Gordon's Thoughts On Open-Source GPU Drivers

[pingufunkybeat]

LMFAO, uhhuh that was the same thing people were crowing with ATI. They kept saying "release the specs, and the problem will be mostly solved." and then when they did they then changed their tune expecting AMD to write the drivers too.

R500 and lower are mostly community-written, and they are fantastic.

R600+ are catching up, and are decent on r700 hardware.

There is a certain delay because the driver development starts much later than it does with the blobs, but the drivers are awesome.

[pingufunkybeat]

Not true at all. Even with AMD's specifications the open source drivers are poor compared to the proprietary ones, especially nVidia's proprietary drivers. When new hardware generations arrive, the proprietary drivers has already been in the works for a long time. If what you are saying were true, we would have very good open source drivers for AMD's GPUs by now, with AMD both releasing documentation and contributing to the drivers. But we know that's not the case.

The drivers for r500 and earlier are not only very good, they are full-featured and excellent, and by most accounts superior to the old blob in most respects. What are you talking about?

It's an issue of the delay with newer hardware and basic changes to Mesa infrastructure which need to be done (OpenGL 3 stuff).

[pingufunkybeat]

And btw, maybe you should follow your own advice and leave the decisions to vendors as to how they are going to support their product.

Sure, but a company which does not support Linux and open source should not expect support from the Linux community either.

There will always be apologists like you, but if 99% of all hardware has available specs and free drivers, then somebody has to stop playing the offended diva and do the decent thing -- release the specs.

[kraftman]

Not true at all. Even with AMD's specifications the open source drivers are poor compared to the proprietary ones, especially nVidia's proprietary drivers. When new hardware generations arrive, the proprietary drivers has already been in the works for a long time. If what you are saying were true, we would have very good open source drivers for AMD's GPUs by now, with AMD both releasing documentation and contributing to the drivers. But we know that's not the case.

You should realize Open Source drivers are less mature than proprietary, but they even beat proprietary drivers in some areas.

[kraftman]

Sure, but a company which does not support Linux and open source should not expect support from the Linux community either.

There will always be apologists like you, but if 99% of all hardware has available specs and free drivers, then somebody has to stop playing the offended diva and do the decent thing -- release the specs.

Release the specs... and still write drivers, but using Open Source model. This is what we want, I guess. It means much more than just releasing the specs.

[Remco]

Release the specs... and still write drivers, but using Open Source model. This is what we want, I guess. It means much more than just releasing the specs.

We want ponies and free beer, too. Doesn't mean that AMD has to provide it for us, or even be mad at us for demanding such unreasonable things.

[birdie]

We need more people like him. People that just work to make Linux better (as a gaming platform). People that do something, instead of participating in absolutely preposterous flamewars like KDE vs. Gnome or Qt vs. GTK, etc.

[kraftman]

We want ponies and free beer, too. Doesn't mean that AMD has to provide it for us, or even be mad at us for demanding such unreasonable things.

It seems there are companies who do 'unreasonable' things like Intel, Atheros... Tell them now, they're not reasonable.

[kevinbenko]

But....

Dude, if you don't do Linux for the Freedom, just go get yourself a copy of OSX and live a happy life.

The concept of freedom must, necessarily, also include the freedom to choose to run proprietary, non-open, software. Otherwise, to assert that freedom excludes the opportunity to make such a choice displays a lack of freedom, does it not?

[smitty3268]

The concept of freedom must, necessarily, also include the freedom to choose to run proprietary, non-open, software. Otherwise, to assert that freedom excludes the opportunity to make such a choice displays a lack of freedom, does it not?

I don't think anyone is saying you shouldn't be able to use proprietary drivers if you want to. Just stop telling the rest of us to give up on our free ones.