AMD's Hiring Open-Source Graphics Developers Still

[V10lator]

I can't understand that AMD bitching, too.

If you choose to use windows you have only blobs.
If you use linux + NVidia you have the blob or a reversed-engineered driver.
If you use linux + Intel you have a crappy FOSS driver.
If you use linux + AMD you have the blob or a AMD sponsored FOSS driver.

So what the hell is the problem with you guys?

[monraaf]

Last time I heard this 'crappy' FOSS Linux Intel driver provides hardware accelerated video decoding, something not provided by the AMD 'sponsored' FOSS driver. Not everyone cares about gaming and such, you know.

Also I don't hear Intel employees telling you that you have to write your own FLOSS driver for the hardware you already paid for. Perhaps because Intel has a proper team of devs working on the FOSS drivers, contrary to AMD with only one active dev.

[Panix]

Last time I heard this 'crappy' FOSS Linux Intel driver provides hardware accelerated video decoding, something not provided by the AMD 'sponsored' FOSS driver. Not everyone cares about gaming and such, you know.

Also I don't hear Intel employees telling you that you have to write your own FLOSS driver for the hardware you already paid for. Perhaps because Intel has a proper team of devs working on the FOSS drivers, contrary to AMD with only one active dev.

That's because ATI, well AMD now, has fake support. They are hiring TWO developers...whooop deee doooo... There's no support, NONE. They are not investing into Linux support when it comes to video drivers. Why do you think there's constant bugs and refusal to cover various features?

The proprietary drivers don't even work that well and they have the Windows drivers to work with. It's pathetic.

Nvidia is evil and I think they suck, too, but just because they're a crappy company, doesn't mean ATI/AMD should be excluded from criticism. Both are preoccupied with supporting Windows and AMD has minimal Open Source support from what I can tell.

AMD is trying to keep up with Intel with processors and motherboard components/chipsets. That's the bread and butter? I think support of Linux graphics is way down the line. You can try to support it by buying graphics hardware but they don't seem to care about investing much more than what they do now. Therefore, your support will include bugs and slow progression of fixes/features/video performance. Is it an equal trade-off?

[V10lator]

Last time I heard this 'crappy' FOSS Linux Intel driver provides hardware accelerated video decoding, something not provided by the AMD 'sponsored' FOSS driver.

The intel driver is not usable (no 2D nor 3D) on my netbook right now, on my desktop with ATI Graphic:

OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV730
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.11-devel (git-ad2999d)
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

Seems like 3D is working with open drivers here. And if you don't want them get the binary blob.

Also I don't hear Intel employees telling you that you have to write your own FLOSS driver for the hardware you already paid for.

No, Intel doesn't tell that, instead they tell... Nothing! Bugs are getting ignored and so on...

P.S. I never sayed nobody has the right to criticism AMD, I only sayed I can't understand it.

[crazycheese]

I'll take the heat.You are a moron.

Seriously, do I have to read more?
Which card do you use ? I guess you are deanjo(no offence, my proprietary f(r)iend ) ) mirrored clone and use AMD.

Are you proud your card performance is wasted under Linux, with company stepping in way nvidia already completed for years, and openCORE driver(ubuntu, oracle and recently amd) usable only for engineers? Such people as yourself literally leave linux to never move direction desktop, opensource or not.

Well rock on!

Linux has 2000 times less 3D superspeed graphics demand.

Linux is a kernel. An efficient state-of-the-art opensource kernel and operating system. Using it for state-of-the-art development or state-of-the-art gaming is something WIDELY adopted. But guess what, every time "linux" and "graphics" tags come up, "nvidia" is almost always associated third tag. Are you happy?

You read Phoronix. You read the state in which the cards are. You read that card X that cost $Y gives Z performance. You are notified. So stop bitching if you do not do your homework.

Yes master, acknowledged master.

People that go FLOSS know there are compromises. Don't claim you don't know that, because that would make you a double moron.

Tell it to HP, RedHat, Google, Mint, Apache - they will look at you as if you are the person you are trying to mimic right now. Because they somehow get only benefits from it. Oh that must be cause they are opensource and not opencore.

I realy can't accept a non compositing KDE grade desktop workflow. I need that card. Therefore I bought the card. There is no screwing around since the AMD driver supports UVD and superspeed graphics. On their driver website, if you had cared, they declare the required pieces of software.

Weee! You need ... which card? Current opensource state is thanks to AMD, usable only on IGP. At BEST. I guarantee!

Oh, by the way...

I case you forgot...
*beep*
Amazing, no? I cannot use the card features, I cannot use UVD, I cannot use superspeed graphics(but AMD opengl is almost always worse than nvidia, unlike directx. But lets call it company priorities, it still works).
Should I use windows for amd card, cause its in the "required pieces of software" on their website?

The FLOSS driver is sponsored, but is Linux software.

This is best shortest single line of BS I ever saw on internet. No seriously. Is windows driver.... erm ... sponsored?..
How about making me pay for the driver in linux in same way I pay for it in windows?
Well, at least AMD actively refused to even think about it.

It is powered by devs paid by AMD but it is not AMD's driver, even though they do probably have some copyright somewhere.

Of course its AMD driver and AMD proprietary! And engineers are thankful to AMD for letting them play with hardware, no doubt. But not normal guys, uh.. I forgot, according to you my gentoo box is for freaks only.

You call opening up docs for FLOSS development marketing. It is not.

I never claimed opening docs is a marketing, I call AMD "opensource strategy" - marketing. So, opening docs is part of the plan, but not the plan itself.
If AMD would call it "technology education strategy" - I would rise no further questions.

Hate 'us' FLOSS lovers for it if we convinced you or something, instead.

Look, I want my hardware working on Linux. Comprende?

Says you. And it is usable. I get very nice desktop workflow out of Kwin with 3D effects. I love it and can't get back to non-3D. As for games, yeah... Dissapointment is your problem. If you don't want FLOSS you go with proprietary crap. That's the trade-off. Also if you don't like that then you can start your own code commits if you realy, REALY care. But I bet you don't care that much, beacuse otherwise you would have made time for it.

Yes, says me. Little guy with linux box. If I go to hardware store I don't want to be looked at as a moron, if I mention "linux". Is it bad? Should I start commiting for it? Or maybe I should commit suicide for you to be happy?

Last time Kodak guy assured me linux is supported. A day later he had two opened printers returned to him, 100? each. I have two HP since then. Linux marketing at best!

If AMD would have put 100 developers behind open driver, and at last stand behind it, take responsibility, I would have never sold my 4770. I was a bit tired of periodic freezes and crashes you know. I hope your desktop does not freeze when you type a response to this post. I seriously hope.

[crazycheese]

No, Intel doesn't tell that, instead they tell... Nothing! Bugs are getting ignored and so on...

P.S. I never sayed nobody has the right to criticism AMD, I only sayed I can't understand it.

We should ask Michael, how he managed to do long Intel sandy bridge test. Or is your notebook PowerVR powered?

[pingufunkybeat]

Just as you have the right to sing praise about how wonderful it is that AMD has partly documented and partly provided some code to interface with some parts of its GPU products. He has the right to complain and bitch about AMD's lack of dedication to the open drivers, its lack of features and lack of performance.

Sure!

But what I'd like to see is a sense of perspective, and what some people are spewing here (hi Panix) is malignant, intentional FUD.

AMD hasn't documented UVD. There are good reasons for this. The rest is documented, at least on r700 and below. You can say "partly documented", but then be specific.

AMD still hasn't fully documented the very latest cards, and some other stuff, like HDMI on Evergreen+. As I understand, they want to write code first, document later, which is OK. I definitely want to see the rest of the docs, though.

The open drivers now support all of OpenGL1, all of OpenGL 2.1, and about 90% of OpenGL 3. The remaining parts for OpenGL 3 are due to Mesa problems, as soon as GLSL improvements are done, we'll get all of that. That's 95% of what an r700-class card can do, about 85% of what an Evergreen+ class card can do and more than 99.99% of what any currently existing Linux program can actually use. You have to make this explicit in order to qualify the "partly works" part. The drivers are stable, provide an accelerated 3d desktop, play all native games just fine (though more performance would be nice). The bullshit about "you have to write your own drivers" and "nothing works" and "1% of functionality" is blatantly false. Do people get paid for this shit?

Look, the deficiencies of the Open Source drivers are widely known, and people who actually use them are aware of these deficiencies even more than others. So let's discuss the facts instead of spreading malicious lies,

Let's discuss the best way to get the GLSL compiler up to speed, because this is blocking OpenGL3. Let's discuss Michael Koenig's VDPAU implementation and how far we are from h264 and WebM decoding. Let's discuss particular optimisations like HyperZ and texture tiling, which are almost done (what is their status, anyway), and let's discuss the CPU-bounded bottlenecks that jglisse was profiling some time ago.

But let's not whine like a bunch of spoilt little brats because their Windows games running on a Windows emulation layer, using a FUSE bridge to read them from an NTFS filesystem give them 40FPS instead of 100FPS. You're using the wrong f*%$ing operating system! Linux is here to provide a Free operating system, that anyone can modify. If you don't like open drivers, just go and use something else FFS, you have Mac, you have Windows, you have a Playstation 3, if you don't like open drivers, either fix them or shut up, but don't shit on people who are actually writing open source, like the community has been asking them to. I'm sick of it!

I'd like it if AMD hired another 10-15 full-time programmers to whip Mesa and r600g into shape, but I don't think that we can demand more than documentation and a basic OSS driver. This is what they are doing. Good work, and please hire a few more people because Alex alone is not enough. Thank you.

[pingufunkybeat]

Such people as yourself literally leave linux to never move direction desktop, opensource or not.

Would you sacrifice open source just so "Linux" can "move to the desktop"? No way, never.

Put MinGW on a Windows machine, and be done with it, if that's what you want. You have your shell, you have your binary drivers, you have your DirectX and games, and you have hardware which is supported. Why do people want to graft all of that (DirectX, DirectSound, WinAPI, windows drivers, windows filesystems, .Net, MS Office) on top of the Linux kernel instead? I mean, GIMP runs on Windows too, where's the problem?

Yes, says me. Little guy with linux box. If I go to hardware store I don't want to be looked at as a moron, if I mention "linux". Is it bad?

Wow, that is a really strong argument for making software license decisions for the most critical parts of an open operating system.

What if you get a mighty binary blob with super performance and people still look at you like a moron in the hardware store? What would you scrap next?

[V10lator]

We should ask Michael, how he managed to do long Intel sandy bridge test. Or is your notebook PowerVR powered?

No PowerVR, just a little bug: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31960 and no reply from intel since 2010-11-30. So I have to use an older, patched driver without 2D, 3D or Video acceleration.

Can I start bitching Intel now because they have no working driver and AMD has two?

[crazycheese]

Would you sacrifice open source just so "Linux" can "move to the desktop"? No way, never.

This is hard call. Yes, I would - under condition that someday existing or upcoming graphical chip or system manufacturers move to opensource driver.

You should understand that this is a company and a company is to make money by bringing "advantage". However "advantage" is wrongly associated with:
- "exclusivity" - which in turn is just another marketing word for "deficiency". Yes, it is disadvantage of the component itself. Short-minded things are worse than open-minded. Wrong approach. Remember nvidia cuda and all this crap. But at least nvidia "created" it(after consuming agea, but who cares, nvidia is constantly eating Love to use their crappy chip ).

- or "investment" - mostly intellectual "property"(how can information be property..? Information holder can, but not information - it is just a form), which is another word for leasing. Leasing of information is just wrong. But its what they do - like nvidia or amd(less) claiming patents and etc crap. If you research, it is needed by YOU. So, so long its needed, you pay for its research. You don't research all ways out of desert and set toll zones after that. This should be illegal. They are privatizing the moon by the way... Well, nvidia and amd give closed source drivers because of this. Even if they want to open up, many things are external and NDA, and they do not hurry up in opening them however.

But the real meaning of advantage, in my opinion, is company RnD, true work, completely dynamical process. If others want to match they will have to follow exactly same way and carry same costs. Now they can replace meat with low quality carcinogen soy. But imagine things are open and others immediately notice it... You cant sell BS in open society.

Put MinGW on a Windows machine, and be done with it, if that's what you want. You have your shell, you have your binary drivers, you have your DirectX and games, and you have hardware which is supported. Why do people want to graft all of that (DirectX, DirectSound, WinAPI, windows drivers, windows filesystems, .Net, MS Office) on top of the Linux kernel instead? I mean, GIMP runs on Windows too, where's the problem?

Because there is game creation idea, using x86 hardware(or general open hardware, remember IBM and MCA bus) that is being encapsulated and forced into systems owned by microsoft(then it was called - IBM).
You dont need all the things your wrote down for a gaming platform. You need good programming tools, good graphical system, sound system, network system, some help with strings, data types etc. Right now this things are being created for microsoft, instead of being platform-agnostic. Everytime I played Fallout 2 (old fallout, not new garbage) I hated to do it in windows. If fallout 2 would be available for multitude of platforms, do you think people would care about windows? NO. Why? Because windows is ANYTHING, but innovative.

What if you get a mighty binary blob with super performance and people still look at you like a moron in the hardware store? What would you scrap next?

Opensource gives immense advantage, but only as attribute to existing worthy code.
If you compare opensource student code vs unreal engine or stripped open version vs full-featured closed source blob, its like comparing white mice and black elephants. Compare white elephants to black elephants, I think the former ones are more sexy!
If a company produce both white mice and offer black elephants as upgrade(AMD) and other just produce black elephants(more stable sort)(nvidia), ... yeah - this is state of current madness.