Icculus Grows Fond Of Open-Source GPU Drivers

[garegin]

i'm sorry but the oss drivers for nvidia suck doney balls. They render systems unbootable in many cases and if they work they are glitchy as all heck. no enterprise distro (i am looking at you, centos) should ship it as default, the default should be vesa and the user should be given the option to activate the Nouveau with a big warning that it might kill all the puppies.
I would never in my life buy a system with an nvidia chip. Nheever, ever. It's obvious that one should take their business to brands that care about Linux support. companies like intel, realtek, ralink, and atheros.

[Hamish Wilson]

It is interesting... I was speculating on his current opinion on this matter in another thread if some of you would remember.

As for why he did not mention AMD, it is probably just that he never had the opportunity to try out the free radeon drivers with the hardware he has. It does not really matter, as so much is shared (especially between the radeon and nouveau drivers, as well as Intel to a lesser extent) that if you have a good experince on one, it bodes well for the rest.

Also, nouveau has arguably had the most progress in the past few years as AMD was so much more ahead. For instance, take my rather common onboard GeForce 6150 SE that came with my motherboard and then compare my external Radeon HD 4670. When Fedora 13 was released in 2010, the radeon could play Doom 3 and many other older titles, although it lack S3TC support at the time. Nouveau could not even launch glxgears.

With Fedora 14 in November 2010, nouveau started rendering things, but it could not even get a game like Rune to draw right. Fedora 15 released last May proved to be the one to hit the jackpot for both. radeon switched to Gallium and got S3TC support, and nouveau could finally actually start handling 3D tasks. That is a fairly impressive transition.

If you want to keep on trolling crazycheese, I suggest you ask Gordon first. He is very receptive to inquiry, as long as it is not about UT3.

As for why he would not want to move, he only recently got married and now has a two month older daughter. He has a lot more on his plate now than he used to. I am not surprised if he is happy doing what he is doing now - porting Humble Bundle titles and living in North Carolina. It is time for the next generation of icculus's to emerge.

[downer]

your versions are outdated i use 3.0 mesa 8.1-devel (Git-bd2410b precise-oibad-ppa) i also force openGL3 in the rendering path with: R600_GLSL130=1 R600_STREAMOUT=0

I hope you're putting that git repo to use and providing patches!

[whizse]

These open-source drivers also wouldn't do justice for the impressive and visually-stunning engine and game assets without being able to properly handle AA and other visual features.

Seriously? Seriously?

This is just BS. I've played a load of Source titles with r600g, and it work's very well.

[Qaridarium]

I hope you're putting that git repo to use and providing patches!

my skill doesn't allow me to providing patches sorry.

but I?m interested and try to help

[blacknova]

Full functionality

Well, I'd been happy if open-source graphics drivers would give at least half of closed source driver performance while providing the same (or more) level of functionality. Right now this not the case at all.

[d2kx]

Seriously? Seriously?

This is just BS. I've played a load of Source titles with r600g, and it work's very well.

The newer games (like CS: GO) are much more demanding than Left 4 Dead 2 etc., we'll see how the open source drivers will perform.

[numasan]

At the moment the Source-based Left 4 Dead 2 natively on Linux with the proprietary AMD and NVIDIA drivers is running several times slower on Linux with the OpenGL renderer than under Microsoft Windows.

What have I missed? Any _proof_ to back up this statement? Guess I have to wait until after Michael comes back from Valve, but presenting stuff like this as fact still leaves a bad taste in my mouth...

[whizse]

The newer games (like CS: GO) are much more demanding than Left 4 Dead 2 etc., we'll see how the open source drivers will perform.

That's a title that isn't even released yet, so not really a fair comparison.

I might also add that I played through HL2 (in Wine) with a Radeon 9200 using the r200 driver. Of course that was back when the game had a Direct3D 7 backend...

[crazycheese]

It is interesting... I was speculating on his current opinion on this matter in another thread if some of you would remember.

As for why he did not mention AMD, it is probably just that he never had the opportunity to try out the free radeon drivers with the hardware he has. It does not really matter, as so much is shared (especially between the radeon and nouveau drivers, as well as Intel to a lesser extent) that if you have a good experince on one, it bodes well for the rest.

Also, nouveau has arguably had the most progress in the past few years as AMD was so much more ahead. For instance, take my rather common onboard GeForce 6150 SE that came with my motherboard and then compare my external Radeon HD 4670. When Fedora 13 was released in 2010, the radeon could play Doom 3 and many other older titles, although it lack S3TC support at the time. Nouveau could not even launch glxgears.

With Fedora 14 in November 2010, nouveau started rendering things, but it could not even get a game like Rune to draw right. Fedora 15 released last May proved to be the one to hit the jackpot for both. radeon switched to Gallium and got S3TC support, and nouveau could finally actually start handling 3D tasks. That is a fairly impressive transition.

If you want to keep on trolling crazycheese, I suggest you ask Gordon first. He is very receptive to inquiry, as long as it is not about UT3.

As for why he would not want to move, he only recently got married and now has a two month older daughter. He has a lot more on his plate now than he used to. I am not surprised if he is happy doing what he is doing now - porting Humble Bundle titles and living in North Carolina. It is time for the next generation of icculus's to emerge.

No, no, I wasn?t trolling (do I ever troll?). I think you are right, maybe Gordon really has no AMD hardware, which is result of pre 2008? actions of ATI. I also agree about noveau vs radeon. As for Valve, I think they do some sort of linux-powered closed source steam-box.