanted to talk about the fact that [Rage] Theater 300 and later families (including Theater 550, 650, 750) have ZERO SUPPORT IN LINUX! Not free driver, not proprietary driver, not even documentation!! It is used on various All-in-wonder cards and standalone PCI[E]/USB tuner cards, and would be a great product ($39 for Theater 650 Pro TV card) for Linux if only THE LOBBYISTS AND DEVELOPERS START PAYING ATTENTION!!!
Very happy with the Open Driver by 7-Vodka · 2010-02-01 16:00 · Score: 3, Informative

I've had a R600 based radeon HD3870 on linux for a while. I used to go with the fglrx proprietary drivers, but I've recently switched to the radeon (ddx) driver.
I have to say I'm extremely happy with the Open driver. Now is it Free Software? I'm not sure, I mean *most* of the driver seems to be, but you still need to load microcode firmware.
As far as the quality of the driver though, it seems very bug free and the kernel mode setting is awesome. Switching from vt-1 to an Xorg session for example is instantaneous. Mesa seems to need some work on the 3d side, but you can play quakelive on it and run the kde version of compiz.
It's really great that ATI has both released documentation and paid developers to work on getting these drivers up and running, they should consider both sponsoring some 3d work on the mesa side and also figuring out a way around the microcode situation.

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1. Re:Very happy with the Open Driver by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-02 00:24 · Score: 0
  
  HELP! Microcode Firmware!!111 the horrorz!
  They could push the firmware byte by byte into the chip and call it "timing setup sequence". You probably wouldn't notice. The driver considers the firmware "data" - nothing it executes, merely bytes to move from disk to chip to get it to operate as expected.
2. Re:Very happy with the Open Driver by bluefoxlucid · 2010-02-02 01:37 · Score: 1
  
  Microcode firmware is control software for the hardware. It's like a BIOS but stored in RAM on the hardware expansion card itself. The other method for this would have been to load the microcode as permanent flash, rather than in the driver, and not bother publishing updated versions or just require you to bios-upgrade your graphics card. Basically, they've moved that data from one place to another; the "way around the microcode situation" is to push it out of sight, literally, just to get people like you to stfu and gtfo.
  
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3. Re:Very happy with the Open Driver by 7-Vodka · 2010-02-04 16:56 · Score: 1
  
  Or the microcode itself could be distributed under the GPL.
  Is there some reason you ignored this ideal solution?
  
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  Liberty.
Re:Name Says It All by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-01 17:36 · Score: 1, Insightful

here here! My name is Anonymous Coward, and I thank you for your work on the drivers Alex! My computer wouldn't work the same without you.
lets hope via follows by Exter-C · 2010-02-01 18:42 · Score: 2, Interesting

Its great to see some hardware companies coming out with open source drivers for their technology. Even if the driver is so far incomplete its at least a good starting point which will hopefully be improved on. I feel that by providing this sort of information AMD may have a repreive which will help it have a fighting chance in the future. Its such a shame that Via have not been doing more with their graphics drivers in Linux. I really wish that openchrome had more support given that so many cheap nettop/netbook style systems have via chipsets (at least in asia).
so, which troll did I offend? by drinkypoo · 2010-02-01 23:13 · Score: 1

While some of my recent negative moderation may have been justified, I've never been down-modded so much, so quickly. Am I really being attacked by Scientologists? Pretty amazing. This post, however, is NOT a troll; I believe all that I have said. I will stand by it until I die.

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1. Re:so, which troll did I offend? by Anonymous Coward · 2010-02-02 01:47 · Score: 0
  
  ...their donation of OSS drivers is worse than useless, as they can use it as an excuse not to release the full specifications necessary to develop full functionality without their "help". I'd prefer to have a fully Open+Free Linux system, but until someone makes that feasible, I'll be sticking with nVidia.
  (typing on a computer with an Radeon HD 3850 and fully working, Free dri2, kms, etc.)
  I think you got modded troll because there is no 'wrong' mod. The specs that they have released have been as complete as you could ever realistically hope for. What? It's missing the HDCP bits? Don't really care. These are already the best video drivers I've ever used in any OS.
  Been reading your posts for at least a decade. Usually pretty good but wrong this time.
2. Re:so, which troll did I offend? by drinkypoo · 2010-02-02 03:51 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I think you got modded troll because there is no 'wrong' mod. The specs that they have released have been as complete as you could ever realistically hope for.
  The specs that they have released have been consistently late. Instead of providing them in advance of the release of the hardware they are continually released well afterwards (if the continual bitching about same from ATI owners is any indication) forcing strict FOSS users to buy last year's card at best if they want the full functionality of their hardware, which still does not work for many older cards (esp. regarding acceleration and TV out) for many users who have otherwise-supported hardware.
  Believe me, I don't want to give nVidia too much credit; their driver doesn't support my shiny new video card, a GTS 240 that I bought for its decent performance and low power consumption. Or maybe it does now, I'm out of town so I haven't been checking. Two beta drivers released after the release driver I'm using (which incorrectly identifies the card) caused spontaneous reboots sometimes, and X to consume all system resources at other times. But the card is working with that release driver, and my system is stable. I've never had this result with any ATI hardware and any ATI driver on any operating system; again, I've suffered with every ATI video chip since the Mach32.
  
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Windows driver by bluefoxlucid · 2010-02-02 01:33 · Score: 1

Now if only they'd release an open-source Windows driver....

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1. Re:Windows driver by BitZtream · 2010-02-02 08:23 · Score: 1
  
  Port it. All the required tools are free, I'm pretty sure the Windows DDK is free as well. I get it from an MSDN subscription so I haven't actually tried to find it without one, but I seem to remember it being there if you look for it.
  You have the source for a Linux driver, shouldn't be that hard to port it for someone who understands the WDDM model, or hell the 2000/XP model since the this driver isn't accelerated anyway.
  
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UVD anyone? by 3choTh1s · 2010-02-02 06:30 · Score: 1

I just want XBMC to hardware decode all that hidef stuff with an ATI card. That means UVD support both at Ati's end and of course the XBMC project end. I'm using an Nvidia 9400gt right now in my media center and it works fine and all, I just want to have more choices. Is that too much to ask?
Re:Previous series of cards has good acceleration. by BatGnat · 2010-02-02 08:25 · Score: 1

Which is a driver issue, not the card? releasing driver openly might help get some of that stuff sorted for Linux based systems
Re:Name Says It All by fritsd · 2010-02-02 08:42 · Score: 1

Seconded, looking at the Mesa repository it seems as if people are working very hard to get those new drivers working.
By the way, is there any plan for a radeon r600 gallium driver or is that after r300g is done?

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