It's Official: Mesa 8.0 With OpenGL 3.0

[mateli]

"These features can be enabled if rebuilding Mesa with non-default build switches and pulling in the external S3TC library, but no major distribution vendor (unless counting Arch) is doing so out of legal concerns."
Why require hardlinking to this library? Wouldnt it be possible to make mesa search for it and load it if available? Or perhaps load a default dummy library and make it possible to change a config file in order to make it load the real lib?

[DaemonFC]

I should also point out that it's rather selfish and arrogant to suggest we should risk an entire free software operating system distribution just because 1-2 people out of every 100 users needed a feature that was encumbered by patents. If you need them so bad, why don't you go negotiate with SGI and S3? So far they haven't listened to or made any exceptions for free software projects, but if you think you can come up with a more compelling presentation that will get them to cooperate than what the ENTIRE free software community has managed so far, I'm sure we'd all be...grateful

When you get protectionism via software patents, it makes it illegal for free software to compete with proprietary software. That's antitrust right there, but the US government is so corrupt they let it go on under the false premise of "intellectual property protection".

BTW, I get worked up when I hear someone use the term "intellectual property" because I rightly get the mental image of an unholy coven of corporate lawyers scheming on how they can get me to pay to use my own property. Bridgman of AMD uses that term a lot and it really pisses me off.

[Sidicas]

I'm in the same situation, but keep in mind mesa drivers probably fully support our hardware. Furthermore, if Ubuntu 10.04 ships with catalyst 9.3 we still have support from AMD.

Nope nope nope!! Ubuntu 10.04 cannot run Catalyst 9.3 and Catalyst 9.3 is the last Catalyst driver to support a lot of legacy AMD/ATI graphics hardware. These users will have to use Gallium and many of them will have to forfeit their MSAA and about 15% graphics performance because of it. The performance loss I can deal with since the GPU seems to run cooler as a result of it, which works out well in my laptop, but MSAA is important to me because my laptop screen resolution is low and it's a big screen.... and the hardware doesn't have the features to run MLAA.

[DaemonFC]

Linux devs are targetting the lowest common denominator among graphics drivers, and currently it's Mesa. As soon as OGL 3.0 support is in place, it's usage will go mainstream. I remember KDE devs speaking about using GL3 features in KWin a year ago, so it will quite likely happen this year, I guess. Same can be said about Direct3D. Because XP is still the most used Windows distro out there, game developers are using DX9 despite two newer versions being released already.

You're missing the point that you can't ship a compliant OpenGL 3 stack without paying patent tax to SGI (float textures), and many things that need OpenGL at all (even going back to 1.x) will call S3 Texture Compression, which is controlled by an outright patent troll.

If we can't throw Khronos under the bus for their lousy stewardship of OpenGL (the name does imply that it is open, but anything patent-encumbered really is not), then we should at least get rid of OpenGL and just go with OpenGL ES. The problem with that is that even though it is currently not infringing patents, there's no guarantee that one of the hardware vendors that controls the Khronos sock puppet won't stuff it full of patents at some later date like what has been done to OpenGL itself.

[droidhacker]

I suppose you'd like the library to be able to give blowjobs, too. But like that S3TC is not going to happen, for what should be obvious reasons.
Eventually the patent will expire or somebody will officially release a 'promise not to sue' and then it would be accepted.

Whatever happened with this: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=OTkxMQ ???
Anybody hear of any progress in this investigation?

[kraftman]

I don't agree here.... The Windows Catalyst drivers for a lot of old AMD hardware is still available for an OS that's supported by Microsoft (Windows XP).. Those same Catalyst drivers (9.3) will *not* work on any modern Linux OS due to changes in the linux kernel and xserver. Because of this, I wouldn't say that the Catalyst Linux drivers are on par with the Windows ones at all because Microsoft supports their OS for 10 years and Linux distros only support their OS for 2 years.. You can still get Catalyst drivers for a supported OS if you run Windows, but that's not true if you run Linux.

Newer versions of Catalyst don't support my hardware.

I'm in the same situation, but keep in mind mesa drivers probably fully support our hardware. Furthermore, if Ubuntu 10.04 ships with catalyst 9.3 we still have support from AMD.

[sandain]

Well your hope is entirely misplaced. Learn something about how patents and patent law really work and you'll have a better understanding of why.

The chances of them being invalid are nil.

This is why it's fantastically important to fight patents and IP law whenever possible and stop giving money to corporations, like Apple or Nvidia, that are pro software patents.

Oh wise sage drag, why don't you explain how you believe patents and patent law really work, because I obviously know jack squat.

The chance of US5956431 being marked as invalid is low considering the past history of this patent, however I would have to argue that the chance of this happening is not nil. The legal mess that is the smart phone industry is our best bet for this to happen.

I agree that software patents need to die, but I don't see patent reform going anywhere with the current political environment here in the US. Besides boycotting pro-software patent companies, how do you suggest we go about fighting software patents?

[Sidicas]

Wow, you forgot Linux has also proprietary graphic drivers that are on pair with winblows ones.

I don't agree here.... The Windows Catalyst drivers for a lot of old AMD hardware is still available for an OS that's supported by Microsoft (Windows XP).. Those same Catalyst drivers (9.3) will *not* work on any modern Linux OS due to changes in the linux kernel and xserver. Because of this, I wouldn't say that the Catalyst Linux drivers are on par with the Windows ones at all because Microsoft supports their OS for 10 years and Linux distros only support their OS for 2 years.. You can still get Catalyst drivers for a supported OS if you run Windows, but that's not true if you run Linux.

Newer versions of Catalyst don't support my hardware.

Next month, Debian lenny gets dropped, so no more security updates.. The Catalyst 9.3 drivers won't work in Debian stable (or any other linux distro's current "stable")... If I switch the PC to Windows XP, I can still get my security updates and run Catalyst 9.3. If I switch to any newer Linux distribution with the open source drivers, I have to accept that I'm going to lose some graphics features like MSAA..



Because of the above, the open source drivers are very important.. The underlying Linux OS just isn't supported for long durations (10+ years)like Microsoft does with their service packs. So all developments in the Open source driver should be celebrated because the Proprietary drivers don't last very long if you're running Linux. Although I wished they put out MSAA support before they worked on OpenGL3, I'm sure the people that have OpenGL3 hardware that's about to have their Catalyst drivers retired by the hardware manuf.'s would beg to differ.

I think I'm pretty much SOL at this point.. If I upgrade to a new distro, I lose my MSAA and if I keep using an archived version of Debian then my PC is insecure.

P.S. I have much love for the Debian team.. If it weren't for them supporting their OS for so long, I would have been SOL two years ago instead of now. Peace.

[HokTar]

If nothing else, GL 3.0 will put GNU/Linux (and anyone else who uses Mesa + GEM/TTM + other necessary bits) ahead of Mac OS 10.7 for now.

I'm not sure about this one, it states 3.2 here.
However, this table seems to agree with you. Since both are from apple I don't know what to think now... :S

[Azpegath]

Congratulations are in order to all those who have been working on Mesa. It's been a lot of work to hit the 3.0 milestone, but we've gotten there (at least for intel, and hopefully not too long for some of the Gallium drivers).
It looks like a large amount of the work for 3.1 is already done, as well as some of 3.2, and a good amount of 3.3, so hopefully the next few versions will come quickly.
If nothing else, GL 3.0 will put GNU/Linux (and anyone else who uses Mesa + GEM/TTM + other necessary bits) ahead of Mac OS 10.7 for now.

+1. Well put.