I wonder how well Code Warrior GNU version sold. If it didn't do well, then perhaps that also influenced their descision to delay the full Linux version. The market for IDEs also got crowded very quickly, with several other products. That might have made sales less than they expected.
I did beta testing for Code Warrior, and while I thought some people might like it (if you use an IDE), it didn't seem to offer enough for me. What I really wanted to see, and why I joined the beta, was the metroworks compiler. I could use that outside of the IDE if I wanted.
I hope they change their mind, and release the full product. I think the tools are useful to a lot of developers. I think their full product would differentiate them from the rest of the pack and that should help sales.
Yes, DRI material is included in the XFree code tree. The 3.9.16 has the basic framework, but only one limited driver. (The 3DLabs GMX 2000) 3.9.17, includes a fairly current driver for the 3dfx boards.
The DRI work is actually being done in an open repository at http://dri.sourceforge.net. I encourage anyone interested to check out the materials there and join the development list.
At the moment, it is probably only ready for developers (rather than end users), but we're making good progress.
I incorporate all the public XFree snapshots into the SourceForge site, do all my work on SourceForge, and then feed patches back to XFree.
Unfortunetly, no. The "utah-glx" (although that is a poor name it is at least unique) is completely incompatible with XFree 4.0. It would be a lot of work to incorporate it, and it would conflict with the SGI GLX that is incorporated into XFree 4.0.
What needs to happen is for the "utah-glx" drivers to be moved to the DRI framework for use under 4.0. We've created a public open development site at http://dri.sourceforge.net for anyone who wants to work on the DRI.
We hope to make it as open a development process as possible. I'm the intermediary between XFree and the SourceForge project. I take the public snapshots and move them into SourceForge, then I do all my work on the public site, and finally I send patches back to XFree. It seems like the best way to do open development with the current restrictions. I does add a little overhead for me of course!
So, if you're interested in DRI work, please check out our SourceForge project. We are looking for anyone interested in participating.
It was never passed through a preprocessor. That's the way the code has always looked. (For better or for worse) It is complicated code and it does use a lot of preprocessor tricks, but it has all been included.
The FULL code to glide3x for Voodoo Banshee/Vodoo3 is included. You CAN take advantage of your Voodoo card with free software!
The release is focused on the DRI, so if you do a make at the top of the tree, you get a DRI compatible version. If you go into the sources and change a few symbolic links (foo.c.dri to foo.c.orig) then you get a fully functional full screen version of Glide.
There have been so many questions with interrelated answers that I thought I would just send out one big update.
This is a prerelease of the DRI software for 3dfx. It includes FULL source. Because it is a prerelease we know there are bugs and issues. We're collecting feedback on the newsgroup news://news.3dfx.com/3dfx.linux.glide.
It works with the Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo3. Early cards will never support it, because they are 3D only cards. It doesn't make sense to do X on them. (The Rush is an exception, but it is the so degenerate that it isn't worth the trouble.)
The old cards will still work just fine with the old Mesa and Glide. Applications will be linked against Mesa, and if you have an old card it will use Glide2x and be fullscreen. If you have a new card, it will use Mesa+DRI and glide3x and possibly run in a window.
This is a phased rollout. Right now we're in the "stealth" phase.:-) There will be more materials coming out over time and some more press releases to talk about it. So when you see the press releases you'll know about everything coming out.
Why do you care about this? This lets you run multiple apps at once in a window. Performance is just about the same as fullscreen was. So, if all you cared about was full screen quake, this doesn't make any difference. If you wanted to run other apps, this is a big win. It is also the first full DRI solution, which should be helpful to other projects.
This work emphasizes OpenGL. That's why the glide3x defaults to DRI only use. The code to make Glide3x work fullscreen non-DRI is included in the source tree. We want companies to use OpenGL. We realize there's a problem with Glide2x only applications. They won't work in this prerelease. Fixing that correctly means making Glide2x a DRI client. We're working on a solution to do that.
Yes, it is yet another license. (I had nothing to do with that) If you have specific problems with the license bring them up on the newsgroup. They may get changed.
What about other distros/OSes? You've got the source, go for it. We're still doing a prerelease. We've got other problems to worry about first.
All this work was done by Precision Insight and 3dfx.
I think I've got all the relevant questions. Hopefully this will get moderated up. I'll look for other questions later.
You are on the right track, but I think you're you've missed the point a bit.
Just handing out the specs and saying "Write something." isn't good support. You are correct there, but they don't have to do the drivers themselves. They just have to put the money behind the project to get them written well. In this case ATI is paying PI to do open source drivers. By paying us they assure the driver gets attention, quality control, and that bugs are handled. They also get to set certain standards for the product.
There's nothing wrong with a board company paying someone else to write the driver. You are also right, that having the driver in the box in a big benefit. I don't know if ATI will do that, but if we right a good driver I don't see why they wouldn't!
Of course, our company is working to write these drivers so we want vendors to out source their development. We have a concentration of expertise that allows us to do the work faster and better. We get to take our open source code base and write new drivers more quickly by reusing what we already have.
Mirsoft would love to heave researchers at the big schools working on Microsoft products. To encourage that they are providing not on NT source code (for free) to universities, but also full systems. Of course, part of the requirement to take the machines is that they only run Microsoft OSes.
No, I'm not making this up. I know a few CS professors and researchers at the local universities that have these machines. Although they've thought about replacing the OS, the risk is too high. The threat is that all the machines would be taken away and that's significant value to the university.
This gets Microsoft two big advantages. First, cutting edge research gets developed on their OS. Other OSes may get supported on other boxes, but that's more effort. At least Microsoft is sure the software works on their system. Unix development becomes the second choice.
Second, and more indirect, is that these professors starting using Microsoft as their primary OS. The universities typically don't give the professors multiple machines. So, this influence propigates through the rest of the department and to the students.
Most of the professors realize they are being used, and try to work around it as much as possible, but with research money and resource being scarce, they have to use the machines the best they can.
It's all a matter of getting the hardware supported. I've talked to a number of developers from a variety of companies. They are all interested in Linux. They see the value.
It just does their customers no good for them to port to Linux today. Their customers won't buy it today. Customers need a stable environment that works. Although we're starting to see implementations that work, stable is not a word I'd use to describe them.
Have patience. I'm convinced it'll happen. It is moving along at a fairly rapid pace. If vendors don't have products out by next SIGGRAPH then I suspect you'd have a real reason to complain.
Linux is in a rather unique position. It has multiple different implementations of OpenGL provided by different companies. We've got Mesa stand-alone, Mesa in X, Xi Graphics, Metro Link, and others. Most other operating systems have one implementation.
The idea of the Linux/OpenGL base is to make sure that applications written to any of these implementations will all work together. Mesa is important to that list of products as it is probably the most established implementation of the OpenGL API around.
We want vendors to treat OpenGL under Linux as a given. They can pick any implementation they like for their development system. When they release their product they'll know it'll work with whatever OpenGL compatible implementation the user is running.
This isn't really OpenGL becoming compatible with Mesa or even Mesa becoming compatible with OpenGL. It is really an effort to make sure we have a common standard and that changes are made wherever they are needed to implement the standard.
We're trying to make sure everything we do is as independent of OS as possible. There are some other folks that are trying to port it to BSD for example, and they made some good suggestions for things we can do to make their lives easier.
With that said, the customer demand right now is for Linux. The companies that are paying us to do the work are paying us to do Linux, and the vendors that want to write applications want to put them under Linux. So, the focus is still there.
I'm not dissing games. I play Q3A and you might see me on a server every once in a while. I do think games are good for the spread of Linux.
Under Linux today, I suspect games are not the largest market. That's because Linux isn't getting used on the home desktop as much. I know there are a lot companies that want 3D under Linux for other applications.
The reason I brought it up at all was that the posting was labelled as being about Quake and the threads were all about Quake. Digital content creation means the games can be built under Linux. It also means film production can be done under Linux. I worked on a film that approached $2B in worldwide gross. We did use Linux on it, but only as a render farm. I want to see that change. I know from first hand experience that it's a sizable market that is desperate to use Linux. I know people doing SciVis/Medical work with my 3dfx drivers and want better support. All those are important as well.
The bottom line is that it all needs good OpenGL. I want people to keep in mind the other capabilities that it will enable. Don't focus entirely on games.
Mesa is an implementation of the OpenGL API. It is easy to slip and call it OpenGL, but that's really not correct. No, SGI isn't going to sue Brian, but people should respect the distinction. Brian is careful about it.
To officially be called OpenGL the product must pass a set of conformance tests and you must pay a licensing fee to SGI. Then you may call it OpenGL. That's why Mesa is called Mesa and not OpenGL.
In the future, I suspect Mesa will pass all the conformance tests, but it still won't be called OpenGL because no one will pay for the license.
I also wanted to remind people that this isn't just about Quake. The work we're doing on OpenGL is about 3D graphics for Linux. Digital content creation, CAD/CAM/CAE, scientific visualization, medical imaging, and yes games.
We showed Quake at SIGGRAPH because it was an easy thing to leave running as a demo, not because games are the only, or even the most important OpenGL application.
Suck is right that Linux will change with money and a larger audience. I think we all know that. For Linux companies to make money, it needs to spread to a larger audience. To spread to a larger audience it needs to be simpler. Suck is right about all that.
That's about where the truth stops. Just because we add simpler interfaces does not mean that the power (which requires complexity) goes away. Linux has done a great job so far layering simple interfaces over powerful features. That's the best of both worlds. You can get to the power if you want, and if you don't you'll use the easy interface.
Will companies write the talking paperclip and other idiot tools? Absolutely, and I say more power to them. They will sell a lot of them, just not to me or any of the other power users. That's just fine.
Will the power users stop developing powerful software? No, why should they? They do it now. They will continue to do so. They won't care about selling it to the masses. Someone else may write a fancy interface over the top and sell it. So what? If you wrote it originally without the interface why should you care? It serves the same purpose for you.
Finally, I'm going to get on my soapbox at this point. Companies like Cygnus and Precision Insight are the future of free software. We've got people funding us to write code that we give away. We get to do top notch technical work and pay top notch people to do it. We can provide support and a corporate backing for our open source work. This has all the benefits of open source with the stability commercial customers require. Companies based around this model will do very well in the future of open source.
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I wonder how well Code Warrior GNU version sold. If it didn't do well, then perhaps that also influenced their descision to delay the full Linux version. The market for IDEs also got crowded very quickly, with several other products. That might have made sales less than they expected.
I did beta testing for Code Warrior, and while I thought some people might like it (if you use an IDE), it didn't seem to offer enough for me. What I really wanted to see, and why I joined the beta, was the metroworks compiler. I could use that outside of the IDE if I wanted.
I hope they change their mind, and release the full product. I think the tools are useful to a lot of developers. I think their full product would differentiate them from the rest of the pack and that should help sales.
- |Daryll
The DRI work is actually being done in an open repository at http://dri.sourceforge.net. I encourage anyone interested to check out the materials there and join the development list.
At the moment, it is probably only ready for developers (rather than end users), but we're making good progress.
I incorporate all the public XFree snapshots into the SourceForge site, do all my work on SourceForge, and then feed patches back to XFree.
- |Daryll
What needs to happen is for the "utah-glx" drivers to be moved to the DRI framework for use under 4.0. We've created a public open development site at http://dri.sourceforge.net for anyone who wants to work on the DRI.
- |Daryll
We hope to make it as open a development process as possible. I'm the intermediary between XFree and the SourceForge project. I take the public snapshots and move them into SourceForge, then I do all my work on the public site, and finally I send patches back to XFree. It seems like the best way to do open development with the current restrictions. I does add a little overhead for me of course!
So, if you're interested in DRI work, please check out our SourceForge project. We are looking for anyone interested in participating.
- |Daryll
- |Daryll
OOPS!
- |Daryll
- |Daryll
The FULL code to glide3x for Voodoo Banshee/Vodoo3 is included. You CAN take advantage of your Voodoo card with free software!
The release is focused on the DRI, so if you do a make at the top of the tree, you get a DRI compatible version. If you go into the sources and change a few symbolic links (foo.c.dri to foo.c.orig) then you get a fully functional full screen version of Glide.
Clue check, you failed...
- |Daryll
Folks, this is the first prerelease. Hang in there. There's more to come.
- |Daryll
- |Daryll
This is a prerelease of the DRI software for 3dfx. It includes FULL source. Because it is a prerelease we know there are bugs and issues. We're collecting feedback on the newsgroup news://news.3dfx.com/3dfx.linux.glide.
It works with the Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo3. Early cards will never support it, because they are 3D only cards. It doesn't make sense to do X on them. (The Rush is an exception, but it is the so degenerate that it isn't worth the trouble.)
The old cards will still work just fine with the old Mesa and Glide. Applications will be linked against Mesa, and if you have an old card it will use Glide2x and be fullscreen. If you have a new card, it will use Mesa+DRI and glide3x and possibly run in a window.
This is a phased rollout. Right now we're in the "stealth" phase. :-) There will be more materials coming out over time and some more press releases to talk about it. So when you see the press releases you'll know about everything coming out.
Why do you care about this? This lets you run multiple apps at once in a window. Performance is just about the same as fullscreen was. So, if all you cared about was full screen quake, this doesn't make any difference. If you wanted to run other apps, this is a big win. It is also the first full DRI solution, which should be helpful to other projects.
This work emphasizes OpenGL. That's why the glide3x defaults to DRI only use. The code to make Glide3x work fullscreen non-DRI is included in the source tree. We want companies to use OpenGL. We realize there's a problem with Glide2x only applications. They won't work in this prerelease. Fixing that correctly means making Glide2x a DRI client. We're working on a solution to do that.
Yes, it is yet another license. (I had nothing to do with that) If you have specific problems with the license bring them up on the newsgroup. They may get changed.
What about other distros/OSes? You've got the source, go for it. We're still doing a prerelease. We've got other problems to worry about first.
All this work was done by Precision Insight and 3dfx.
I think I've got all the relevant questions. Hopefully this will get moderated up. I'll look for other questions later.
- |Daryll
Just handing out the specs and saying "Write something." isn't good support. You are correct there, but they don't have to do the drivers themselves. They just have to put the money behind the project to get them written well. In this case ATI is paying PI to do open source drivers. By paying us they assure the driver gets attention, quality control, and that bugs are handled. They also get to set certain standards for the product.
There's nothing wrong with a board company paying someone else to write the driver. You are also right, that having the driver in the box in a big benefit. I don't know if ATI will do that, but if we right a good driver I don't see why they wouldn't!
Of course, our company is working to write these drivers so we want vendors to out source their development. We have a concentration of expertise that allows us to do the work faster and better. We get to take our open source code base and write new drivers more quickly by reusing what we already have.
- |Daryll
No, I'm not making this up. I know a few CS professors and researchers at the local universities that have these machines. Although they've thought about replacing the OS, the risk is too high. The threat is that all the machines would be taken away and that's significant value to the university.
This gets Microsoft two big advantages. First, cutting edge research gets developed on their OS. Other OSes may get supported on other boxes, but that's more effort. At least Microsoft is sure the software works on their system. Unix development becomes the second choice.
Second, and more indirect, is that these professors starting using Microsoft as their primary OS. The universities typically don't give the professors multiple machines. So, this influence propigates through the rest of the department and to the students.
Most of the professors realize they are being used, and try to work around it as much as possible, but with research money and resource being scarce, they have to use the machines the best they can.
- |Daryll
It just does their customers no good for them to port to Linux today. Their customers won't buy it today. Customers need a stable environment that works. Although we're starting to see implementations that work, stable is not a word I'd use to describe them.
Have patience. I'm convinced it'll happen. It is moving along at a fairly rapid pace. If vendors don't have products out by next SIGGRAPH then I suspect you'd have a real reason to complain.
- |Daryll
The idea of the Linux/OpenGL base is to make sure that applications written to any of these implementations will all work together. Mesa is important to that list of products as it is probably the most established implementation of the OpenGL API around.
We want vendors to treat OpenGL under Linux as a given. They can pick any implementation they like for their development system. When they release their product they'll know it'll work with whatever OpenGL compatible implementation the user is running.
This isn't really OpenGL becoming compatible with Mesa or even Mesa becoming compatible with OpenGL. It is really an effort to make sure we have a common standard and that changes are made wherever they are needed to implement the standard.
- |Daryll
With that said, the customer demand right now is for Linux. The companies that are paying us to do the work are paying us to do Linux, and the vendors that want to write applications want to put them under Linux. So, the focus is still there.
- |Daryll
Under Linux today, I suspect games are not the largest market. That's because Linux isn't getting used on the home desktop as much. I know there are a lot companies that want 3D under Linux for other applications.
The reason I brought it up at all was that the posting was labelled as being about Quake and the threads were all about Quake. Digital content creation means the games can be built under Linux. It also means film production can be done under Linux. I worked on a film that approached $2B in worldwide gross. We did use Linux on it, but only as a render farm. I want to see that change. I know from first hand experience that it's a sizable market that is desperate to use Linux. I know people doing SciVis/Medical work with my 3dfx drivers and want better support. All those are important as well.
The bottom line is that it all needs good OpenGL. I want people to keep in mind the other capabilities that it will enable. Don't focus entirely on games.
- |Daryll
To officially be called OpenGL the product must pass a set of conformance tests and you must pay a licensing fee to SGI. Then you may call it OpenGL. That's why Mesa is called Mesa and not OpenGL.
In the future, I suspect Mesa will pass all the conformance tests, but it still won't be called OpenGL because no one will pay for the license.
- |Daryll
We showed Quake at SIGGRAPH because it was an easy thing to leave running as a demo, not because games are the only, or even the most important OpenGL application.
- |Daryll
The Voodoo cards do not go over the wire. They are essentially direct rendering already. (Albeit not integrated with the window system).
We demo'd Q3ATest at SIGGRAPH running in a window as our first full OpenGL implementation within the DRI.
- |Daryll
He did actually accept the offer a little over a week ago, but his start date isn't until October.
- |Daryll
- |Daryll
That's about where the truth stops. Just because we add simpler interfaces does not mean that the power (which requires complexity) goes away. Linux has done a great job so far layering simple interfaces over powerful features. That's the best of both worlds. You can get to the power if you want, and if you don't you'll use the easy interface.
Will companies write the talking paperclip and other idiot tools? Absolutely, and I say more power to them. They will sell a lot of them, just not to me or any of the other power users. That's just fine.
Will the power users stop developing powerful software? No, why should they? They do it now. They will continue to do so. They won't care about selling it to the masses. Someone else may write a fancy interface over the top and sell it. So what? If you wrote it originally without the interface why should you care? It serves the same purpose for you.
Finally, I'm going to get on my soapbox at this point. Companies like Cygnus and Precision Insight are the future of free software. We've got people funding us to write code that we give away. We get to do top notch technical work and pay top notch people to do it. We can provide support and a corporate backing for our open source work. This has all the benefits of open source with the stability commercial customers require. Companies based around this model will do very well in the future of open source.
- |Daryll
- |Daryll
If you add the nVidia and Matrox you get five DRI based implementations.
I can't really say anything else. :-)
- |Daryll