Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Northern Islands & Fermi Busted On Open-Source

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #11
    Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post
    There's the answer to your own confusion. The reason you can't understand the appeal of the open source drivers is because you've never even tried the good ones.
    Are there any good ones?

    Comment


    • #12
      Originally posted by johnc View Post
      I'm not even sure I understand why the open-source video drivers are so important to people, and why so much effort is spent on developing them. The proprietary drivers, though imperfect, are the far better option for almost all people (at least for nvidia, can't speak for all the others). There should really only be a tiny portion of users that use the open-source drivers, maybe for legal reasons or whatever.

      There are so many other areas in the linux software domain that need to move forward; it seems like a waste to spend time on these open-source drivers.
      Several things:

      1. The people who work on graphics drivers are either doing it because they're volunteers and graphics drivers are the one thing that they are most capable of contributing to, so saying it's a "waste of time" is ridiculous -- it's not like they could put down graphics drivers and then go contribute to GNOME or something. They don't want to, and they're probably not able to, being that their specialty is drivers, not desktop software. As for the paid employees, there are so few of them that they're little more than a drop in the bucket -- AMD doesn't even notice their salaries on their bottom line. Intel might, but they have an entire campus called the Intel Open Source Technology Center, so I think they're a little more invested in FOSS than the average company (so much so that you don't have the proprietary driver option for them).

      2. It's not because of "legal reasons" that people want or insist on "open source" graphics drivers; it's because of the very fact that they're free and open source. Some people value the ideals of FOSS so highly that they would rather have less featureful software that is FOSS, rather than more featureful software that is not FOSS. And the feature disparity is measurably closing, too, despite what anyone here might tell you.

      Comment


      • #13
        Open source drivers are crucial for out of the box support, and also track with updates to everything else much easier. I know that especially the former is of great interest with AMD.

        Comment


        • #14
          Originally posted by mirv View Post
          Open source drivers are crucial for out of the box support, and also track with updates to everything else much easier. I know that especially the former is of great interest with AMD.
          I think this is the most important reason for majority of people. Just, install and use, and don't worry about old propietary drivers, or having to install something manually, it's great.

          I'd would like to have libre (=free as in freedom, in spanish) software too, and sometimes I prefer it, if it isn't a lot less featured.

          Comment


          • #15
            For those that don't know, these types of articles do usually promote change in some manner... Whether it be a company acknowledging they need to get with the initial support better for the next-generation of hardware or marketing representatives that are clueless about Linux learning something new. Etc.
            Michael Larabel
            https://www.michaellarabel.com/

            Comment


            • #16
              Originally posted by Michael View Post
              For those that don't know, these types of articles do usually promote change in some manner... Whether it be a company acknowledging they need to get with the initial support better for the next-generation of hardware or marketing representatives that are clueless about Linux learning something new. Etc.
              That could backfire and result in companies (and people in general) clamming up and not giving out any details until they're fully good & ready with everything. Just saying, keep an eye on what exact change is being promoted, and make sure it's the one you're after.

              Comment


              • #17
                Originally posted by Michael View Post
                For those that don't know, these types of articles do usually promote change in some manner... Whether it be a company acknowledging they need to get with the initial support better for the next-generation of hardware or marketing representatives that are clueless about Linux learning something new. Etc.
                Michael, you are missing the point. This article is not promoting change, especially on the Nouveau Fermi side. Ben already acknowledged in his commit message that the initial support probably has some bugs. He even posted in this thread; here it is if you didn't notice:

                Originally posted by darktama View Post
                Here's a thought. How about doing something useful about it and filing a bug report[1]? There are other boards with the same chipset as the one you tested (one of which I own), that actually work quite fine. We'd probably learn something useful about fermi in the process of fixing it, that'd actually benefit everyone..
                When the main developer of a software project, in this case the Nouveau kernel driver, says you are not being useful, then you are not promoting change.

                Comment


                • #18
                  Originally posted by Plombo View Post
                  Michael, you are missing the point. This article is not promoting change, especially on the Nouveau Fermi side. Ben already acknowledged in his commit message that the initial support probably has some bugs. He even posted in this thread; here it is if you didn't notice:



                  When the main developer of a software project, in this case the Nouveau kernel driver, says you are not being useful, then you are not promoting change.
                  On NVIDIA side, perhaps not too much in this case. As far as bug reporting, I've stated my stance on that in other threads.
                  Michael Larabel
                  https://www.michaellarabel.com/

                  Comment


                  • #19
                    Originally posted by Michael View Post
                    As far as bug reporting, I've stated my stance on that in other threads.
                    Yeah, takes time and generates no income. So why bother doing something useful if you can just bitch around a bit and earn some money from this?

                    Comment


                    • #20
                      Originally posted by Lynxeye View Post
                      Yeah, takes time and generates no income. So why bother doing something useful if you can just bitch around a bit and earn some money from this?
                      And the fact that my test systems are *constantly* changing. Even for these tests from yesterday, that system already has been reconfigured with different software and hardware changes, etc, which would mean there's a big burden on my part to then reconfigure the system to a past state just to work on some bug report testing without any substantive ROI on my end.
                      Michael Larabel
                      https://www.michaellarabel.com/

                      Comment

                      Working...
                      X