Which Linux Graphics Driver Bugs Do You Hate?

[curaga]

Whoa, 6 pages already

Guess people really hate graphics driver bugs. Me too.

In no particular order:

Neomagic - XV has moving colorful pixels. Understandable as they never released docs.

Ati (radeon driver) - VT switch sometimes hangs, missing 3d features (comparison: q3-based games run great natively, 100+ fps, but the same games run like crap in wine, with corruption, assuming because Wine maps some features to OGL 2.0 things), sucky 2d performance
Ati (radeonhd): You cause a black screen and a complete hang for me.
Early ati (mach64): Nice otherwise, but the full potential of the cards is not used. There could be both full Render accel and better 3d, but, meh, not popular anymore, nobody capable willing to help.

Intel - You were great hon, but a bit too slow on the 3d side.

Sis - you should be eaten alive. Not only is your driver slower than vesa, it also does not have 3d accel and produces corruption. Often there's more corruption on screen than content, measured in pixels.

S3 - you did release some docs early. However your drivers were left rotting in Xfree 3, because you weren't popular.

Matrox - I was really in love with your image quality and 2d performance. You even had acceptable 3d in some games. The only thing I can whine about is the fact the drivers never used up the full potential - partly due to different microcode than in the windows drivers, partly due to something else, perhaps just nobody had interest to implement opengl 1.4, multitexturing, and other niceties.

[bridgman]

25 watts = 25 watts per hour.
25 watts per hour = .025 kWh usage in an hour.
.025 kWh x .12 cents = .003 cents per hour
16 hours a day x 365 = 5840
5840 hours x .003 cents per hour = 17.52 per year.
17.52 per year divided by 12 months = $1.46 a month.

Something seemed odd about your numbers. The result is right but...

25 watts = 25 watt-hours per hour.
25 watt-hours per hour = .025 kWh usage in an hour.
.025 kWh x 12 cents = 0.3 cents per hour (or 0.003 dollars/hour)
16 hours a day x 365 = 5840
5840 hours x 0.3 cents per hour = 17.52 per year.
17.52 per year divided by 12 months = $1.46 a month.

Things like that catch my eye. It's what happens when your father is an accountant

[SyXbiT]

I own computers with intel, ATI and Nvidia graphics cards.
Sure, they all have bugs, but I'd definitely rate them in this order

Intel
Nvidia
RadeonHD
...
...
...
...
Catalyst

[JeanPaul145]

What bugs me the most are not the graphics drivers per se, but the audio drivers.

I have to, and far too often, kill X in order to restore the sound. And, logging out and logging in as another user often produce a mute computer.

I have still not understood the pattern but I think the graphics drivers are interlinked to tis issue, in some way. Maybe someone knows better.

I run Debain Sid/Experimental with KDE4 and the latest nvidia drivers on a 8800GT.

If you use Sid you can't expect anything to work well. In fact, the official stance is that you should _expect_ frequent breakage.
So here's my advice to you: switch to Debian testing or another distro, and see what happens.

[wfeltmate]

I keep reading all these issue people have with the ati drivers and how they are just so horrid and widespread. Besides an incomplete or missing feature, none of which have ever been more than a 'oh hey, it would be nice if they would add this', it has always worked for me. I've used various version of Ubuntu, Mandrake and Suse and no issues.

Point is, both nvidia and ati have issues with their drivers. You know this as well as the rest of us, so please stop being so immature as to trash talk one company and make it seem like the other is perfect.

[jonnycat26]

The absence of VTs.
The absence of kernel panic notifications.
The absence of monitor hot-plugging.

Proprietary NVIDIA driver, obviously.

Yeah, I have none of those issues with the Proprietary NVIDIA driver. Not a single one of those has affected me, other than kernel panics, but then, I only had kernel panics with fglrx.

I had, until last week, a radeon HD 4650 in my system. After 3 catalyst releases, each of which fixed old bugs while introducing new bugs, I just ripped the card out of the system and have it sitting in the closet.

I replaced it with a NVidia 9400GT. Cheap card, not nearly as fast as my 4650, but it works.

I had been a NVidia user for years prior to the Radeon purchase, and I had always taken for granted the fact that NVidia drivers more or less work under Linux, no questions asked. The list of problems I had with fglrx was nothing short of mind boggling, and it astounds me that ATI can foist fglrx upon the general public. It's barely alpha quality.

[deanjo]

The _by far_ biggest problem is the miss of Hybrid Power in the nVidia-driver. Bad enough, that such a feature is needed - GPU makers (ATI isn't better) should be able at least not to increase their idle power consumption over the time (they did by factor 3 over the last 3 years), as CPU makers did - but as they were unable to solve the problem the easy way, at least the complicate way should be allowed for non-Vista-users. In some parts of the world electrical power is expensive enough to need more money to run a modern GPU for 1 1/2 years in idle mode than to buy it!

Another issue is the intel 3D driver. Yes, their hardware sucks in 3D performance; it sucks deadly - but their crappy drivers make this suck even more. Their 3D performance is _4 times_ better on MacOS and I'm sure, the driver isn't perfect there too...

On the newer nvidia cards hybrid power really isn't needed. a GTX 280 for example uses 25 watts when not running in premium 3d mode. ATI on the other hand will gobble the power just sitting idle. It's even less with the new die shrinks.

Now lets put some real world numbers behind the "green" concern

25 watts = 25 watts per hour.
25 watts per hour = .025 kWh usage in an hour.
.025 kWh x .12 cents = .003 cents per hour
16 hours a day x 365 = 5840
5840 hours x .003 cents per hour = 17.52 per year.
17.52 per year divided by 12 months = $1.46 a month.

Even with running that card in premium mode for a while (say 10-20%) it still amounts to a paultry amount. Chances are you waste more money on leaving some lights on at home through out the year.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/video/spravka-gt2xx-p4.html

[TheK]

The _by far_ biggest problem is the miss of Hybrid Power in the nVidia-driver. Bad enough, that such a feature is needed - GPU makers (ATI isn't better) should be able at least not to increase their idle power consumption over the time (they did by factor 3 over the last 3 years), as CPU makers did - but as they were unable to solve the problem the easy way, at least the complicate way should be allowed for non-Vista-users. In some parts of the world electrical power is expensive enough to need more money to run a modern GPU for 1 1/2 years in idle mode than to buy it!

Another issue is the intel 3D driver. Yes, their hardware sucks in 3D performance; it sucks deadly - but their crappy drivers make this suck even more. Their 3D performance is _4 times_ better on MacOS and I'm sure, the driver isn't perfect there too...

[deanjo]

I hate any sort of graphic card bugs, really.

I can understand all the latest multi-gpu stuff is still rather buggy, but there really shouldn't be any excuse for basic 2D and 3D functionality to be unstable and riddled with bugs. As I don't really play games, I put my money on any card that I assume will guarantee the most trouble-free graphical experience. If ATI and NVidia don't get their act together, I can only hope one of those open-source graphical cards will see the light of day, or a third manufacturer (Intel? S3?) to gobble up some of the ATI/NVidia market share by having superior drivers for products with reasonable enough performance.

I don't care for half-working products, be it due to hardware or software bugs. There just is no excuse for selling something that doesn't work as advertised.

In all fairness there really isn't a game for linux that requires multicard rendering. Even the most demanding ( which I would have to guess is ET:QW ) runs smooth as butter on semi modern hardware. The most demanding games out there usually require the use of wine, native ports are pretty easy on the requirements.

[december]

Any

I hate any sort of graphic card bugs, really.

I can understand all the latest multi-gpu stuff is still rather buggy, but there really shouldn't be any excuse for basic 2D and 3D functionality to be unstable and riddled with bugs. As I don't really play games, I put my money on any card that I assume will guarantee the most trouble-free graphical experience. If ATI and NVidia don't get their act together, I can only hope one of those open-source graphical cards will see the light of day, or a third manufacturer (Intel? S3?) to gobble up some of the ATI/NVidia market share by having superior drivers for products with reasonable enough performance.

I don't care for half-working products, be it due to hardware or software bugs. There just is no excuse for selling something that doesn't work as advertised.