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  • #11
    Originally posted by marek View Post
    It will always be a hobby project as long as it's free.
    The kernel has managed to do something that the graphics people haven't. It managed to create a financially sustainable ecosystem around it that allows it to be free and open and -more important- support the people working on it. At least some of them.

    This was presumably achieved because the kernel was cheaper and better in every way compared to the competition.

    And thats the challenge to the graphics people. Can they create an ecosystem that can sustain itself and be attractive for companies or whatever to put their money on?

    Wayland is getting some attention. Intel is employing the main dev and nokia people hack on it. Also they got meego running on it but thats only part of the graphic stack. Mesa/G3D needs to find a way of becoming more attractive.

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    • #12
      Originally posted by 89c51 View Post
      The kernel has managed to do something that the graphics people haven't. It managed to create a financially sustainable ecosystem around it that allows it to be free and open and -more important- support the people working on it. At least some of them.

      This was presumably achieved because the kernel was cheaper and better in every way compared to the competition.

      And thats the challenge to the graphics people. Can they create an ecosystem that can sustain itself and be attractive for companies or whatever to put their money on?

      Wayland is getting some attention. Intel is employing the main dev and nokia people hack on it. Also they got meego running on it but thats only part of the graphic stack. Mesa/G3D needs to find a way of becoming more attractive.
      You seem to think that somehow the open source stack will die if it doesn't achieve this. It won't there will always be people willing to hack on open source graphics drivers, there is a sustainable ecosystem its just no producing things at the same level as dedicated 100 man teams, but the thing is that doesn't directly affect the developer ecosystem. Some distros cannot ship binary drivers no matter what they do, so there will always exist a market for open source drivers. Now they may not have the featureset that people on here care about but that doesn't actually matter to the sustainability.

      Dave.

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      • #13
        Originally posted by airlied View Post
        You seem to think that somehow the open source stack will die if it doesn't achieve this. It won't there will always be people willing to hack on open source graphics drivers, there is a sustainable ecosystem its just no producing things at the same level as dedicated 100 man teams, but the thing is that doesn't directly affect the developer ecosystem. Some distros cannot ship binary drivers no matter what they do, so there will always exist a market for open source drivers. Now they may not have the featureset that people on here care about but that doesn't actually matter to the sustainability.

        Dave.
        No. Nothing will die. As you wrote there will always be people willing to hack. My post was only a thought on how it can be enhanced in a way that will be beneficial for the devs -jobs & steady income- and for the users -features-. This lack of manpower is hurting everything and the best way to attract people is money.

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        • #14
          Originally posted by airlied View Post
          You seem to think that somehow the open source stack will die if it doesn't achieve this. It won't there will always be people willing to hack on open source graphics drivers, there is a sustainable ecosystem its just no producing things at the same level as dedicated 100 man teams
          When AMD or Intel releases a new CPU, Linux supports it with little to no effort as long as you don't need it to take advantage of new instructions and such. The same can not be said of graphics, unless drivers are written for each new generation they won't work at all. Of course code doesn't disappear but if you measure the quality of drivers compared to how recent the generation is, then yes it might certainly regress not just stagnate.

          The R500 is now the 5th most recent generation after N. Islands, Evergreen, R700 and R600, when Southern Islands is released they'd be the 6th most recent. Unless new code is written fast enough to keep up Linux will only function well on graphics cards found in museums and not on recent PCs. So I disagree with you, there's certainly a critical mass and below that things get worse, not better. And vendors willing to disclose their specs, of course - I think if AMD changed their mind you'd agree things would go downhill, fast.

          That said, I don't think now is the time to be glum, it looks a lot better today than back in 2007 when AMD first opened their specs. Back then I seem to remember everyone serious being on closed nVidia/ATI drivers, while the few people on open Intel drivers just wanted to get a picture. Now the graphics stack is starting to look like the 21st century and the generations of backlog the open source team has had is shrinking. But then when you start at the bottom, I guess there's no other way than up either...

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          • #15
            Originally posted by Kjella View Post
            When AMD or Intel releases a new CPU, Linux supports it with little to no effort as long as you don't need it to take advantage of new instructions and such. The same can not be said of graphics, unless drivers are written for each new generation they won't work at all. Of course code doesn't disappear but if you measure the quality of drivers compared to how recent the generation is, then yes it might certainly regress not just stagnate.

            The R500 is now the 5th most recent generation after N. Islands, Evergreen, R700 and R600, when Southern Islands is released they'd be the 6th most recent. Unless new code is written fast enough to keep up Linux will only function well on graphics cards found in museums and not on recent PCs. So I disagree with you, there's certainly a critical mass and below that things get worse, not better. And vendors willing to disclose their specs, of course - I think if AMD changed their mind you'd agree things would go downhill, fast.
            From my limited understanding of HW i get the impression that x86 chips are more close to each other than the various GPUs from different manufacturers. Even if thats not true the manufacturers cannot afford their CPUs not running on linux and hence they play with the kernel rules. They all provide patches to the mainline kernel and don't depend on volunteers.

            In the graphics side of things most companies do their own thing. They either have blobs or do their own thing without trying to work on a widely accepted solution (Intel situation with classic Mesa). At least AMD provides documents and has a few devs on the payroll even thought its not enough to keep up with the fast paced GPU development.

            What slightly bugs me in the whole situation is that noone has tried to address the problem. ie the FSF, the Linux foundation or all the open source foundation can probably pay a dev or two -+ ask the community to chip in- in order to get a feature full OpenCL or OpenGL state tracker for G3D (or whatever is needed).

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            • #16
              Originally posted by 89c51 View Post
              From my limited understanding of HW i get the impression that x86 chips are more close to each other than the various GPUs from different manufacturers. (...) What slightly bugs me in the whole situation is that noone has tried to address the problem.
              CPUs are pretty much just hardware with a fixed interface, they must run low-level x86/x86_64 code compiled by others. Graphics companies can change their hardware and software at will, as long as they end up with something DirectX/OpenGL compliant. The AMD hardware and software guys talk to each other, we change the hardware so and you change the drivers so. There's no stable hardware interface and that's not really a problem that can be "solved". All you can hope for is to have enough open source developers to shadow what the binary driver developers are doing - or at least the most essential parts.

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              • #17
                Maybe better get a nv card to play with nouveau instead, much faster

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by Kjella View Post
                  All you can hope for is to have enough open source developers to shadow what the binary driver developers are doing - or at least the most essential parts.
                  but thats exactly what causes -and will continue to cause if it doesn't get solved- all the problems with the open source stack

                  lack of manpower

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                  • #19
                    Even a lowend 9400 gt with nouveau beats a my hd 5670. It is about 3-4 times faster with trine and has correct rendering.

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                    • #20
                      But isn't this performance advantage only limited to a small range of cards?

                      I don't know how often you test, but there has been a lot of improvement in the last couple of years. My HD4550 does Prey at high quality and high definition and manages to make it playable.

                      It's possible that the CPU-boundedness is preventing better frame rates on more powerful cards, though.

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