Intel Winning Over NVIDIA For Linux Enthusiasts

[uid313]

Well, Windows and closed source, probably will not exist after 3-5 years. So nvidia must invest on "Socialist/Free".

Windows have been here for over 25 years ago. It has a dominance on the market. It is here to stay, Windows is not going anywhere.
Microsoft is not like Google who launches a service and drops it a year later. Microsoft is strongly committed to their products, which is why they're trusted and relied on so much. Microsoft's support makes Ubuntu's LTS releases look like a joke. Windows XP was released 10 years ago, and it will still be supported for 2 more years.

As for Linus Torvalds, he don't care about politics, socialism or free software. Linus cares about developing a good kernel and finds the open source software development model to be well suited for that.

I'm with you. While this is a very frequent issue in most technical sites, Phoronix is probably the worst offender.

Michael, seriously, there are many different colors. Make them easily distinguishable. It's not that difficult.

Michael does not pick the colors, its scripted by some crappy algorithm.
Presumably it was worse before, and they actually "improved" the color pick function, but it still sucks.
Patches to Phoronix Test Suite are welcome.

I actually tried write a improved variant, but it has not been merged. Maybe it is not so good, but maybe it is at least better than the current implementation.
It uses HSL color rotation. But someone told me HSL have a problem that it does not map colors all that good.

<?php

$items_to_benchmark = 16;
$h = 0;
$s = 100;
$l = 50;

if ($items_to_benchmark < 8) {
  $increase_hue_by = 360 / $items_to_benchmark;
} else {
  $increase_hue_by = 45;
}

for ($i = 0; $i < $items_to_benchmark; $i++) {
  if ($h == 360) {
    $s -= 33;
    $l += 10;
  }
  $color = "hsl($h, $s%, $l%)";
  echo "<div style=\"background-color: $color\">&nbsp;</div>\n";
  $h += $increase_hue_by;
}  

?>

Try the code, write a patch and send it in.

Time to cancel steam on linux. Seems most users won't be able to run the games anyways.

Those with Nvidia cards surely will.

That would be about 2 years ago.

Well, depends on what you do.
AMD have more cores, so might be good for multi-threaded stuff like raytracing. While Intel might be better at gaming.

In that document are some nice easy distinguishable colors.

Or maybe the Tango color scheme?
http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_I...eme_Guidelines

Microsoft makes enough profits from Windows and Office still, but unless something dramatically changes there is no future for them.

Microsoft is working a lot on the cloud with Azure.

[chithanh]

Well, Windows and closed source, probably will not exist after 3-5 years. So nvidia must invest on "Socialist/Free".

You've gotta be kidding me.

I don't know about closed source in general, but Microsoft is currently struggling in the markets to stay relevant:

• Mass exodus of developers (Source [PDF])
• Online search/advertising business makes nothing but losses (Source)
• Mobile marketshare drops from 13% to 2% between WP7 and WP8 launch
• Need to give away Office Web Apps for free in order to make users interested in SkyDrive
• OEMs are upset after Microsoft Surface tablet surprise, $85 license cost for Windows RT makes them uncompetitive both against Microsoft's offering and Android / iOS devices

Microsoft makes enough profits from Windows and Office still, but unless something dramatically changes there is no future for them.

[Redi44]

Can intel play Oilrush?

According to their forum the new Intel HD 4000 should be capable of playing OilRush on HD [1280x720] resolution. Altrought they say that the drivers are "problematic".
BTW the thread on their website was started by me, because I found that game in one gameshop in the UK and wanted to support them. You can found the thread here.

[ldesnogu]

Even on the Android side one needs to be careful. I was very surprised with the Nexus 7 being Nvidia based. I saw some XDA content where they said that TI's OMAP platform is the only one that is all open source drivers. (Contrast with Nvidia and Qualcomm.) So guess what platform any Android devices will be that I buy next.

This is completely wrong: TI OMAP use IMG tech GPU and their drivers are not open source.

EDIT: Oops I had missed liam answer.

[VinzC]

Awesome chart. Four shades of blue and two shades of red. Hang on; let me get my laptop with the Pantone color sensor to detect the subtle variances that my eyes can't distinguish.

I second that too!

[thofke]

The first thing I see in the graphic is that almost everything is blue or red. How are we supposed to distinguish nVidia and Innotech / VMWare and Cirrus?

First google hit: http://www.perceptualedge.com/articl...sing_color.pdf
In that document are some nice easy distinguishable colors.

But you can also learn from LibreOffice et al (data is made up and doesn't add up to 100%, I don't care):


Note the colors and the dots which have different shapes. It is already enough if you let the lines start and end with these shapes instead of dots.

[XorEaxEax]

I'm sure Intel has scored points with Linux users by providing good open source drivers, still, to me it seems that it has at best only accelerated what was going to happen anyway, which is that igpu solutions will eventually make discrete graphics just about obsolete on end user desktops. NVidia has obviously seen this aswell, however as they can't provide an igpu solution for x86 due to not getting a licence, they've turned towards arm.

Meanwhile there will still be markets for high performance GPU's in 3d and hpc, areas in which Linux is huge, and those were already NVidia's targeted markets on Linux to begin with so I don't see NVidia suffering too much from Intel being used increasingly on the Linux end user desktop. It's another matter when we talk about the Windows desktop, people are finding less need for discrete graphics there aswell and that will really hurt NVidia as they (as mentioned due to licencing) can't provide igpu solutions for the x86 on which the vast majority of Windows system runs and that market is of course HUGE.

However this transition will still take time, I'd guess two more generations of igpu architectures before practically all desktop end users find that the performance they get from igpu solutions turns dropping discrete gpu's into a no brainer unless they have particularly high performance needs.

Obviously this is mainly me speculating based upon what trends and technical progresses I've seen, as always time will tell.

[pdffs]

On mobile, your choices are generally Intel, or Intel + nVidia with Optimus. Since Optimus is an unworkable piece of crap on Linux, your only sane choice is to go Intel, even though they fail comparatively on performance.

[scottishduck]

Why not Intel? Well like to use AMD CPU's until they can not compete enough with Intel anymore - might be very soon now.

That would be about 2 years ago.

[boast]

Time to cancel steam on linux. Seems most users won't be able to run the games anyways.