What next?

[craign]

For those naive shoppers such as myself two weeks ago, I don't want to imply that I'm unhappy with this ATI board. If using the web wasn't such a big deal and Firefox such a great browser, flipping around the desktop cube, moving around the windows, etc. is truly a beautiful thing on Fedora 9 with an ATI FireGL V8600 board. I'm OK with clicking out of KWin when I'm using VMware for obvious reasons.

I'm holding out hope that somehow my Firefox problems will be fixed in the not to distant future, and ATI will remain a choice when I'm again shopping for a new board, which seems to happen every two years. I happen to believe that is more likely if ATI open sources their driver software, but I'll take any solution that works.

[craign]

ssh -XC localhost firefox

Tried that, no difference. Behavior remains:
(1) No close/minimize/resize window widgets
(2) Intermittently (but frequently enough to be a usability issue) on scrolling or moving mouse, screen and cursor freezes for several seconds

Thanks again,
Craig

[Dandel]

hmm... weird, can you give a list of plugins that are enabled on compiz, along with what is disabled?

[craign]

hmm... weird, can you give a list of plugins that are enabled on compiz, along with what is disabled?

Weird is apparently my computer's current middle name

Is there an easy way to generate a complete list?

[craign]

hmm... weird, can you give a list of plugins that are enabled on compiz, along with what is disabled?

Does this help?

~/.gconf/apps/compiz/plugins $ ls
cube decoration %gconf.xml scale

$ cat cube/allscreens/options/%gconf.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gconf>
<entry name="index" mtime="1220130888" type="int" value="11">
</entry>
<entry name="abi" mtime="1220130888" type="int" value="20080424">
</entry>
</gconf>

$ cat decoration/allscreens/options/%gconf.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gconf>
<entry name="command" mtime="1220133404" type="string">
<stringvalue>emerald --replace</stringvalue>
</entry>
</gconf>

$ cat scale/allscreens/options/%gconf.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gconf>
<entry name="index" mtime="1220130859" type="int" value="13">
</entry>
<entry name="abi" mtime="1220130859" type="int" value="20080301">
</entry>
</gconf>

[duby229]

A few points:

1) Current top-end nVidia is having problems as well, and in some cases are (it might be were now) being out performed by older nVidia cards.

2) Drivers are critical, so if ATI release an open-source driver, what is to stop nVidia copying ATIs magic recipes and mixing them with nVidias secret ones? Result? nVidia out-perform ATI on the same price range across all platforms.

3) ATI don't own all the code in the drivers.

Nothing you have said answers either of points 2 and 3, so...

License it under the GPL then... The GPL specifically protects against these kinds of violations throught the use of what is now known as a copy-left agreement. In other words it means that if you use code that is licensed under this agreement, then any derivative works must also be licensed under this agreement. Which in turn means that any improvements that nVidia makes will also be available to ATi. If you think about it, it makes it possible for the two companies to compete more directly, and the advantage will go to who-ever has the best hardware. Given current architectures, and the current trend to rely more heavily on the 3D engine (you know eliminating all that special purpose hardware, and moving those functions to the 3D engine, and making the 3D engine more general purpose), ATi has the advantage.

You need to give the GPL a little more credit, we arent totally stupid. The whole point of the license is to protect your code.

It's actually worth reading. You should take an hour and a half or so and skim through it. You can get most of the important data in an hour and a half or so..

[duby229]

That may be, but it's a whole lot easier to install NVIDIA at this point on Fedora. While that may not be reason enough to choose NVIDIA from a company engineer's perspective, consumers tend to follow the path of least resistance.



This isn't software in a vacuum--it accompanies a hardware device. Nothing will stop NVIDIA from copying all of ATI's code, but as long as ATI provides comparable hardware at lower cost, I the consumer will buy it. And as the underdog, I would imagine ATI would want to do anything to keep my business.



I'll admit I don't know what ATI does and doesn't own (how could I in a closed environment?) but I'll bet the acceleration of software development in an open source environment would more than make up for the code ATI doesn't currently own.

Imagine a world where ATI is the preferred graphics hardware by Linux users because the Linux community is writing its drivers! Or perhaps you are an ATI software engineer worried about losing his/her job in such an environment--that's the only remaining reason I could imagine for this line of defense

If ATi fires there Linux devs, then they are truly retarded. There are only a small handful of developers that know anything about graphics drivers on linux. ATi has some of them on staff right now. Firing them would be the single dumbest thing ATi could do, but they definitely need to be re-allocated to the team developing the open source drivers... It's unfortunate, but right now that team is a one man army....

[Dandel]

Does this help?

yes actually, try changing the command...

emerald --replace

with

kde-window-decorator --replace

and if this does not work, try disabling the compiz window decorator feature.

also, mind telling us which version of the desktop manager you have...
for compiz the command is easy, it's...

compiz.real --version

and as for kde, it's the command,

kde-config --version

and gnome, is the command

gnome-session --version

[bridgman]

FWIW, GPL doesn't help at all. It's just a license that protects the actual code, not the ideas expressed within that code. It would take very little time to re-express the same ideas in different code which would not be subject to any of the GPL restrictions.

This was one of the approaches we looked at early on in the project, but unfortunately it doesn't help in this particular situation.

[duby229]

FWIW, GPL doesn't help at all. It's just a license that protects the actual code, not the ideas expressed within that code. It would take very little time to re-express the same ideas in different code which would not be subject to any of the GPL restrictions.

This was one of the approaches we looked at early on in the project, but unfortunately it doesn't help in this particular situation.

And is that a bad thing? You make it sound like it's terrible. Like it is the worst possiblre thing. But it isnt. First of all I dont think that nVidia could take your code and re-implement it. I know for a fact that is a GPL violation. The GPL specifically states that if they use your code they they need to abide the GPL... Period..... It really is that simple.

Check this site out... gpl-violations.org The information here is somewhat limited, but you can go through the list of GPL enforcements, and time after time you find that it protects against exactly the situation you just described The problem is that you make it sound like it is some kind of bad thing.

The truth is that it is not. In the end you'll be able to benefit from the work that every other GPU company is making in the free software community. Sure they will benefit from your work too, but --ONLY-- if they too adopt the GPL... In which case you'll win due to superior hardware.