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  • Intel's Brewing A New Linux Driver Release Cycle

    Phoronix: Intel's Brewing A New Linux Driver Release Cycle

    Intel's Open-Source Technology Center (OSTC) team responsible for the open-source Linux graphics driver stack is drafting new plans for how they release their driver code. The release model and release criteria for the Intel Linux driver will be quite different from the status quo of putting out new releases on a timed quarterly basis...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Welcome to our future FOSS overlords...
    • Intel front:
    • Intel's Open-Source Technology Center
    • Intel's open-source Linux graphics team

    • AMD's Linux Team (probably organized in a more granular way I don't know exactly right now)
    • Nouveau - (This is an "error" in the formula)


    Both Intel and AMD is in a fight about conquering Linux, not forming part of the ecosystem. They want to get a bigger and dictatorship influence in the Linux platform and they are able to do it, as they are the bipoly (my own term for oligopoly of two) in the X86 world.
    1. Xorg has key people under Intel's arm. The same as Linux kernel, with gurus like Alan Cox and others.
    2. MESA has the best support under Intel and AMD. They are hiring people everywhere.
    3. Xorg is a non-profit organization, but their governance isn't really so independent.


    MESA is a bazaar, no proper organizational structure. Both Intel and AMD are fighting a battle of influencing the project, some Gallium3D friendly and some not.

    So why people keep being so innocent and not start thinking on this? Why we act of fanboys of one corporation or other like some kind of geek religion? They are trying to own Linux in a strategically twisted way. Of course this is very normal and nothing "wrong", after all they are corporations and not organically made organizations.
    • They develop their own development infraestructures, TTM is mainly from ATI/AMD and GEM from Intel.
    • They have their own strategies.
    • They develop the code to benefit themselves, instead of the project itself.
    • They use it as a way of Public Relationship to clean their images, specially in the Free/Open Source world.
    • They use Free/Open Source as a farm to grow and hire experienced developers, not really to participate on it in the long term. Scientia est potentia.


    Do we want a future of Free/Open Source conquered by a few corporations? Or even worse, a very big one owning both hardware and most developed software on our machines. Because that can happen.

    Of course you all can accuse me of paranoid, I don't care at all...

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by timofonic View Post
      • Intel front:
      • Intel's Open-Source Technology Center
      • Intel's open-source Linux graphics team

      • AMD's Linux Team (probably organized in a more granular way I don't know exactly right now)
      • Nouveau - (This is an "error" in the formula)


      Both Intel and AMD is in a fight about conquering Linux, not forming part of the ecosystem. They want to get a bigger and dictatorship influence in the Linux platform and they are able to do it, as they are the bipoly (my own term for oligopoly of two) in the X86 world.
      1. Xorg has key people under Intel's arm. The same as Linux kernel, with gurus like Alan Cox and others.
      2. MESA has the best support under Intel and AMD. They are hiring people everywhere.
      3. Xorg is a non-profit organization, but their governance isn't really so independent.


      MESA is a bazaar, no proper organizational structure. Both Intel and AMD are fighting a battle of influencing the project, some Gallium3D friendly and some not.

      So why people keep being so innocent and not start thinking on this? Why we act of fanboys of one corporation or other like some kind of geek religion? They are trying to own Linux in a strategically twisted way. Of course this is very normal and nothing "wrong", after all they are corporations and not organically made organizations.
      • They develop their own development infraestructures, TTM is mainly from ATI/AMD and GEM from Intel.
      • They have their own strategies.
      • They develop the code to benefit themselves, instead of the project itself.
      • They use it as a way of Public Relationship to clean their images, specially in the Free/Open Source world.
      • They use Free/Open Source as a farm to grow and hire experienced developers, not really to participate on it in the long term. Scientia est potentia.


      Do we want a future of Free/Open Source conquered by a few corporations? Or even worse, a very big one owning both hardware and most developed software on our machines. Because that can happen.

      Of course you all can accuse me of paranoid, I don't care at all...

      I appreciate proper concern over corporate motivations as much as anybody, but those brilliant people at GNU and Linux have thought of this years ago, and gave us the GPL. If having "control" means proper support for your hardware platform, then let the games begin. As long as I am free to compile my own sources, and free to fork their code, then we shouldn't complain about Intel and AMD fighting over who has better Linux support.

      PS: The server market has, by far, the biggest margins. The world wide server market is dominated by Linux for everything except crappy intranet sites running ASP.NET, and Domain Controllers for logging in Windows workstations. There is an excellent financial motive in proper Linux support.

      Comment


      • #4
        To answer your question, yes. That ensures things work properly.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by timofonic View Post
          bipoly (my own term for oligopoly of two) in the X86 world.
          I believe the word you're looking for is "Duopoly".

          Either way I don't see where you're going with your argument, if that where the case IBM could have crushed all. It's like saying Apple controls all BSD development.

          QT was developed by Nokia, Did that mean they took over Linux? How about Google? They make Android*LE GASP!*

          If you want to be free from the tyranny on Intel, AMD and VIA your only real refuge will be Xcore86, apparently spun out of SiS, with their Vortex86DX which is a 1Ghz i586 compatible SoC without an FPU and only 1Gb of ram and a GPU of unspecified design that maxes out at 1280x1024. Not kidding, thats all I could dig up, their site is extremely sparse on details for all products as the company that apparently makes the SoCs also sells old versions that are based on i486 some VIA parts and even a few RISC based machines based on VIA's design.

          The thing you seem unable to understand is that being HARDWARE MANUFACTURERS, is that they do in fact have to write code that benefits nobody but themselves because both companies designs, while compatible with high level code are actually so completely different at the hardware level that theres no way you can write "one code fits all" even for older hardware from the same company, this goes double for their GPU hardware. Every company took a completely different path to get to the same place ans have all completely changed the entire way GPUs work, hence the difference between old OpenGL2.1 hardware and modern 3.0+ hardware.

          Originally posted by timofonic View Post
          Do we want a future of Free/Open Source conquered by a few corporations? Or even worse, a very big one owning both hardware and most developed software on our machines. Because that can happen.

          Of course you all can accuse me of paranoid, I don't care at all...

          So what then? We move to ARM or MIPS and start all over again from scratch, with no real hardware support, and constant dropping of older ARM builds for any distro that isn't Gentoo? Thus pushing us back to being in a digital stoneage with at most 100k users world wide and no company anywhere giving a fuck about Linux support, even the ones that we could count on for support? Maybe you enjoy jackin' it to a command line on half working hardware, but most of us have shit to do. Well maybe you aren't just paranoid, but straight up stupid...

          So I'm vulgar, In the immortal words of the legendary comedian Denis Leary "Life sucks, get a fucking helmet, alright!?"
          Last edited by Kivada; 11 October 2011, 01:36 AM.

          Comment


          • #6
            Can anybody tell if only the Sandy bridge processors would benefit from the new OpenGL 3.0 support (the mesa 7.2 or mesa 8.0) or even older processors. I have an Asus P5KPL-AM IN board which houses an LGA 775 Intel Dual-Core 2.7 Ghz E5400 (Wolfdale) and has GMA 31 chipset (G31 in short). Would it have some improvement or just the Sandy bridge ones (the icore series) only ?

            Another query, is there anyway to subscribe to the DRI Workqueue bug list . I registered to the site but am unable to subscribe to the page or bug list. If there is a tracking bug for the OpenGL 3.0 support in Intel would really like to know. The link for the dri workqueue http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/WorkQueue

            Looking forward to answers.

            Comment

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