Slashdot Log In
ATI Committed To Fixing Its OSS Problems
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu May 10, 2007 10:17 AM
from the about-time dept.
from the about-time dept.
Sits writes "Chris Blizzard blogged from the Red Hat summit that an ATI marketing spokesman said, from the stage, that ATI knows it has a problem with open source and is committed to fixing it. Does this mean ATI will finally resolve alleged agpgart misappropriation, and fast track the release of open source 2D drivers on its latest cards while releasing specifications for its mid-range cards? Or is ATI only concerned with fixes to its binary driver to maintain feature parity with competitors?"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Likely binary drivers only. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would they open a spec when they can compete with the binary drivers?
Re:Likely binary drivers only. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Likely binary drivers only. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Likely binary drivers only. (Score:5, Insightful)
I did some research into this for a course, but I don't have sources to cite off the top of my head. Definitely something worth looking into.
- shazow
Parent
IP (Score:5, Insightful)
They have already sold the card, so it doesn't matter as far as revenue who writes the best driver. Good open drivers might help sell cards. I would sure choose a good card with a good open driver.
I think it's an IP issue. They've bought into some fundamental patented IP, the license forbids releasing driver source (or it's something they have patented and it is counted as an asset on their Balance Sheet), and the patent covers something so integral to their design that it isn't worth the R&D it would take to get around it.
Parent
Re:Likely binary drivers only. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not.
1. Millions of hackers? There isn't a single FOSS project that millions of hackers have contributed too.
2. There are very few people with the experience to write a good much less great 3d driver.
3. Even with the specs I am guessing that the majority of contributions will be security or code clean up and not performance optimizations.
Parent
Re:Likely binary drivers only. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because they can compete with open source drivers. Otherwise, why would Microsoft fear Red Hat and Novell?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
C'mon, we all know the likelihood of them doing that is slim to none. There's nothing pressuring them to do this. Last I checked, NVidia doesn't have open source drivers either.
As the poster above you indicated, the video card industry is pretty secretive. The chances of them opening the spec and revealing their "trade secrets" are extremely slim to none. Unless something else happens in the indus
Does this mean ....... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not news (Score:3, Insightful)
Open Source supporters within ATI (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Open Source supporters within ATI (Score:5, Interesting)
* 2 were Matrox G400s, based on their being the first mainstream card to get 3D hardware support under Linux. I even ran Utah-GLX on one.
* 1 was an ATI Radeon 8500LE, based on price/performance and the existence of the open source R200 drivers.
* 3 are nVidia cards, since there's no competitive contemporary open source 3D any more, and the quality of nVidia's binary seems to be better. There are reverse-engineering efforts on both, but it's unclear who will be the clear winner on this.
So I *have* put my money where my mouth is, and will continue to do so.
I also recommend hardware for friends and co-workers, and this is a factor. Even for a friend who is only going to use Windows, if all else is equal I would advise that he "reward" the company for its Linux support. Notice that in this case I said, "all else is equal," and let the friend know why I gave the advice I did.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not going to directly disagree with you because I'm unsure how you'd define the above. What 3D tasks do you want the card to do? Because if all you want is basic 3D acceleration good enough for e.g. TuxRacer [sourceforge.net] or Open Arena [openarena.ws]and the fun desktop effects with Compiz/Beryl [oreillynet.com] then Intel has very nicely provided complete Free/OpenSource drivers [intellinuxgraphics.org] for most of their integrated components (*) including the GMA
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Open Source supporters within ATI (Score:4, Insightful)
ATI's lack of driver quality and commitment has always been a problem for me. I went from 3dfx to Nvidia and have never personally purchased an ATI product specifically because of their poor Linux support.
Parent
Marketing? (Score:5, Funny)
There goes the good old problem solving by marketing. Wait until their developers hear about this
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'll believe it when.... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is *the* limiting factor which has prevented me from buying a new computer - any new machine would be an i386-64 with PCIe video, and right now the only real choice there would be Intel graphics.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
First the nit: i386-64? Are you on crack? If you want to call it something cutesy, call it AMD64. The 486 was the last non-RISC CPU either AMD or intel made. Everything since has been internally [mostly] RISC with an x86 decoder glued onto it.
Now the meat: Why is nvidia not an option?
And actually, a better q
People tend to say OSS support ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:People tend to say OSS support ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Even the nVidia binary drivers have wider support than ATi, since they work on OpenSolaris and FreeBSD as well as Linux.
Parent
Current State (Score:5, Interesting)
ATI needs to step up the quality of their coding and there is no *good* reason why ati does not support AIGLX and why their 8.35.5 is having problems with dual monitors. Because my laptop uses ati and i was so displeased with its state of drivers forced me to go with nvidia when i built my desktop a year ago. Im sure many people using Linux stay clear of ati when possible for the same reason. When and if they get their stuff together it will receive a warm welcome...if they do it right that is.
Also why is it people need programs like envy [albertomilone.com] to install their drivers. Hopefully ATI and nvidia will pick up the slack hear and make it easer to install the drivers.
Dell .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dell .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh Oh! (Score:5, Funny)
Consumer point of view (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
R300 opensource drivers (Score:4, Informative)
Recently the driver has been included in the official DRI tree. Most distro use it to provide open-source 3D acceleration. It is the default drivers for near every GPL-compatible Beryl/Compiz LiveCD (like Kooraa, for exemple) and function well enough with them (the same can't be said for official binary drivers).
As usual you should stop focusing on the hardware maker - who doesn't { have the possibility to / want to } throw resources at an OS that represents only a smaller fraction of their market share.
You should instead seek what has been produced by the OSS community - through large-scale collaboration they often manage to put out some marvels.
There no way one could except ATI to open-source drivers. They may have problems with code in their drivers that wasn't produced in house and that can't be opened cheaply.
BUT what AMD/ATI realy need to do is to help the DRI/FreeDesktop guys develop their own driver, and for that they need to document a little bit their chips. The best thing could do to the OSS community isn't trying to make their BLOB drivers less borked. The best thing would be to provide list of registers and samples so the community could write a R500 driver.
Parent
In other news (Score:5, Informative)
ATI, NVIDIA: fuck you. Open source graphic drivers are possible, period.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The more detailed the explanation, the better. This is how we educate manufacturers.
An operating system MUST be license neutral (Score:3, Insightful)
HTPC use *better* get them motivated (Score:3, Insightful)
all the howtos talk about the nvidia binary (sigh) driver and how it helps (but isn't a full solution) to mpeg motion accel. in hardware.
but with ati, there IS no solution. "don't use ATI" if you use linux and want fast video for home theater use.
I bought an ati card for the windows side of my htpc design - but I won't be buying them again until they show an xvmc driver for linux.
its just a shame they ignore unix like that; especially in the days when HTPC building is really starting to get popular.
Thanks ATI (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh... Guess you'll wait a while... (Score:3, Interesting)
Put on the cheerleader uniform (Score:3, Insightful)
That being said, I think the conference has the potential to quickly degrade to LinuxWorld-level, and this announcement doesn't surprise me. Companies will come out of the woodwork and start screaming "Yaaa, we like Linux! Hooray for open source!" for a week, but then not do anything until the next conference/expo rolls around.
(On a related note, the last notebook I bought came with Intel graphics. I specifically chose this because I didn't want to deal with the headache of ATI and Nvidia's binary drivers. Intel is no saint, but at least having full 3D drivers in Xorg is nice.)
Open? Does not play with DRM, so forget it. (Score:5, Informative)
Protected Video Path User Accessible Bus (PVP-UAB) and Protected Broadcast Driver Architecture (PBDA..."
All lovely things that Microsoft and ATI (will/do) use to piss you off, and make connecting all of your expensive new PC & AV kit virtually impossible.
Better binary drivers? Maybe.
Genuinely 'open' architecture that would enable the OSS community to bypass (more easily) current and future DRM, while still being able to view the result on the lastest hardware? No way.
ATI is pulling your (our) leg (Score:3, Insightful)
What's more, it may not be just one component that's truly sucky: All I know is that ATI's FGLRX + 3D + Xorg = failure. Their driver may be fine, there could be an issue with Xorg and ATI together, or some unseen combo that nobody is looking at--or it would have been fixed. So, as a result you have, really, only one good choice for Linux 3D, and that's nVidia. Nvidia knows this and loves it. ATI chooses to chase the other guy rather than fix things and gain new converts.
In a month or two when nothing has come of this, at least you'll know why. Pay no attention to the flapping heads of ATI until they actually DO something.
Commercial uses (Score:3, Interesting)
When they can't be bothered to get their drivers to pay attention to vblank properly, you know it's not their top priority.
Re:Does this mean hardware hacking is dead? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Does this mean hardware hacking is dead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Does this mean hardware hacking is dead? (Score:4, Insightful)
You see, 3d cards are complicated. On top of that the hardware itself if often finicky with lockups to the point that they should really be considered bugs. So, you can only start once your got the hardware in your hands (which means after release) and with lots of work, at best you will have something semi-working a year later. It will be at least another year before the drivers mature so everyone can use them mostly without lockups. In the meanwhile ATI will release a few more variations and, if you are aiming for comprehensive support, you are back to square one.
If ATI wants to be nice to Open Source it means releasing partial specifications (at the very least) before the card is ready so that all their cards work with 2d, Xv and multi-monitor/multi-card when they are in stores (or a couple of months later) and having full specifications no later than 6 months after release.
Anything else and we are back to scrounging for older well-supported cards - which also happen to be a good deal cheaper and have less of a margin for ATI.
The latest card I have is Radeon 1600 - and given a choice I would gladly go back to R300 (or better yet - Rage Pro) if only those cards supported the resolutions I need and PCI express.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
At this stage, to buy anything except an Intel GMA X3000 is madness. Intel are delivering fully Free/Open solutions that are powerful enough for anyone except hard core gamers (and said games don't exist on Linux anyway) and CAD people.
The
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ok I am stupid ... (Score:5, Informative)
Long answer: No. X11+GLX is very different from GDI+DirectX. In almost all cases, it would be easier to reverse-engineer the hardware, rather than wrap the driver api. Also, it would probably be impossible to use windows graphics drivers in a secure manner. And the extra translation layer would kill performance. If you are going to reverse-engineer the drivers, you might as well look at the hardware info, and not the software api.
Note that in some cases, it is possible to use Windows drivers on a *nix operating system. The NDIS network card driver api is well documented, and is supported by projects for Linux and FreeBSD.
Parent