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Open-Source GPU Drivers Show Less Than Ideal Experience For SteamOS/Linux Gaming (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Phoronix's recent 22-Way SteamOS Graphics Card Comparison showed that NVIDIA wins across the board when it comes to closed-source OpenGL driver performance. However, when it comes to the open-source driver performance for Steam Linux gaming, no one is really the winner. A new article, "Are The Open-Source Graphics Drivers Good Enough For Steam Linux Gaming?" answers that question with "heck no" by its author. While AMD is generally regarded as having better open-source support, their newer graphics cards still can't run at their rated clock frequencies due to lack of power management support, the lack of enough OpenGL 4.x support means many AAA Linux games simply cannot run yet, not enough QA means regressions are common, and other issues were noted when it comes to testing a number of modern graphics cards on the open-source drivers.
You say catch-up, I say ketchup.
I don't see the problem with using closed-source binary blobs for a SteamOS box. What would be the point of an open-source gaming system? As long as nobody can hack into your system and delete your saved games or whatnot, I think it's more than good enough. It's free and it removes the need to buy a Microsoft Windows license just to be able to play videogames.
Fight for your bitcoins!
Honestly, it's been a while since I even attempted to get 3D cards and gaming working on a Linux box. I pretty much always use Linux for dedicated server "appliances" in the workplaces these days, and stick with a Mac or Windows box for general purpose use at home like gaming.
But I remember in the past, the closed source nVidia graphics driver bundles were perfectly fine, as long as you ran one of the Linux distros they supported. Otherwise, you were sometimes out of luck. That's probably the single biggest argument I had against the closed source drivers. You were stuck using something like RedHat, because nVidia didn't want to provide tarbars for many of the more obscure Linux variants out there.
Otherwise, sure.... I don't think Linux gamers or even people doing heavy 3D editing/animation feel a big need to have access to the source code for the graphics drivers. Maybe a VERY small percentage would prefer it, because they're knowledgeable enough of a coder to tweak a driver to fix a specific problem they're encountering? But that's got to be far less than 1% of the user-base.
All in all though, I get the impression that video drivers are largely debugged and improved BECAUSE advanced video games drive those changes. Windows always winds up with the fastest, best drivers for a given 3D card because it has the most games that push the limits and expose flaws. You saw the same thing happen on the Mac in OS X when it first started getting some "serious" 3D games developed for it like Word of Warcraft. There were regularly updates in OS X for the video drivers that referenced WoW bugs as reasons for the fixes.
Since Linux has the least number of these game titles coded for it, it gets the least video driver development too.
Something I don't understand (I'm no a kernel developer) is why, given that AMD released the complete register reference for the cards, can't the open source driver compete with the proprietary one?
I don't think Linux gamers or even people doing heavy 3D editing/animation feel a big need to have access to the source code for the graphics drivers. Maybe a VERY small percentage would prefer it, because they're knowledgeable enough of a coder to tweak a driver to fix a specific problem they're encountering? But that's got to be far less than 1% of the user-base.
I have little interest in hacking my own video drivers, but I would still very much prefer that they were open source. Because I want the very small percentage of users who would hack their own video drivers to be able to, so that I can benefit from their work. That's the beauty of open source, and it's the reason why we put up with all the considerable ugliness of open source.
You don't see the problem? What happens if/when Valve starts to behave like Microsoft/Sony? I have a 12+ year old STEAM account but I definitely see the open source thing as good and free as in beer as better. Having said that I'm willing to bet less than 10% of my library will run without Windows. So for the time being, it's the Win 7 lifeboat for me.
They're moving in that direction. Specifically, catalyst will be moved to a userspace program running above the kernel, while the OSS radeon driver will be an alternative userspace program running above the kernel.
The name of the unified kernel driver is "amdgpu".
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
Is there anything stopping me from just using the drivers that actually work? When the OSS drivers catch up we can revisit them - until then I'll use what works.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.