NVIDIA Publishes Code For X Synchronization Fences

[mirv]

It's very interesting to see a thread with people bashing nvidia for once (and also others trying to defend it). It's good for a laugh.
Regardless, anything nvidia contributes to xorg will only be done out of self interest. If it's of benefit to the community really doesn't matter - it being of benefit to nvidia does. The only reason nvidia has opened up the vdpau api is to get more people using it - and thus buying nvidia cards for using it (they have direct hardware support for it, so it should well run better on their cards).
AMD obviously see a good business decision in investing in open source drivers and other things that are good for the community - but again this isn't to be nice, it's about business.

[jmcharron]

Then your thinking is very wrong. Fanboyism is down the street to the left.

Mix in some #'s if your going to tell me I'm wrong... Because your just being a troll. Your posts make up about a third of this thead, atm

Phononix Graphics Survey 09

http://www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/phx_2009_survey_results/2.png

http://www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/phx_2009_survey_results/3.png

Phononix Graphics Servey 08

http://www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/lgs_2008_results/2.png

http://www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/lgs_2008_results/3.png

Phoronix Graphics Survey 07

http://www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/924/03.png

http://www.phoronix.com/data/img/results/924/03.png

[monraaf]

I don't get all this nvidia bashing in this thread. You can bash them for not being cooperative with the development of an open source driver but for this? I wish the fglrx team was as involved as nvidia.

Where nvidia contributes to xorg for the benefit of the users of their binary drivers and actively monitors changes to xorg to prevent breakage with their binary driver, the fglrx team seems to live and work on their own little island and don't seem to care much about breakage.

[kazetsukai]

There's a difference in what is persued and what is currently the situation. What I said was that if it is OK to just have a blob and no FLOSS then one might as well run Windows or Mac OS X in case one wants Unix.

I cannot even come close to comprehending THIS insane view on drivers. Just because the video driver is closed we are better off running Windows? What drug are you on?

As a user, I can greatly benefit from using Linux over Windows/OSX for -countless- reasons other than the simple fact that it is an open system. Your way of phrasing this suggests otherwise.

Start posting about function rather than pure philosophy, at least your extremist views will have a sliver of reason to them that way.

[MaestroMaus]

I don't get all this nvidia bashing in this thread. You can bash them for not being cooperative with the development of an open source driver but for this? I wish the fglrx team was as involved as nvidia.

Where nvidia contributes to xorg for the benefit of the users of their binary drivers and actively monitors changes to xorg to prevent breakage with their binary driver, the fglrx team seems to live and work on their own little island and don't seem to care much about breakage.

You do know they actually spend money and manpower themselves on the OS driver right? That undermines every single argument you just turned up with.

[MaestroMaus]

Actually that's not right... the work which led to the more recent improvements in fglrx started almost a year before we made the decision to restart open source graphics driver support. The primary reasons were (a) some of AMD's CPU customers (OEMs) pushed very hard for open source graphics support, and (b) having both CPU and GPU businesses meant that the worst-case scenarios linked to offering open source GPU documentation and code would be unlikely to kill the company.

That is really interesting! I did not suspect that at all.

There were certainly a few people arguing internally that proprietary drivers should die Die DIE !!! but that was not the basis for the final decision.

The primary objective was to let distros offer a really good out-of-box experience when installing on a typical PC, which was hard to do with proprietary drivers.

Again, very interesting. I did not think reading this useless argument over here would end up with info I wouldn't want to miss.

Yeah, they were. The hard part was that everyone had good reasons for saying what they did. Linux is used in a lot of different markets, often having totally different requirements and priorities, so the "obvious choice" for one market may seem totally insane in the eyes of someone familiar with a different part of the Linux market.

The great thing is that everyone was able to converge on a common plan in the end, and that we're all still talking to each other

Could you give an example of a good reason why you wouldn't wan't to have an opensource driver in Linux please?

Furthermore, could you please tell what the internal opinion is over there of how the OS ati driver is shaping up?

Thanks for the reply's Bridgman!

EDIT: oh, and I do know where way off topic but I don't think anyone is going to care :P

[rohcQaH]

Could you give an example of a good reason why you wouldn't wan't to have an opensource driver in Linux please?

Because nobody who builds workstations or embedded devices actually cares? For those, developing an OS driver would be a giant waste of resources.

Of course you need to limit your view to certain markets to make that point, like bridgman said.

[MaestroMaus]

Because nobody who builds workstations or embedded devices actually cares? For those, developing an OS driver would be a giant waste of resources.

Of course you need to limit your view to certain markets to make that point, like bridgman said.

That point can also be made for the closed source driver, right?

[kraftman]

V!ncent get off your open source high horse. I think you just don't like the fact that nvidia has been and will continue to be the flagship hardware/driver provider for most causal Linux users. Nvidia doesn't need open source drivers to get Linux market share so way even bother... The only reason AMD opened up is because ATI kept such a lousy track record in the past.

Some proofs of this? I'm not interested in Phoronix numbers, because those aren't very high numbers to proof this (and notice OS Ati drivers + Catalyst are nearly catching up to nvidia blob). Nvidia has messed up hardware and only binary blob while Ati has wonderful hardware and OS drivers that beats nvidia blob in many aspects, so I suspect their marketshare will go away in the near future.

[kazetsukai]

Some proofs of this?

Anyone who has been around the Linux scene for 6-7 years and isn't waving an ATI fanboy flag can tell you. The only reason ATI opened up was because of their terrible track record with Linux driver releases.

(and notice OS Ati drivers + Catalyst are nearly catching up to nvidia blob).

In what ways, on games that are running the Quake2 or *gasp* Quake3 engine? ATI OSS drivers aren't even on the NVIDIA blob's horizon, you just think so because they can run Compiz and support multimonitor and can achieve similar framerates on 15 year old game engines.

Nvidia has messed up hardware...

"Some proofs of this"? Last time I checked my card works everywhere ATI's doesn't on Linux, including many instances on Wine and applications which use recent OpenGL technology.

and OS drivers that beats nvidia blob in many aspects

in zero aspects. Get your facts right and stop dreaming.