Future of ATI Linux drivers

[yoshi314]

besides it must be difficult to provide blobs for operating system where 99% of software can be rebuilt from source agains wide range of libraries and toolchains. :]

[cleric]

besides it must be difficult to provide blobs for operating system where 99% of software can be rebuilt from source agains wide range of libraries and toolchains. :]

Its pretty easy... just release the source of the blob

[Svartalf]

I think you've pretty much got it. The main point is that it takes a lot of investment to make a fully featured, high performance workstation driver (including a lot of optimization work) and no company feels like giving that investment away and making things easier for competitors.

Heh... If only you could get them to get out of the stone age on their crufty rendering code... >:-)

The biggest question would be if one could arrange a wedge slot for an immediate mode accelerator in an open source driver where there's something that does a hit-or-miss job of things but is completely open and then the full-on accelerator piece you guys have in hand?

I'll be honest- I want good out of the box performance. Even for workstation work (which I would be doing in some cases with my stuff I do...); but right now, NOBODY gives me that. OEMs that ship with the binary-only drivers take a chance on bringing a GPL violation suit on top of their heads (You can't ship with the binaries installed. Nobody does anything other than grumble about NVidia's driver situation because you're installing them after installation- you're not distributing a system with the stuff that way. If you did, you'd have to be able to provide the source code to the NVidia drivers to comply with the terms of the license...). So, if you could give everyone the great out of box experience, barring peak performance on immediate mode apps, and then allow someone to download or to pull off an installation CD the immediate mode accelerator module as a snap-on... Well, you'd win out over pretty much everyone else at that point.

[Svartalf]

For us, one of the big reasons for supporting open source development was to make it easier for distros to provide a good (non-scary) out of box experience for new users.

And, for that: THANK YOU.

For our side of the equation, I think we're just frustrated that it's moving slower than we think it needs to be to help your position- and OURS. Combine this with odd sharp edges either real or perceived on both sides...

I think if you keep talking with us we might find some better answers for things like the need to keep TIMMO closed up, than keeping a whole driver closed. Done right, you can have all of what you're needing and we can all have some of the best drivers for some of the best of breed silicon.

[benwick]

diagnosis diagonal

Right now there is tearing on the TexturedVideo implementation (a diagonal line), but you should see improvements there soon.

Muchas gracias, Bridgman. That is all I ever wanted to hear regarding fglrx. (Of course, how soon is soon? I am itching to "liberate" my Windows partition! )

[cleric]

And, for that: THANK YOU.

For our side of the equation, I think we're just frustrated that it's moving slower than we think it needs to be to help your position- and OURS. Combine this with odd sharp edges either real or perceived on both sides...

Well thats not quite right... noone would be frustrated if the opensource driver from ati would be an opensource project. as far at it seems it is still a closed development with publishing the source afterwards. Thats how it look for most of the users.

Even if that is wrong.

I think if you keep talking with us we might find some better answers for things like the need to keep TIMMO closed up, than keeping a whole driver closed. Done right, you can have all of what you're needing and we can all have some of the best drivers for some of the best of breed silicon.

1+

[yotambien]

Originally Posted by bridgman
For us, one of the big reasons for supporting open source development was to make it easier for distros to provide a good (non-scary) out of box experience for new users.

It's been some time that I wonder why AMD is pursuing this. I find it hard to believe that any company would care about anything but profit. So the thing is, how trying to have a marginal minority of users happy can benefit AMD? Are there any market-grow predictions I'm missing? Are Dell and co doing that well in the linux sector?

Althought happy about it, I just don't get it...

[curaga]

I think it's the fact the most accomplished, known geeks are in the marginal minority. When any noob wants to buy a computer/parts, they usually ask one of us. And if we're happy, we're bound to tell how happy we are.

This is just my point of view, what's AMD's?

[butdie]

lenovo thinkpad switches to nvidia

say, lenovo wants to make it linux compatible also without much additional efforts to bring in 5% more customers. then, lenovo switches to nvidia.

it doesn't cost much to switch, so it worthwhile to do it to get 5% more customers.

it costs too much to make 5% nvidia + 95% ati. so ati loses 100% here.

It's been some time that I wonder why AMD is pursuing this. I find it hard to believe that any company would care about anything but profit. So the thing is, how trying to have a marginal minority of users happy can benefit AMD? Are there any market-grow predictions I'm missing? Are Dell and co doing that well in the linux sector?

Althought happy about it, I just don't get it...

[bridgman]

All good points. The main one is that as a graphics-only company it's hard to make the numbers work out other than in the workstation business. The biggest change IMO is that as part of AMD we are able to make Linux decisions based on both CPU and GPU numbers, and that makes a lot more things possible.