The Challenge In Delivering Open Source GPU Drivers

yuhong writes "After the recent Intel Sandy Bridge launch left Linux users having to build the latest source from Git repositories in order to have full support for the integrated graphics, Phoronix looked at the problems involved in delivering new graphics drivers for Linux."

Comments

Intel and Open Source

[Technician]

I would have expected Intel to have released drivers. They are involved heavily in Open Source. They have the Open Source Technology Center. Has anyone asked Intel about it?

http://www3.intel.com/cd/corporate/icsc/apac/eng/teams/331393.htm

Re:Intel and Open Source

[stoborrobots]

Wait, am I getting this right? Intel wrote an _open source_ driver working with the latest and greatest in Linux GPU-support-land, it was availible on release day, and people are WHINING about this?!

You're getting it 90% right - the whining hasn't started yet, but these guys are explaining why it's about to start...

• It's not a single driver - Intel contributed patches to all the relevant projects for support for the new features; but they've only been included into the repositories so far, and are expected to be included in the upcoming releases over the next few weeks, and some features are not yet complete, or not even planned to be supported...
• The components involved which would need recompiling on to work include the kernel, the lowest-level support libraries like libdrm and libmesa, and X - the holy trinity of "if this fucks up I can't use my computer"...
• Since the patches haven't been backported, they likely won't make it into packages which can be installed on currently-available release, or even next-releases of the big distros, where the freeze window starts some 6 months ahead of release...
• From the article:

  Over the years the expectations of Linux users have gone from simply wanting Linux drivers for their hardware to wanting open-source Linux drivers (read: no binary blobs) to now wanting open-source drivers in the distribution of their choice at the time the hardware first ships...

So, yeah - there's code out there which should be usable to make the open-source drivers go, but most of the reviewers on the net won't be able to make the bits go, some of the bits won't be ready for a while, and in general, anyone who tries to make them go in order to review this will have something or other to complain about...

But you're spot on with this statement, which echos some of the sentiments from the article:

I guess Linux on the desktop has come a long way when people start bitching about new hardware not being supported out of the box in Ubuntu.

Re:It's not easy

[hitmark]

How many gaping issues are left unresolved because microsoft is maintaining a stable ABI?

Seems worse in the mobile space.

[ChunderDownunder]

This thread discusses the availability of FOSS drivers for those snazzy ARM Cortex chips found commonly in touch-screen devices.
Even if you can 'root' your Android phone, getting a 3D accelerated x.org experience is unlikely. Even Nokia's forthcoming Meego device will be a binary blob affair, I suspect.

Re:It's not easy

[Ash-Fox]

That would be zero.

Err... Aren't you conveniently forgetting that just last year we had the issue of Microsoft's unpatched DLL load hijacking issue that could not resolved without changing stable APIs and recompiling software?