Future of my support for ATI

[Melcar]

So if nVidia does not have OSS drivers. Why is everyone bashing ATI and praising nVidia?

At least ATI helps the community with OSS drivers, while nVidia doesn't (or does it?).

So all those people that are currently very glad they chose nVidia might soon be left in the dark...

I can ask the same question. But to be fair, most of the flames originate from the apparent lack of functionality and stability of fglrx compared to the nvidia binary; it seems to me that open source purists simply tag along for the flame fest.

[energyman]

> However, I think that most users just want their hardware
> to work! Why does it matter if the driver is proprietary
> or open source as long as it works?

Because binary drivers don't work. They cause data loss
and have security holes. Completely unacceptable.

Why is this thread attacking ATI when they have apparently
seen the light and are releasing docs?

Someone mentioned chipsets as being documented. Where are
the docs on how to implement SATA NCQ on nforce4?

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

> As of 2006-01-25, Nvidia provided provided information (under NDA) that will permit implementation of NCQ support

if your chipset does not have ncq turned on - maybe its because of the disks? Or in case of the nf520 - it can do ncq but it does not tell about it. A quirk was added in 2.6.26-rcsomething so 2.6.26 has working ncq for nf520

edit:

http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Hardware,_driver_status#NVIDIA

[deanjo]

> However, I think that most users just want their hardware
> to work! Why does it matter if the driver is proprietary
> or open source as long as it works?

Because binary drivers don't work. They cause data loss
and have security holes. Completely unacceptable.

Why is this thread attacking ATI when they have apparently
seen the light and are releasing docs?

Someone mentioned chipsets as being documented. Where are
the docs on how to implement SATA NCQ on nforce4?

swncq was added in the 2.6.24 kernel for the nforce 4's.

http://lwn.net/Articles/255649/

Kuan Luo (1):
[libata] sata_nv: add SW NCQ support for MCP51/MCP55/MCP61

[Dragonlord]

I can ask the same question. But to be fair, most of the flames originate from the apparent lack of functionality and stability of fglrx compared to the nvidia binary; it seems to me that open source purists simply tag along for the flame fest.

Have you forgotten the drama ATI produces around giving out the specs? Yes it's good they do something than doing nothing but right now we have an instable CS driver blob and two barely functioning ( and without 3D I consider it not a working driver since graphic cards are 2D PLUS 3D ) FS drivers. With nVidia we have at last a stable and working CS driver. Far from optimal but at last we have something. Hence this has nothing to do with purist ( or whatever flamebait word one might use ) but simple and brutal "status quo" ( without any flaming just stating the obvious facts ).

[energyman]

then go nvidia. Buy a 8600 or 8800 card and suffer from the horrible 2d.

[Dragonlord]

Dude, I'm game dev... I HAVE to test on both nVidia and ATI. Otherwise I would not bother yet with this but nVidia systems are simply not enough for cross HW developement. For this you need at least one representative ATI system around or else you are fucked.

[Alecz]

Maybe OT, but how come 2.6.22 is the "latest" kernel in Ubuntu 7.10
Why not 2.6.26 or 2.6.25?

[energyman]

because they need a lot of time to port all their patches.

[Melcar]

Have you forgotten the drama ATI produces around giving out the specs? Yes it's good they do something than doing nothing but right now we have an instable CS driver blob and two barely functioning ( and without 3D I consider it not a working driver since graphic cards are 2D PLUS 3D ) FS drivers. With nVidia we have at last a stable and working CS driver. Far from optimal but at last we have something. Hence this has nothing to do with purist ( or whatever flamebait word one might use ) but simple and brutal "status quo" ( without any flaming just stating the obvious facts ).

When I was starting Linux (long time ago) one thing that people kept beating me over the head with was "nvidia". I was told that ATI was horrible and to stay away from it, and that nvidia was the best thing since sliced bread and my cards would work "out of the box". Being the non conformist that I was, I went against everyone and used my old trusty ATI card. So I load up my first distro and was surprised that my card worked "out of the box", literally. So I think to myself "boy, it this level of support is considered bad by the Linux people, nvidia must really have good drivers". A few months go by and decide that I will start using nvidia cards, so I get one (6600gt). I was again surprised that the card had very little use from the get go, compared to the Rage128 it replaced. So I ask around "WTH guys? You told me that nvidia had much better Linux support than ATI". It is then that I learn of the different drivers in the Linux world. ATI had two at the time, both functional for both 2D and 3D; nvidia had basically just one, that you had to install (and back then installing drivers was a real pain for us new guys).

Back then, radeon was just as good as fglrx, with the latter being a bit faster and having better openGL support, but you had two drivers to choose from; people forget that ATI did infact release docs. for their cards, although they did take their sweet time releasing them (and docs. for some cards never came); now AMD, while still releasing docs., is doing it at a much faster pace. Nvidia only had one really useful one, with the open source driver being pretty much useless for anything other than seeing your desktop.

Fastforward to today. Now we have 3 drivers for ATI cards; a rather functional and fast proprietary one, the stable yet slow radeon with working 2D and 3D for most older cards, and another still maturing driver. Nvidia still has only one for all intents and purposes, that while it does work extremely well, it does have problems and stability issues, issues that proper open source drivers do not have.

[Dragonlord]

So what exactly is now the point of your post? ( enter confused smiley here ).