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  • Hey bridgman

    Hey, I'm a newcomer to the forum and I see bridgman asking around about people want in drivers. Well here's what I want:

    I good set of open source drivers for general use, 3D, playback of unprotected content.

    When I want to do something "closed" like watch DRM protected stuff or play high performance games, here's my dream:

    1) shut off video subsystem on the computer (turn off all display drivers, suspend X, etc)
    2) start a virtual machine and boot into Windows. The virtual machine gives the guest OS direct access to the video hardware, so the ATI Windows drivers can take over. (the host video drivers are disabled so there's no conflict)
    3) play games, watch blu-ray, whatever. If I need to run Linux programs at the same time, I can use VNC to access the host OS.
    4) Shutdown the VM, reactivate Linux open source drivers.

    The only thing that's missing is a VM software that can pass through video hardware access to the guest. Then you could just focus on unspoiled open source drivers for Linux, and just let Windows do what it's good for since it's already jacked up with DRM everywhere.

  • #2
    I've had to do that in the past to make some streaming content usable. It's not a very rewarding solution after awhile.

    I think a better approach is to let the user decide how much he or she wants to crapify the machine, and then give them the means to do it themselves, like Ubuntu's approach to the DVD library that cannot be named if you live in certain countries.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by drwowe View Post
      Hey, I'm a newcomer to the forum and I see bridgman asking around about people want in drivers. Well here's what I want:

      I good set of open source drivers for general use, 3D, playback of unprotected content.

      When I want to do something "closed" like watch DRM protected stuff or play high performance games, here's my dream:

      1) shut off video subsystem on the computer (turn off all display drivers, suspend X, etc)
      2) start a virtual machine and boot into Windows. The virtual machine gives the guest OS direct access to the video hardware, so the ATI Windows drivers can take over. (the host video drivers are disabled so there's no conflict)
      3) play games, watch blu-ray, whatever. If I need to run Linux programs at the same time, I can use VNC to access the host OS.
      4) Shutdown the VM, reactivate Linux open source drivers.

      The only thing that's missing is a VM software that can pass through video hardware access to the guest. Then you could just focus on unspoiled open source drivers for Linux, and just let Windows do what it's good for since it's already jacked up with DRM everywhere.
      Speaking about virtualization, it will require support in the processor by the IOMMU. AMD is working on it in it's next version of Pacific. It should be ready in time for Bulldozer.

      Basically you'll need to upgrade your processor to a chip that has an IOMMU that can support IO Virtualization, and that wont be ready until the next version of Pacifica which should be done in time for Bulldozer....


      Hope that makes sense.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by duby229 View Post
        Basically you'll need to upgrade your processor to a chip that has an IOMMU that can support IO Virtualization, and that wont be ready until the next version of Pacifica which should be done in time for Bulldozer....
        That's not QUITE true. VitualBox has virtualization of OpenGL support for Windows guests on Windows hosts- they're working on the others from what I understand. Now, solid, reliable, easy work requires IOMMU assist, but it's not something that is beyond the realm of reality- just not done yet and somewhat difficult to accomplish.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Svartalf View Post
          That's not QUITE true. VitualBox has virtualization of OpenGL support for Windows guests on Windows hosts- they're working on the others from what I understand. Now, solid, reliable, easy work requires IOMMU assist, but it's not something that is beyond the realm of reality- just not done yet and somewhat difficult to accomplish.
          Yeah, I think even vmware has an accelerator that can support up to dx8.1. So there is some limited graphics support, but I dont think it will get anywhere near full featured until we get IO virtualization support in the IOMMU. The nearest I can think of will be the next version of Pacifica, which should be in Bulldozer.

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