Will The Free Software Desktop Ever Make It?

[pingufunkybeat]

AFAIK, AMD are funding three OSS developers at this time. And (and this is also important) they are providing technical assistance to OSS developers.

This is less than Intel, you are right. And most of these people are working on Radeon-specific stuff. This is also true.

Still, it's more than Nvidia, isn't it?

Also, the support for OpenGL2+ required a move to an in-kernel memory controller, which coincided with the switch to KMS, and most of OpenGL3+ stuff will take place over Gallium3d, which is also relatively recent. All this took time.

[mirv]

Make it work? or make it workaround to reduce development costs? Did amd make opensource drivers work? when? where? haha Do they support OpenGL 3.3/4.1? Do they support OpenGL ES and WebGL stuff? Do they accelerate HD video? Don't they suck like fglrx does? Just give me the name of your planet and I'll find speak with you face to face

I was trying to be reasonable, but you're just being an idiot now. You're also completely ignorant of what has been going on with regards to the open source drivers, and just what AMD has been doing. To fix your ignorance in this matter, learn to use your brain.

[pingufunkybeat]

Yes I do. because amd doesn't help brian paul and assist mesa developers implementing the GL 3x/4x stuff. Why don't they donate code to mesa like intel does?

BTW, this is the most fucked up reason for supporting NVIDIA that I've ever heard.

[glxextxexlg]

BTW, this is the most fucked up reason for supporting NVIDIA that I've ever heard.

I did say that to save another person from AMD's false prophecy which they constructed to reduce their development costs by early dropping support for hardware and leaving money paid customers with inferior buggy drivers, not to support NVIDIA, which with its quality policy, doesn't need my support anyway.

[glxextxexlg]

BTW god save nvidia

[pingufunkybeat]

I did say that to save another person from AMD's false prophecy which they constructed to reduce their development costs by early dropping support for hardware and leaving money paid customers with inferior buggy drivers, not to support NVIDIA, which with its quality policy, doesn't need my support anyway.

You're all over the place.

None of the "unsupported" hardware (deprecated by fglrx) can do OpenGL 3.

All of the "unsupported" hardware are fully supported by the OSS drivers with the exception of MSAA.

[pingufunkybeat]

The fact of the matter is that AMD and the OSS community provide excellent OSS drivers for ATi cards. Nvidia's OSS drivers are reverse engineered due to the local neglect by Nvidia.

This might be unimportant to you, and you might only be interested in the closed driver, which is legitimate.

But don't spread FUD.

[glxextxexlg]

All of the "unsupported" hardware are fully supported by the OSS drivers with the exception of MSAA.

After how long time you tell me? And how many users could have become linux users if they didn't drop support leaving people with half-baked drivers? Ask questions, be skeptical and you'll realize the answer. For sure you'll recognize the truth when amd will drop support for r600-r700 hardware and when people won't be able to play modern games with good performance and stability or digest webGL content with their hardware without bugs, but it will be a bitter moment.

[blackiwid]

It?s pretty much easy, if you like linux because its free as in free speech and you don?t want to start over all development if nvidia gets bankrupt and the next grafic-hardware-producer have to start again with the vesa driver and no mesa and stuff like that, you admire amd and intel for their support of free/open software.

If you just think about the next 1 or 2 years and the small advantage what you maybe have and you don?t care about free software at all you just use linux because it feels better than windows or have some features you like more, go ahead and use nvidia hardware+their blob.

But then stop flaming about that nvidia supports opensource better or such stupid nonsense. AMD support the free software world more then Nvidia does it, and the problem from intel is that the hardware sucks ^^ and sometimes its more expensive and you cant buy intel-cards, so you have to have also a intel cpu to use a intel gpu and the intel plattform is not the choice of everybody. (not me)

[pingufunkybeat]

After how long time you tell me?

You know why I called you a troll? Because you act like one.

Here you change the topic yet again. You don't know WHAT you are arguing.

First you argued that ATi users don't have good drivers because there is no OpenGL4. Then you said that they drop support, leaving people unsupported. Then you said that the old users with dropped support actually have fully featured drivers, but they came too late.

Yes. They are too late. But they are here and they work fantastically up to r500 hardware. This hardware CANNOT DO hardware decoding of video or OpenGL3. It's complete.

For sure you'll recognize the truth when amd will drop support for r600-r700 hardware and when people won't be able to play modern games with good performance and stability or digest webGL content with their hardware without bugs, but it will be a bitter moment.

I can play the most modern Linux games on my low-end r700 just fine. The performance is the only thing bothering me, because there are NO OpenGL3 games on Linux that I'm aware of. Zero. The rest works just fine.

By the time r700 is dropped from the fglrx driver (which I don't use), the OSS drivers should be complete, in case some OpenGL4 game comes to Linux for me to play.