Is ATI really on par with NVIDIA now?

[d2kx]

I haven't been actively discussing this topic on here, but have been following what users & AMD say with great interest. Thank you for those long explanations, bridgman!

I, personally, have started using Linux, because it is free, as in freedom, but still, I am using some proprietary software here and there (mainly talking about fglrx and Windows for gaming, which I am doing less and less). Hopefully, this will change in the not too distant future

[Regenwald]

hm "come on all you hackers..."
is there an increase of x-devs/ati-hackers? are more people working now on the oos-driver? now that there are docs (for several months..), i wonder wheather there are more people working on x-drivers...
x is definitly *the* dark corner in linux...

[deanjo]

hm "come on all you hackers..."
is there an increase of x-devs/ati-hackers? are more people working now on the oos-driver? now that there are docs (for several months..), i wonder wheather there are more people working on x-drivers...
x is definitly *the* dark corner in linux...

lol. If it wasn't for the contribs of intel/amd/novell developers the x community would be going "w00t!!!! We won!! We got docs!! Now what? Who want's to write drivers?"
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*more silence*

[bridgman]

also Red Hat (airlied) and a couple of very active independents (nha and MostAwesomeDude) who did nearly all of the R5xx 3D work and are continuing to work on the code to get it ready for porting to Gallium. Glisse is doing some interesting work on analyzing and preventing lockups... I know I'm forgetting someone else, sorry.

EDIT - forgot osiris and z3ro.

The big change I see is that 5 years ago there were lots of independent developers who did something different during the day and hacked on X during the evenings; now they all work for distros or IHVs. We need to help the next crop of developers get started, unfortunately it's a pretty complex environment these days for someone trying to get started.

[Redeeman]

For years, people cried for documentation on ATI cards now that they get it they say that it's not enough.

AMD put out the specs. For years the community said "We aren't asking you to write the drivers, we will do it, we could do a better job."

AMD fulfilled it's end, it time for the FOSS developers to put up or shut up.

Yes, except that they havent actually done it yet, they are in the PROCESS of fulfilling their end, and once they have done, nothing more can be expected of them. If they do more, thats great, if not, well.. their choice..

[Vighy]

also Red Hat (airlied) and a couple of very active independents (nha and MostAwesomeDude) who did nearly all of the R5xx 3D work and are continuing to work on the code to get it ready for porting to Gallium. Glisse is doing some interesting work on analyzing and preventing lockups... I know I'm forgetting someone else, sorry.

EDIT - forgot osiris and z3ro.

The big change I see is that 5 years ago there were lots of independent developers who did something different during the day and hacked on X during the evenings; now they all work for distros or IHVs. We need to help the next crop of developers get started, unfortunately it's a pretty complex environment these days for someone trying to get started.

How could people start? what's the base knowledge you have to own to be able to put your hands on such an enormous project?
These are some of the initial problems to solve: provide, to the ones that would like to start, a way to grow and learn how to manage such problems.

Is there any strategy to solve this situation?

[Melcar]

How could people start? what's the base knowledge you have to own to be able to put your hands on such an enormous project?
These are some of the initial problems to solve: provide, to the ones that would like to start, a way to grow and learn how to manage such problems.

Is there any strategy to solve this situation?

Everyone seemed confident before. They just got taken by surprise and are overwhelmed. I don't think many were expecting the level of commitment AMD has shown.

[oblivious_maximus]

It was late, and I was hungry, sorry

No need to appologize, it must be tiring sometimes(or often perhaps) having to respond to so many people's concerns/queries. Thanks for being such a dilligent responder.

It's apparent from the replies that my own posts don't even really explain very well what I'm thinking here, and that I'm not even sure myself what I'm thinking. It all stems from my simply wanting to use the hardware I bought without fear of lockups, and from the clear functionality & stability disparity between the Windows and Linux drivers. From my perspective fglrx just doesn't seem like something worth putting much continued effort into. I guess I'll have to hold out and see if my opinion on that can be changed, but the fact that you're telling me I can't rely on being able to use any given X feature doesn't help my optimism. I'm still really thinking "seriously?" on that point, I just don't understand how "we don't support using x or y feature of X" can be AMD's position.

That is not our message at all. If you see anybody or any materials saying that please let me know and I will get them fixed. I am saying that fglrx makes sense but that is not the same as it being "the only thing that makes sense"

I'll see if I can't find some Phoronix articles that left me with that impression, but your own words from earlier in that post are a good example of what I'm talking about. You wrote:

Some customers would like to see it all invested in feature-rich and high performance proprietary drivers, others would like to see it all invested in open source drivers -- but the two groups have totally different priorities and the solution for one will not satisfy the other.

"feature-rich and high performance proprietary drivers" vs "open source drivers". The implication being that open source drivers couldn't possibly be high performance and feature rich. Every time the two approaches are mentioned together(seemingly, from my craptastic memory at least), it's that same dichotomy.

Something I'm sure of my thoughts on - the people who want feature rich and high performance but don't care about openness would still be quite happy with a feature rich and high performance open driver, wouldn't they? I do accept your point though, re: AMD's existing software investment so please don't take this paragraph as an argument for abandoning flgrx, more as an argument for keeping an open mind (which seems to be the plan anyway, from the rest of your post so...).

Seeing proprietary code does not preclude someone from working on open source but in order to get the benefits you expect they would have to *copy* or transcribe that code into the open source drivers -- which we do not allow.

I think you're overestimating my expectations a little (which is probably my fault ). In much the same way I don't want to use a driver which causes me to stress over when I'm next going to have to use the reset button, I don't want to buy a 3D card only to get <50% of its capability because of the driver. I just hope that if that's the level of optimization that X.org devs are able to provide, AMD would be inclined to make efforts to push performance a bit higher, so that the performance difference between open and closed isn't a night and day -type contrast. The end of your post seems to indicate that's kind of already on the roadmap (certainly infrastructure-wise at least), so I'm glad to hear that.

I just want to explain that I wasn't suggesting AMD just drop Catalyst for Linux altogether, immediately. Obviously it's working for some people/customers. And I wasn't suggesting that AMD put in enough people-power to duplicate Catalyst performance/feature-wise with ati/radeonhd. Just that I think it would ultimately be advantageous for AMD to put more resources into helping to make the open driver(s) as good as they can be. I don't see why that has to mean ripping code out of fglrx, but I'm just a humble(ok not so humble) user.

I have certainly become a Free software lover, and quite anti-proprietary software over the last few years, but my use of "Linux and Free software" was more intended to be an all-project-encompassing term, X.org, Mesa, the various distros themselves, and the BSDs also, rather than a "Free=correct proprietary=incorrect" -type comment. It seems to me once the open drivers are up and running, ATI hardware would be supported on a truckload more operating systems than at present(and not just GNU/Linux ones), with fglrx only being tested on 3 distros (2 of which nodody outside an office really uses).

[Kano]

ATI can keep the fglrx drivers, but the bugs in there usually stay in for years. It is even more likely that new bugs are added: like 8-6 is completely unsable for wine due to corrupts, 8-5 worked at least most of the time. There are several other errors, and the attitude that "we don't add kernel x support until it is released" it absolutely crap. In most cases there are ways to run the drivers with new kernels, but why on earth do others need to do the job for ATI? At least for the drivers of the current hardware lineup Nvidia provides 2.6.26 capable drivers, but better don't expect that even when there is rc9 now... And the kernel 2.6.26 IS used in Ubuntu/intrepid! So it would be extra funny to have got a build target which does not compile Something that only ATI can do.

[bridgman]

ATI can keep the fglrx drivers, but the bugs in there usually stay in for years. It is even more likely that new bugs are added: like 8-6 is completely unsable for wine due to corrupts, 8-5 worked at least most of the time. There are several other errors, and the attitude that "we don't add kernel x support until it is released" it absolutely crap. In most cases there are ways to run the drivers with new kernels, but why on earth do others need to do the job for ATI? At least for the drivers of the current hardware lineup Nvidia provides 2.6.26 capable drivers, but better don't expect that even when there is rc9 now... And the kernel 2.6.26 IS used in Ubuntu/intrepid! So it would be extra funny to have got a build target which does not compile Something that only ATI can do.

In fairness, the "attitude" is that support for unreleased kernels and unreleased distro versions is lower priority than some of the *other* issues our users would like to see addressed -- so we work on those other issues first.

Once most of the other hot issues get settled we should be able to start working earlier with new kernel and OS versions. Our intent is still for open source drivers to track the bleeding edge while fglrx focuses on released distros and kernel versions, but I think we would all like to start working earlier on new stuff coming from upstream.