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ATI Announces Open 2D/3D Linux Support
RareEYE was the first to point out the
press release from ATI announcing their official support for Linux and endorsement of Open Source. As part of their support, they will be "...releasing 2D, 3D and multimedia programming specifications for its industry-leading
RAGE graphics technology." ATI also mentions their current/past work with the XFree86 group, which they will be ramping up to an even higher level now.
While I have had support for the Mach64 video chipset for a while, it has only been in the last few months that my ATI TV card had any Linux support. This was due to ATI's refusal to provide any driver info whatsoever. What a fine turnaround this new attitude seems to be, wonder what changed their mind, and how long it will last?
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither. " Ben Franklin
ATI has supported XFree dating back to 1992 and nearly every ATI adapter is suppored by open source XFree drivers. ATI has been helping developers develop TV Tuner support since early this year. The only new stuff ATI released about 2 months ago was 3D specs for Rage Pro and Rage 128.
Huh. I've been running XFree86 on my Rage Pro LT since March when I bought it. Back then you did have to download new versions of things like the Linux kernel to get the VESA framebuffer support and you needed the latest PCMCIA stuff. If your on any recent distro it should work out of the box as long as you enable the experimental frame buffer and set the video mode in LILO. It works great at 1024x768. I'm pretty close to not using a desktop machine any more though it would be nice to have 1280x1024 and a little bit larger LCD but I'll take the portability.
Well, with a great deal of OEM business, you won't really have to worry about them losing market share..
BTW: a friend of mine may have "prior work" to disput the RMS trademark of "good thing"
Lowmag.net
This is nice to hear, but in the press release, they only mention "Rage" chips(ets?) more recent than mine (a Rage + or something). Surely they'll publish the specs for the old stuff, too? I hope so.
Soon as I can, I'm gonna dash out and download all of that stuff that has "...and OpenGL." at the end of its requirements list.
Mind the Gap
Now this is the sort of support that I was talking about in response to the processor announcement from AMD.
Hardware developers and software developers working together for the greater good. It is exactly what Microsoft and Intel have been doing for ages (although not for the greater good)! Is this going to result in Penguins over hardware boxes quoting "Designed for Kernel 2.2.13" or "Yes! It runs with Slackware". I do hope not. I just like to see this sort of cooperation within the industry - it's refreshing.
3DFX: not open, suffering because of it
Matrox: partly open, enjoyed a big boost in popularity
S3: completely open, enjoying a resurgence in spite of underperformance on early chip sets
RIVA: mostly open, sitting pretty
Rendition: completely closed, no longer in existence (although their design lives on)
ATI: opening up today, seeing the light
Anyone have corrections/more to add for this list? It sure does seem at this point that there's a connection between openness and success for hardware makers.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
> Oooh, about as long as it takes them to
:-)
> release a full OpenGL driver...
Hehe. Seems to me like these two things could be related: as a wild guess, the time between releasing hardware specs and someone writing a full OpenGL driver is probably significantly less than the time taken for the original manufacturer to write that same driver
Personally I have to go with NVidia as far as graphics hardware is concerned, on grounds of general helpfulness and quality of drivers. Matrox are equally helpful to Linux people, but their Windows OpenGL implementation is way behind the NVidia one, which is an issue for people like me who have to work on both platforms...
I too, have never had any problems with ATI cards. I recently purchased the Rage Fury 128 (with 32 Mb ram). XFree did not support it at that time, so I ended up trying Accelerated X. Worked great, and screamed in X :)
Still, I am glad to see ATI doing this. Makes a good company even better.
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
This is great news I think. Their 2D support has always been fantastic (except for some reason I cannot run 1280x1024x24 under X with my RagePro 4Meg PCI, but under Windows I can, it claims I don't have enough mem) but now that they've opened 3D support as well, this will mean more 3D games and applications are likely to be ported.
In fact, I think commercial games like Quake 1-3 being released for Linux has had a major bearing on why companies have chosen to provide Linux drivers. I thank John Carmack for this.
It's been a while since I first read that someone was working on GLX drivers for the Rage Pro based on released ATI specs. For more up to date info, I suggest people to check: GLX.
Considering their Rage+, Rage II, and Rage II+ chipsets don't even have an OpenGL driver under Win9x, I wouldn't count on having one for Linux either. Not that it wouldn't be possible, but those cards just aren't fast enough for a full OpenGL implementation. You'd probably wind up doing most of it in software due to lacking 3D features anyways. Considering you can get an 8meg Rage Pro AGP now for like $75 cdn, it's not a huge issue to upgrade.
now that they have official linux supports, thats even better!
congrats!
But will we ever get specs for the All-In-Wonder, one of the more popular unsupported pieces of hardware? Until ATI releases this information, they seem to be kind of hypocritical..
I like to support vendors that have supprted Open Source with drivers and information. So how supportive has ATI been as compared to other vendors in this area?
Does anyone have a good resource for not just hardware compatibility but how 'community' friendly a vendor has been?
bit
Good for them. They finally came to their senses. My work computer has an ATI Rage Mumble Mumble (ever notice that there are a MILLION fscking varieties of that chip!) soldered onto the mobo. No AGP slot either. This is a good thing.
Great news! ATI were top on my list of "uncool people who hide their specs", so it is great to see that they might finally be seeing how stupid that is.
So now we have open source drivers for Matrox and NVidia cards, and ATI starting to look more promising. This leaves 3Dfx as the only major 3d accelerator manufacturer who insists on hiding all their hardware details, which is kind of paradoxical since they actually have the best current support under Linux! How long do you reckon it will take them to realise the advantages of being free as in speech as well as just beer?
I suppose this is a good thing, but I have to compare to people like S3. When I couldn't get my S3 Virge GX2-based card to work, I went to S3's site, filled out a form and 2 days later got a 3-inch-thick specification book in the mail. They didn't even ask if I was working on an Open Source project.
Good to see another company smartening up, though. Eventually I look forward to the day they all write their own XFree86-4 module....
On the other hand, based on the schedules quoted, it is still reasonably likely that with the rapid deployment of video cards these days, cards can go from "initial release" to "retirement" before XFree86 supports the card.
On the gripping hand, at least the graphics cards should eventually be supported, which is the important thing...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
There is certainly a reason for hardware vendors to hold back the info one would need to write a driver, at least if my view of the world is not yet totally twisted... if you open up your hardware specifications you make a present to your competitors, since they now can for free get all the secret engineering thingies you tried to hide so long by forcing NDAs and stuff. It's all about trying to win a competition, sort of not "security through obscurity" but "advantage through obscurity".
Not so different from software at this view point angle...
-nc
I'm having a hard enough time deciding whether to get a Millennium G400 or a Riva TNT2 for when I upgrade my system!
Now we're going to make ATI an option too?
I may NEVER get this old PPro with a Voodoo 1 and a Virge/DX (biggest mistake ever, NO improvement over the straight Virge) upgraded.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
When I registered my Xpert 128 a couple of weeks ago I added a comment requesting greater support for Xfree. That must be the reason. grin.
Seriously, we should all be doing this sort of thing to make hardware manufacturers aware of how many people are using linux.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
This is slightly unrelated to the original story, but I noticed the link at the bottom of the press release was for www.ati.com
Wasn't it just a while ago that ATI's homepage was at www.atitech.ca or something?
Does anyone have any information on how they acquired this page from its previous owner?
Well, if you believed the drek on their webpage it was due to "lack of interest" on the part of the Linux community. The other two theories I had heard were: 1) ATI didn't want to give out too much info on their custom ASICs since they didn't want other people knocking them off, especially in the mobo area. And you've gotta admit, they did well in the OEM arena. Plus I believe there was some interested in keeping their TV-tuner-on-a-video-card hardware a secret so that they would stay first in that market. 2) ATI and Microsoft had some agreement around the time of Windows 98 development. Rumor had it that, in exchange for keeping their specs a secret, Microsoft would add features to Windows 98 specifically designed to make ATI's hardware look good. (e.g. WebTV integrated into Win98 that would work on the ATI All-In-Wonder). I know both theories sound conspiritorial, but consider the following: Other video card makers are beginning to include integrated television functions into their cards now as well. Also, ATI has *greatly* improved their 3D graphics chipset and can thus be considered a contender in that area now. So reason #1 is invalid. And Microsoft, AFAIK, isn't planning to do anything special for ATI video cards in W2K, so reason #2 is invalid as well. Maybe now ATI has nothing to lose...
Now if only whoever made the Linux decision at ATI would maybe talk to the tach support folks they could change thier web site away from its current 'you're on your own' message
I thought they still kept the specs to themselves and business partners that signed one of their silly NDAs... When did that change and where can I snag the specs docs?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I hope so... I have a few PowerMacs at home and work, and it's a damn shame that the Rage Pro drivers are crippled and the Rage128 drivers not up to snuff.
A friend of mine has a Dell laptop (Inspiron 7500) with the ATI chipset with a 400MHz processor (Celeron, I think). The 3D acceleration is actually slightly slower than the software renderer ! Things like Half-Life demonstrate this. You do get certain texturing benefits when using hardware acceleration, but I prefer the framerate. I don't see any reason why any X server which supports this chipset would be any different. Geometry setup has to be done by the CPU anyhow.
Unfortunately, you won't see much in the way of overkill until you can get a laptop with that new NVidia chipset ! :-)
-- Steve
That they don't mention the GATOS project, a group that was implementing video capture drivers for Linux for the ATI All-In-Wonder, AIW Pro, and ATI-TV. We pushed for close to a year to get any sort of specs for the video capture chipset and the I2S interface. But we wern't a corporation and they wouldn't release the specs because it was protected under the terms of their contract, or so they said. Funny, where did that contract go?
-- Terry
Now that soon I will have 3d games under linux with acceleration that will only leave my scanner to get suport under linux so I could erase windows forever.
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
Any one here know where the rage pro opengl will be developed? I want to follow this closely.
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
sawtooth support probably isn't too far off. it should be much easier to support new macs, now that there's a unified mobo design (ie, same chips different form factors). i've never used an ATI card, so i don't know how good the support is on PPC (or on x86, for that matter). i don't think there's 3D support (though i could be completely wrong about that), but regardless, ATI's new commitment to linux can only help.
as for altivec, since mac os X uses gcc, apple has a motive for adding vector support. the general impression i get (read: rumor) is that apple or moto will release a patch for gcc 2.95 in the not too distant future. i'm not a gcc guy, but i would guess it would be pretty simple to add the asm support for the vector instructions, and not too difficult to add the C extentions (just new data types?).
Truth is, folks, they've been doing this for the last few months; they gave the specs out to the GATOS project, GGI and the XFree86 team. This is just their marketing team putting the final spin on things.
Notice there's no mention of any effort to actually help develop anything more; they're only going to be sending out the specs to more open source groups.
Still really cool, but I think they're trying to take credit from the other people writing the software.
James
Not very. Granted they have an X server you can download and the glx.so module which lets you play q3test, they havn't released specs for their cards so that stuff like agp support, or even dma texture copies can be done. This means that your framerate in linux is about half of what you get on Windoze (I think, don't have windoze on my machine).
They have released a kernel mod that is supposed to be an interface (they call it a resource manager) to the function I mentioned above, but a) the important code is preprocessed, b) it's for 2.0.34 not 2.2.x and I can't get it to compile even for 2.0.34, c) this is not the way graphics are handled by any other card. This really should be a library or something like that.
The other real open graphics card maker is Matrox. They have released an API that is being used in the glx project . They are getting much higher framerates on a G200 than I get on my TNT2.
From all that I can gather this also means no one as started to work on the XFree 4.0 DRI implementation for Riva cards.
Hopefully this news will get Riva to open up a little more.
Perhaps the demand for a low-end Unix Graphics Workstation with Linux and a GeForce 256 to replace some SGI's will get them moving.
--
You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me.
They do help the developers giving them sample code, sample hardware, programming documentation (not just register specs) and answer developers questions when they arise. Plus, the press release states that they are paying Precision Insight to develop open source drivers.
As much as I hate the RAGE chipset, I have to applaud ATI on this move. Note that ATI is the absolute market leader for OEM based graphics - and they do very well in the retail market as well.
Some people may say that this is just an ATI ploy to be the market leader for every operating system out there. ATI cards could very well be the Microsoft of video cards - but there isn't too much evidence to support this, yet. They are just releasing their specs at the moment, and supporting the development of drivers.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Oh yeah... this can only lead to better Mesa support for the RAGE series of cards.
I've never really seen a Rage128 in action untill yesterday.. It would be sweet if there was a Rage 128 PCMCIA card for powerbooks...
quake quake quake quake quake quake quake!
This is good news, and i hate to rain on the parade, but "supporting" Linux is not enough. Handing us the specs and telling us we have their *permission* to write drivers is not nearly enough. Do hardware vendors just hand over specs to Microsoft and tell them to go at it if they want? No, they write their own drivers for Windows, and distribute them with the hardware.
What we really need is for vendors to write their *own* drivers for Linux (hopefully, Open Source), and distribute them with the hardware just like Windows. And i don't mean sticking it in a file cabinet on their web site behind a page that says "Beware of the leopard"... i want to go to Best Buy, pick up the latest greatest video card, see a penguin logo on the box, and find a CD inside with an XFree86 server (with source!), pushbutton installation for all major Linux distributions, and a bunch of throwaway programs, gizmos, and game demos to show off the capabilities of the card. That's what Windows gets (except for the Source, of course), and what Linux deserves.
Are you listening, ATI? You want bragging rights? They're right there for the taking, if you have the courage to reach for them.
---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
I've got an ATI Rage 128 chip set, and it works very well for a desktop under the beta XFCom driver by Suse. 1600X1200X16M resolution works fast and well.
I can't run 3D games on it in Linux yet, but it runs Half Life with noticeably better framerate than my Nvidia TNT in Win'98 used to. I've also upgraded from K6/300 to P3/450, but I don't think that's the whole story.
I've had trouble with ATI in the distant past, and am not a big supporter of theirs. But it seems like they are improving and maybe I'll give 'em one more chance after this news.
I hope they release the specs for the TV tuners, maybe someone will be able to write the drivers properly, because from what I've seen, ATI sure can't. I'm still waiting for a fix for this ATI TV WONDER card which a lot of windows users have had difficulty with. They've known about the problem for about two months, am I just impatient or do these things really take this long?
The usual reason offered for the secrecy is that there are all sorts of tricks and techniques in the software that improve performance. This generally applies to OpenGL and Direct3D drivers. The best-performing ones are much more than just a thin layer over the hardware. They have a lot of tricky 3D code in them, and may have innovative techniques for using MMX, 3DNow, and the new PIII instruction sets.
These intial stages of the 3D graphics pipeline may not be closely tied to the hardware, and could be "stolen" by other companies for their drivers. The 3D accelerator market is so competitive that even small performance differences can make a difference in sales.
All the more reason to applaud and encourage the companies that open their specifications - especially if they open up all the code in their best Windows OpenGL drivers to be ported to Linux!
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
One company that comes to mind was Gravis, instead of withholding programming information on their Ultrasound cards, they made it public, and encouraged people to write software for them. This did help their card's market position, but not enough to make it a force.
Problem with the TV Wonder? I just bought one of these things and can't get it working. What roblems are other people having with theirs? Where can I read about those problems. Isaac
It is true that the driver was not picked up yet by the community. nvidia released some specs, but obviously nobody could make use of it.
End of September, there was a brief discussion on the glx developers list with someone from nvidia about it. Problems were acknoledged and it was promised to try to improve the situation by providing us with their RM.
Alas nothing happened, at least on the glx project. Maybe they released it to the XFree86 team, I have not checked lately (no time right now).
No, Gravis just didn't have a clue about marketing. The Ultrasound was way ahead of any other consumer cards at the time it was released. Gravis knew how to market joysticks, but soundcards are a bit of a different beast.
Also, there was so much DOS soundblaster software out there (that the GUS tried to emulate a SB for, but wasn't terribly successful) that the lack of hardware compatibility was a huge downside.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
I have this feeling that ATI is incorporating Linux support so they could include display drivers with the soon-to-be-released Corel Linux.
;-)
ATI may not have the fastest board, but once the Rage Fury MAXX with the double Rage Fury graphics chip setup is available, the first one that can write an Linux OpenGL driver to takes advantage of the Serial Line Interleave (SLI) mode of the Rage Fury MAXX is going to be very popular very quickly.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Even more shocking, some day soon somebody is going to write a better Windoze driver than the one shipped, for one of these cards that released their specs. This I think will be the big clue needed to convince the hardware manufacuters that it just may not kill them to reveal how to talk to their device.
I' ve been waiting for this for more than a year.
Regards,
Cosmin
compustores.net - the computer stores directories
On their developers pages they have a link to the GATOS project.
so this means, Linux will finally get some decent, optimized, quality drivers, and Macs will still be stuck with the same shit ones ATI ships. Hows that for irony?
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
So the order is now: Nvidia - specs and code ATI - specs Matrox - partial specs 3Dfx - binary drivers, closed source. Interesting turn around. Not too long ago, 3Dfx had the praise of Linux for support. Now they are last place because they don't open up things, while all others have.
S3 does not have Linux 3D hardware acceleration available for the Savage4 yet. Non-hardware accelerated Savage4 XFree86 support was made available only in version 3.3.5 of XFree86 (which came out in August -- 3.3.5 comes with RedHat 6.1, but didn't come with 6.0 (which had 3.3.1)). Over on the Savage Daily News web site (sdn.fgnetwork.com), Paul Crossley, an S3 representative, had the following to say about Savage4 Linux 3D support (on October 15): "Linux 3D software is going to take an internal group of folks very hands on with the various Savage archtiectures. We don't have one put together yet (a team), but it is on the "to-do" list for next year."
In other words: "We do not want to release the specs so when the time comes that we must support Linux we will do it in house and release a binary driver"
S3: Can you get 3D/multimedia specs for S3 chips?
Yes, you can. I know because I have them, and others are sure to confirm this. Riva I didn't try, although I've heard that they're not forthcoming at this time. ATI - well, that's today's story.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
I'm not sure how they aquired the domain, but about a year ago www.ati.com was owned by "Acme Turd Inc.", or some such place. I'm not making this up. They had a big steaming pile of fake dog crap on their front page. It wasn't pretty. The first time I loaded the page, I thought "I must have loaded their Windows drivers page by mistake." :-)
TedC
I've "heard" (ahem) that 3dfx is going to open up some more information in a BIG way. They say they are going to be a big contributor, and will release more specs. The big part is getting all the documentation completed and reformatted.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
More drivers from other companies can be expected. The cost of porting drivers is rather low and it give the board builder one more feature to list on the box. These companies are there for bucks. They really dont care is windoz or Linux wins.
You can expect the modme chip makers to release Linux drivers for softmodems too. The companies that make softmodems write the host (pentium) code as well as sell the analog chips that go on the motherboard. Whey are going to get paid per IC so why not put an engineer or two on porting their code to Linux. The first company to do this will have a leg up on their competition and then the rest will follow. The downside here is that I do not expect these modem companies to release their source.
>Linux rendered titanic. big deal to render, who do you think made the modeling, and what about ANTZ, BugsLife, The Matrix, StarWars.... you don't realy suggest that linux is a better system for MM then sgi( who wrote openGl ? take a wild guess...) any way with this big celebration, it took ATI more then one year to bring close-to-working drivers for their shitty Rage-Pro cards i just wonder i much time would it take for the poor people from glx to release a working drivers /gaby
Your ignorance is typical and what i would expect from a slashdotter. Who do you think wrote OpenGl ? On what machines do you think Star wars,Bugs Life , were made on? Rendering is JUST THAT. RENDERING. There is a H-U-G-E differemce between rendering and Modelling/creating. Go do your studying first.....
...and what will the support be for the Xpert 98 card? Even in Windows the support is pretty dicey. The only OpenGL support is a fairly crap Quake II implementation.
Here is another more cynical interpretation.
3DFX: Good fast glide driver, bad OpenGL driver but no one cares because all games run under glide (except minigl wrapper for quakes). Result Don't open their driver, don't need too.
Matrox: Bad opengl drivers, so they open their specs up to get the opensource community and fscking Joh Carmarck to write a driver for them. Then when the linux port is finished they can backport it to Windows and finally have a decent opengl driver.
NVidia: Many bigbrains ex SGI live here, patent sharing agreement with SGI. Best OpenGl driver of any consumer card. Result don't need to open driver.
S3: Similar to Matrox.
ATI: Seen the light of getting John Carmarck to write your driver for you. Opening up....
It seems there's more a correlation of how desperate they are to improve their driver than opensource=success....
This means that all the laptops using the ATI Rage Pro LT will get Linux 3D support !
That's gonna be very cool ! A linux laptop is already a cool thing but a linux laptop with 3D is just overkill !
Why on earth would you hold back programming information on a piece of hardware anyway? The only effect (as far as I can see anyway) will be that you limit your market. Software protocols are a bit different, if you allready have marketshare you actually gain something from holding that information back from the competition. But hardware? Are they afraid the competition's gonna start writing drivers for their cards?? welcomme to the real world guys.
They didn't always release specs.
However that seams to be changing so lets embrace and extend in our own way. I.e. Embrace some really cool video cards and extend ATI's bottom line. This is a "good thing" (TM).
Don't bother to say how ATI is just doing this to keep from loosing market share to some other card maker. They are but it doesn't matter.
"Good thing" is a trade mark of RMS -: All rights reserved.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
but don't get your panties in a bunch. A friend of mine had a laptop with a Rag LT Pro, and he had to wait till just a few weeks ago for the 2D Xserver for it, so increased support is definitely a good thing. But the Rage Pro is a very out-of-date chipset -- it was already pretty slow at this time a year ago.
I have yet to see a laptop with even acceptable, let alone cutting-edge, 3D support.
great news. ati cards are very good and i use them since '94 (now a rage fury) and tried out almost all of them. in former times all ati cards were equipped with drivers for multiple systems but unfortunately they are "windoofs only" now...
and because it is soon possible to play unreal4linux AND there's an ATI card in very very many computers AND the rage128's are fast, i defenitely WANT 3d acceleration for linux with my fury.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
FWIW, we have ATi cards on our machines at work here, and the XFree drivers are pretty solid under Solaris x86; much better than Solaris's drivers! However, 3D support is going to be needed to get the best from the cards.
--
Why is it that I can use the All-in-wonder (v.1) TV reception with DLed drivers, but not obtain them directly from ATI? Oh well, maybe they'll release them directly for the 128 tv model... And the sound won't suck ;>
Unless another manufacturer follows suit with this kind of commitment, I guess my next card purchase will an ATI offering. I recently bought the all in wonder 128 32 meg dealie for my home entertainment system and I am very impressed. That kind of quality graphics on linux would make me a happy camper.
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
The BIOS in my Dell Inspirion doesn't restore the Rage LT's state correctly after a save-to-disk (running in VGA FB mode) - this is because the BIOS does not save and restore enough of the state.
Alas, when you're only interested in Linux, Nvidia OGL driver is behind Matrox one.
Since the first Nvidia beta driver for Linux, nothing happened, nobody seems to develop anymore to enhance this driver, no word from NVidia...
Active developpment is currently only happening on Matrox G200/G400 an soon on ATI cards (somebody in the GLX mailing list seems to have a nearly completed driver for the Rage Pro).
I bought a TNT2 only because Nvidia released their beta driver, but I regret it. Now, I would probably buy a G400 which is way ahead of TNT2 in OGL Linux performance.
On Q3Test Benchmarks under Linux, a G200 outperforms a TNT2 Ultra !
I just read in LJ that Houdini (a 3D software that is used to create special effects in many Hollywood movies) is being ported from SGI to Linux. Maybe ATI doesn't want to miss the opportunity to reach the professional graphics market in Linux that will soon explode.
Just a thought...
Gustavo J.A.M. Carneiro
this is only the beginning in an already uphill Linux dominatiion of the 3D and movie market. for years now Intel 3D has beaten the pants off poor performing, overpriced SGI solutions.
In fact, SGI 3D innovation is pretty piss poor when you look at the facts. RIVA TNT blows any SGI graphics system right out of the water in every application.
Now with companies like ATI supporting Linux, even more 3D apps/games will be coming our way!
Linux rendered titanic. Where was SGI?? NOWHERE TO BE FOUND.
LISTEN UP SGI. LINUX/INTEL HAS YOUR PANTS BEAT IN THE 3D MARKET. ITS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE DREAMWORKS AND PIXAR ETC ARE ALL INTEL/LINUX SHOPS.
Another battle won...open source rules!
LiNuX MaN
Since the rage fury was supported with Linux PPC [correct name?] a month or more before it was supported on the intel side I'd take the mac support.
The GLX group has had docs in hand since September. It takes a little to get the ball initially rolling and the bulk of the coders are working on G200/G400 stability and speed for a point release before moving onto the DRI version of the same. We're waiting for the initial work on the DMA portion of the engine to be completed before moving on to the pixel bashing work. That phase should be starting shortly.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...not the VGA BIOS...
Contact DELL for that- of course, they're going to tell you that Linux isn't supported on that notebook. The VGA BIOS is not supposed to be the one saving states of the card- the save-to-disk is doing that one (and since that notebook was designed with Windows98/NT, and not VESA mode framebuffer, the code to preserve all of that may not be there in the notebook's BIOS.).
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
No, it was less than a year ago that some overzealous open source began a letter writing compaign to ATI's upper management that was openly hostile to ATI. That action could have resulted in ATI ceasing to support open source software developers at all! Fortunately, ATI was big enough to forgive all of the rude, obscene, and totally irrational email letters they received after they realized the letters didn't represent the feelings of most Linux users. Thank you ATI.
This is very true. Harassing hardware vendors will not get you anywhere. Showing them in a realistic, logical, business-like manner that developing drivers or releasing programming specs is in their benefit will go a long way to getting what you desire. Remember you are dealing with business people, not open source zealots. Talk their languange and they will listen.
The LinuxPPC support for Rage 128 is not related to the level of support given to Apple by ATI.
Apple has really gotten the shaft on ATI drivers. ATI won't give them specs, so they have to rely on ATI to write the drivers. ATI never gave them any support for the DVD decode circuitry in Rage 128, so they had to use an extra hardware decoder board with a C-Cube MPEG-2 decoder chip to do DVD. (In some of the new Mac models, Apple is trying a software only decoder instead.) This is really silly, because one of the few unique features of Rage 128 is that it implements more of the MPEG-2 decode process in hardware than anybody else.
BTW, the LinuxPPC support for Rage 128 is actually behind Intel as far as X is concerned. All that's there right now is a frame buffer device driver, so you can change resolutions and color depth. There is no accelerated X server.
I'll have to admit that I've never had a problem with an ATI card from a hardware or 2D driver standpoint. But they consistently have the worst card on the market for 3D. Not only is their hardware performance poor, their 3D drivers (especially GL) are generally considered to be the worst performing and most unstable in the industry.
Even if ATI went beyond releasing the specs and open sourced their existing drivers, I still wouldn't bother looking at the code. The only positive thing coming from this announcement is maybe a slight incentive for other manufacturers to release full specs.
I wonder if there level of support will be better than Apple recieves?
onward indeed...I hope other hardware companies join the bandwagon
all Linux soliders and solderers prepare...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I can only imagine this makes things even better over in the Linux PPC world. Speaking of which, how are the new G4s and Linux? Can gcc take advantage of the new processor, and is there currently any support for 3D (although, if not already there I imagine coming shortly)?
Ryan
The same people who've guarded Glide with their lives? The same people who have tried to get rid of all the wrappers with legal bullying? Who sued Creative for their wrapper(but it isn't really a "wrapper", they said so, heh.)?
Oh well, I guess if they do, it was because they were forced. Can't hold out for too long.
ATI has been quite closed up too. ATI card 2d support is pretty good under Linux, but I'm not sure if it is because of them, or if it happened without them. Anyway, this is really good. I've always liked ATI, but hated their closed up policy. Hopefully I'll be able to run 3d stuff faster under Linux soon. No more seconds per frame from Q3test(hmm... if Q3 hasn't been released by the time the drivers are done.), and I won't be forced to use Windows for it.
Might even get to play that 3d Tux game....
This is wonderful news. I have been a big supporter of ATI and reccommend them where I work. Now that ATI is open, I can brag even more!
;)
I don't have a DVD, but I have lots of VideoCD... On my poor Pii233, forget full-screen playback with Linux' mtv. When I want to watch movies, I need to boot in Windows, which supports hardware acceleration from my ATI XPert@Play card..
MPEG playback utility for linux would be much appreciated.
We need only make sure that hardware vendors are aware of the demand, in order to have their support. They are more than willing, trade secrets aside, to give in to numbers, and ladies and gentlemen, we have numbers.
Wasn't it less than a year ago that ATI was openly hostile to Linux?
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
ATI is a great source for affordable video cards- but they with window drivers (ugh). Oh well, this made my day, back to building my webpage.
ATI has been supporting XFree dating all the way back to 1992. Nearly every ATI adapter is supported in XFree from VGA Wonder to Mach8, 32, 64 and recently the Rage 128.
*grin* .. that's what I said too when I read the news .. Dunno why it was marked down as 'troll' ... It simply put the point across as I felt it anyway :)
:) :) :)
YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!
ATI support for Linux is a great step forward.. let's hope other manufactuers follow suit. I'm especially happy as ATI have wonderful drivers under Windows, so hopefully the same quality will filter over to the Linux ones too.
Delphis