AMD's opensource lies exposed

[pingufunkybeat]

Yes and where performance counts for people that want it people do recompile. If this wasn't the case there would be no need for alternative compilers for linux now would there?

I've told you before, I don't mind you using the blob if it rocks your boat, or using Visual Studio to compile KDE for the extra diesel juice baby. Knock yourself out.

But you're advocating abolishing free drivers and only having blobs as some sort of "solution." That's like replacing GCC with ICC because of "extra juice", "manufacturer knows best because of secrets and optimisations", "it is here now, who knows when GCC will catch up", and all that stuff.

True, the open Radeon drivers are still missing functionality (namely, OpenGL 3+). But they are IMPROVING, and improving rapidly. This is good for Linux, good for the kernel, good for distributions, good for users. Good for everybody.

[crazycheese]

Becasue he cares about open source?

Why code KDE when there's a perfectly good Mac OSX? Why code for vim when there's a perfectly good Visual Studio?

There are many very good reasons for open drivers -- easier to maintain for distributions, it is LEGAL (!!!) to distribute them, they do not violate the GPL (!!!), they work with multi-screen setups properly, support kernel modesetting, work out of the box, etc.

These are good reasons.

These are excellent reasons.
(It is completely legal to distribute blobs btw, unless blob license itself prohibits it)

But we have completely different fish under the hood.
If we compare Adobe Audition vs Audacity, the latter has zero SMP/Threading support.
That means, when doing any kind of work(several hours soundtrack normalisation and denoise for example) only one core works, because developers are happy with it.
In order to change that, we need people paying developers to change their mind or pay devs with different picture on the mind.

But I can perfectly live on with this situation.

However, when I buy hardware I expect it to work.
It is not coming for free (for already present featureset) in my box and it dies some day(burns, performance evolution of technology, etc).

So, if Im to buy 200$ card, I want 200$ of performance(or featureset, as you wish).
The rather very small group, which is not interested in this are hardware hackers/students, that buy ot for examination, experimentation etc.

So the (excellent) reasons you mentioned are superb, but are just part of multiplicator - multiplicator itself being performance(or featureset) delivered via driver implementation.

Performance X Your_excellent_opensource_reasons

Say, windows user buys 30$ card which consumes 0.03$ of energy to complete task identical to linux user buying 3000$ card which consumes 30$ of energy due to bad drivers. What kind of support is this? Not to mention those (theoretical) 3000$ go into windows user driver development...

If you claim, it is unneeded and wish for clean (but heavily broken) opensource is greater than the result of using the hardware, you deem linux an operating environiment for "hackers/students, for examination, experimentation etc." You can place large red cross on it ever making to desktop.

Nvidia blob is nearly perfect. AMD is polishing its own and loosing in many places(notably the mentioned aging time and arch/os/kernel/gcc/glibc version coverage). Opensource AMD is deemed second class with some serious features not to be implemented.

This is not good way to go.

Ask yourself why do YOU care about opensource drivers? For technical specifications because you hack around?
Or for less bugs, endless lifetime support and security - as a valuable additional multiplicator to performance(or featureset) you get from opensource drivers?

If AMD opensource would get more devs, reach 70-80% of blob acceleration, same day(or month..) support for new hw, get videodecode accel for unencrypted streams, opencl(why not?) - that would be a usable driver every single case favorable over nvidia crappy blob.

[deanjo]

They did with r300g, for the most part. And KMS is useful for stability. Nvidia used to lock up on me when switching VTs. Never happened with free drivers and KMS, because it's properly handled.

Well I've never had a VT lock on me either with the Nvidia blobs. And yes I really do mean never. I have on many occasions however had kernel panics trying to get RS690 systems to simply boot to the desktop with the free drivers.

It is the opinion of Linux Torvalds and a number of high-profile kernel developers. The fact that they aren't pursuing it, but ignoring the existence of Nvidia and their blobs doesn't change this.

Opinion isn't law. Two very different things.

Kernel hackers, for example, refuse to deal with bugs involving blobs. X people and kernel people refuse to introduce blob-only functionality into their software.

Never said they should deal with the bugs in a blob. The blob developers are well qualified to handle them. Nor have the blob developers ever asked the kernel developers to attempt to do so.

Many distros refuse to ship them because of unclear legal situation. Package maintainers have problems because upgrading is difficult (for example, upgrading the Nvidia drivers automatically can b0rk your system when they drop support for your chipset, happened to me).

Actually packaging a blob is pretty easy to do. DKMS also handles upgrades pretty well. The legal situation is actually very clear from the blob side of things.

2.1.2 Linux Exception. Notwithstanding the foregoing terms of Section 2.1.1, SOFTWARE designed exclusively for use on the Linux operating system may be copied and redistributed, provided that the binary files thereof are not modified in any way (except for unzipping of compressed files).

It is not a legality that is preventing distros from including the drivers, it is a "morality" decision.

When there is a bug, it's impossible to trace.

For you, not for the graphic drivers developers.

Lol at KDE. KDE was UNUSABLE on Nvidia for YEARS. Unusable! Because they didn't accelerate things which were important for desktop effects, but were not used in games. The only solution was waiting for Nvidia to fix it.

Used KDE and nvidia for years. It has always been a smooth experience. Desktop effects are pretty low priority for me and I always disable them since they serve no practical purpose at all.

RedHat loves the blobs so much that they are funding nouveau developers to reverse engineer the blob.

Good for them.

Novell loves them so much that they were working on RadeonHD.

Actually AMD hired them to do so.

What are you smoking? The blobs are foreign tissue which cause problems for developers, package maintainers, distribution, and users.

Not smoking anything at all, package maintenance is no more trouble then any other package, users find installing blobs easy enough and distributions.

Only gamers and some GPGPU guys prefer them because they absolutely need the performance.

If this was true then everyone but them would run IGP's in the first place.

[mirv]

Without the open source drivers, you wouldn't be seeing advances in graphics on linux. Both nvidia and amd don't care about such things with the proprietary drivers - they care about making money with them.
It's not really a coincidence that there's been a flurry of activity since the AMD open source drivers kicked into gear.

[darkbasic]

Come on... do you expect to run X as root forever? Without KMS you can't, I don't want to trade security for stupid blobs.

[D0pamine]

And nvidia:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-display-amd64-96.43.19-driver.html

The problems with AMD opensource driver are following:
- ultra small crew
- development support is not connected to selling of cards(buy, don't buy - no matter)
-- same day support will hardly ever happen(maybe same half-year support is realistic)
- it will never reach full possible speed due to absence of close-to-hardware tools and direct communication with designers.
- no video acceleration, probably will never appear

If you buy a discrete card, 99,99% of people that do that, expect performance from it. Either its closed source or opensource matters maybe for 10% once they realise its either proprietary and functioning or opensource and inferrior code. Sadly, Nvidia has way better proprietary. So the decision for them is obvious.

Untill AMD realises this. Until it decides to change it. There will be no change in amounts of cards from AMD deployed under linux.

By ultra small crew you mean absolutely anyone who cares to do it?. Potentially every human on the face of the earth?

[deanjo]

Come on... do you expect to run X as root forever? Without KMS you can't, I don't want to trade security for stupid blobs.

The nvidia blobs haven't required to run as root for a long time now.

[darkbasic]

Non mi risulta, citami la fonte.

[deanjo]

The only thing you need is access to the /dev/nvidia* nodes, which is achieved by putting yourself in the video group.

[D0pamine]

Some people commenting on this thread simply do not understand!