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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."
It's not so much about the eating of and having of cake. It's more about demanding that Intel ship you cake in time for there to be cake there when you are hungry (that you can both eat and have).
It's a bitchy whiney ridiculous complaint - and yet it is a good thing as it puts pressure on Intel and AMD to treat Linux support as something necessary for a launch. Hopefully it won't result in Intel pointing out that there is no cake...
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They did release drivers for the latest kernel, and they work great. However, you do need bleeding edge versions of the entire graphics stack to use them. This is a problem when combined with non-free ATI and Nvidia which always lags behind with no way for maintainers to get them up to speed.
In other words, a distro can include "old" kernels/drivers/X-servers with non-free ATI/Nvidia support XOR newer and less tested ones with the latest Intel support.
Either way, it's a reduced user experience and that's what TFA is on about.
I'll admit I don't know too much about this but freebsd has managed to provide a stable ABI, I think back to the 4.x releases via compatibility layers (which are not installed by default but are available). I've heard that solaris's abi is stable back to the first official release. Linux devs could provide a stable abi ... but they don't care. They build their kernels from git anyway.
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?! Back in the day you'd get a binary driver needing legacy components months after the hardware was released, if you got an official driver at all.
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. Not long ago you'd follow guide after guide trying to get all the hardware in your 5 years old computer to work...
_hardware_ manufactures who think they want to be in the _software_ maintenance market.
The difference between calling an API to render color fast, and knowing that cramming a 0x721 into a register at 0x3392 to render color fast isn't particularly a hemorrhaging of 'intellectual property'.
Granted, it does let us know where the API is "cheating".
So while the example of one byte in one register is reductio ad absurdem, and the process is more about laying out memory buffers and such, who cares. Sure the manufactures may be worried about nock-off hardware, but that hardware almost certainly be nock-off quality. Think of all the SoundBlaster knock offs that have ever been made. Compare that to Creative's bottom line. Those third party cards, which are _still_ on the market made SoundBlaster a universal name. Creative has been reclined upon those laurels for years now.
It is horrifically stupid on the part of the hardware manufacturers to be palying so close to the vest. They should _want_ everybody scrambling to be compatible with _their_ hardware interface, making them the leader that the market has to chase.
First big name out of the gate with a fully open graphics hardware platform would own the segment anew for years.
But "companies" have no smarts and that "isn't the way (that) business is done" so here we languish on in a half-realized market.
(As for the "getting drivers" thing I have spent hundreds of hours of my professional and personal career "getting drivers" for windows machines. Only the "you'll damn well eat what we serve you" hardware platforms like Apple can remove the quest for drivers. And woe betide you if you want to use old gear from those guys. So the whole plaintive "waah, I had to look for drivers" complaint rings a little false.)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
ABI stability helps no one but those that develop and release closed source binaries. Holding the rest of the kernel back for the sake of a handful of modules made by people who won't play nice is stupid in the extreme.