X.Org 7.4 To Lose DRI2 Support

[Pickup]

Careful about those empty promises. We already have enough amateur C programmers making noise and spewing out vaporware.

That's probably true, but you must admit it is very frustrating. Desktop users, gamers and linux advocates (how can you show people how good is Linux if it is still going to look cheaper than windows? Many people here in Italy say "Vista is free too, it comes with the computer itself -not true, but people here think this way-, it's a 'world standard' and ad it features a better look") are desperately waiting for good 3d on linux and can do nothing themself because they can't code, and if they can they are not skilled enough or have no spare time.

It's frustrating.

[suacy]

X.Org 7.4 To Lose Ovals

Phoronix: X.Org 7.4 To Lose Ovals

It's six months late and X.Org 7.4 still hasn't shipped as its being held up on the release of X-Circle 7.1. X-Circle is a new architecture for drawing circles on the screen.

An X developer commented on the mailing list announcement:

"We have to cut out ovals because circles really are perfect ovals and we won't do anything less than perfect. How could we? Drawing circles on a screen that's made up of little squares takes some genius. And that's why X developers are smarter than the rest of the world. I mean, come on, how many people really understand how X works? "

"It's really a whole new paradigm for curves on the screen. And we all like to look at curves on the screen, am I right?" said another X developer, presumably with a wink and a nudge.

[TechMage89]

XD That would be Monty Python and the Quest for the Xorg 7.4 Release, right?

[meden]

...
It is not a simple task to add these two things to a driver as can clearly be seen by the current debacle. Asking ati to provide their own might take even longer than waiting for dri2.

Of course. But AMD is not a part-time group of programmers; ATI began printing Tux on their boxes: maybe it is time to divert a couple more of engineers from Windows to Linux.

besides I don't get what the big deal is with having videos mapped nicely to a compiz cube. Sure it is neat (and was things that made me go wow when compiz first came out) but even with nvidia there are downsides e.g. running xv with an opengl compositor does not vsync xv also I have noticed that with compositing enabled the video quality is reduced (besides the vsync issue).

As in my previous post, I can survive without Compiz, but a compositor is becoming a desktop standard: this is a fact (Vista, OSX, KDE4, Gnome - altough this one through XRender), and if Linux wants gain users it (he? ) has to consider it.
IMHO, of course.

[Vighy]

Of course. But AMD is not a part-time group of programmers; ATI began printing Tux on their boxes: maybe it is time to divert a couple more of engineers from Windows to Linux.

Not so vital, since linux and windows drivers share 95% of the code...

As in my previous post, I can survive without Compiz, but a compositor is becoming a desktop standard: this is a fact (Vista, OSX, KDE4, Gnome - altough this one through XRender), and if Linux wants gain users it (he? ) has to consider it.
IMHO, of course.

Linux is not responsible for Xorg faults. Linux is the kernel. FreeBSD users have to face the same problems.

And linux is not a company!!!

[deanjo]

ATI began printing Tux on their boxes:

Has anybody actually seen this yet?

[meden]

Not so vital, since linux and windows drivers share 95% of the code...

I know... but it seems that this fact does not is enough to ensure same features on Linux and Windows drivers.

Linux is not responsible for Xorg faults. Linux is the kernel. FreeBSD users have to face the same problems.

Never said that. I wrote "Linux" meaning a generic distribution (kernel + apps, not necessarily completely open source), as in common practice. Next times I'll try to be more pedantic.
I did not mentioned FreeBSD because it is not my OS, and anyway fglrx for FreeBSD does not exists at all (at least on the official site).

And linux is not a company!!!

Again, I never said that. If you refer to gaining users, I stress the word users, not customers. I'm not an integralist: closing ourselves in a ivory tower does not help spreading our ideals.

[TechMage89]

Linux may not be a company, or a complete operating system, if we want to be totally mad literalists. However the GNU/Linux/Xorg/GNOME/KDE/Xfce/what-have-you-software-stack, if it wants to be an effective replacement for closed source stacks (i.e. Windows, OSX, etc.), it needs to have comparable features. Fully functional compositing is an important thing, and these driver debacles are really slowing that down.

[Melcar]

Linux may not be a company, or a complete operating system, if we want to be totally mad literalists. However the GNU/Linux/Xorg/GNOME/KDE/Xfce/what-have-you-software-stack, if it wants to be an effective replacement for closed source stacks (i.e. Windows, OSX, etc.), it needs to have comparable features. Fully functional compositing is an important thing, and these driver debacles are really slowing that down.

I don't think they want to "replace", but rather offer an alternative. Still, even if they just want to be an alternative, they need to have similar features and functionality, even if it works differently at the end.

[yotambien]

OK, I give up.

Am I _really_ the only one who doesn't give a rat ass about cubes on my screen? Why is THAT so important to you? Do you really use your computer to do some WORK? Or _even_ if you use it to play games, watch movies or download porn, does it really matter that much whether you do all those things via a compositing desktop interface? How can it be that day after day people is complaining about _insert_driver_here_ not allowing them to do crap projected on a cube? And they pathetically smash their heads against their screens while claiming to have been eagerly waiting for months!

Ah, no, please. Don't even try to argue about the 'benefits' of the cube for your productivity. I've heard them, as well as I've heard the 'selling Linux' bullshit. I don't care if people use Windows, MacOS, FreeBSD or whatever they feel like, and it is not my objective in life to convince anybody about using any particular OS. Do you guys also try to convince your pals about which particular microwave they should buy? (in that case I'd like to hear, so I know what to avoid, by the way).

What I DO care is about being able, with my OS of choice, to open a website or pdf file and scroll down lighting fast without my CPU revving up as if I was recompiling the fucking kernel. About watching a movie without even noticing my laptop's got a fan. About being able to play a 9 (nine!) years old game at good, constant frame rate and decent quality without a glitch. About suspend/hibernate, about attaching an external monitor without even hearing the slightest complain, about not having to hard reboot from time to time because the stupid video driver decided to go crash...

But cubes...who gives a f_u_c_k about them?