Phoronix Readers Are Still Mostly Relying Upon Proprietary Linux GPU Drivers
While our forums and reader base are home to many that swear by the open-source Radeon/Nouveau/Intel open-source drivers, the majority it seems do in fact still rely upon the proprietary drivers.
The poll ended with 57% saying they use a closed-source driver while 43% stated to using the open-source driver for their graphics processor.
Among the comments: "Recently moved from catalyst to open src on an AMD 7950. Impressed games all work OK! Dirt Showdown, Civ V, Cities Skylines etc :)", "Moved over a year ago to radeon, was the only way to get Firefox's fluid OpenGL accelerated rendering without bugs.", and "I use Mesa, but not entirely by choice. My card is not supported by AMD."
Some use the open-source driver to avoid a buggy Catalyst driver or when the hardware vendor drops support for their GPU from the official closed-source driver. However, others use the closed-source drivers since they deliver better performance. If you're a new reader, be sure to check out recent comparisons such as Are The Open-Source Graphics Drivers Good Enough For Steam Linux Gaming?, 22-Way Comparison Of NVIDIA & AMD Graphics Cards On SteamOS For Steam Linux Gaming, and AMD Catalyst On Windows vs. Open-Source Radeon On Linux.
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