XGI, VIA Release Open Source Drivers 315
An anonymous reader writes "XGI has announced the release of open source drivers for its Volari family of graphics adapters. Efforts at X.Org to merge the new code into the head branch are already underway. Almost simultaneously, VIA has announced the immediate release of open source drivers for S3 Graphics UniChrome, VIA ProSavage and ProSavage DDR. Could these moves signal the beginning of a period of rapid improvement in Free drivers for video cards?"
So what card? (Score:4, Interesting)
Open is good (Score:2, Interesting)
C3 systems (Score:5, Interesting)
Desparate times... (Score:0, Interesting)
I doubt this move will have any influence on ATI or Nvidia to open things up but we can always hope...
Hopefully.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The only way those two will release their own drivers as open-source is when they feel a pinch in the pocketbook.
Off the cuff quick answer... (Score:3, Interesting)
We already get our drivers for $free on most platforms. Free as in open and easy, I certainly hope so. While we've made great strides in compatibility over the years, getting the hardware people on board and co-operating is still lagging.
When 95% of each sector of the hardware market is co-operating, then we'll just have to hope coders are doing something useful with the platforms now that they're working.
I'll put this in my personal "Good News" category for future reference.
Re:Desparate times... (Score:3, Interesting)
Does it suck? yes, very much so, but the world is like that with software patents. Though I am not sure how those patents would apply in this case.
This is great news. (Score:5, Interesting)
And guess what? I think this will ultimately increase their sales. As more drivers are available, choosing hardware to run Linux or some obscure OS won't be so difficult, so people will be more likely to buy a piece of hardware.
I think this will also improve the quality of their products. Often, drivers, like any other software, contain bugs, which can cause it to appear as if the hardware isn't working as well as it should. Or perhaps the driver isn't quite as efficient as it could be with system resources, so it seems as if the hardware isn't quite as fast as it should be. When these things are released under open source, it is more likely that things like this will get fixed and improved, and that will ultimately improve the vendor's hardware product without requiring any significant effort on the part of the vendor.
XGI and VIA are doing a smart thing. I'm heading over to write them an email about them and thank them. I suggest that others do the same. This is great news, and I hope other vendors will follow.
But what are we really getting? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what card? (Score:2, Interesting)
I was right about XGI (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know who persuaded XGI to make this commitment to open source but I fully intend to consider XGI for my next video card. I'm using an nVidia card today on the basis of their closed-source driver support for Linux, but I'd rather support a company that embraces open source.
Re:So what card? (Score:4, Interesting)
What this translates to for me personally is that XGI, VIA, and Intel chips are all major contenders for my future desktop, as the current contenders (Nvidia, ATI) both have binary-only drivers that come with some pretty serious headaches (ati in particular, Nvidia much less). Again, I'd also very much consider older ATI cards, as their specs are available to X devs and (hence?) have good drivers. But given my current fight with my ATI card, I'm seriously considering not buying modern ATI again.
Re:So what card? (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple of weeks ago I managed to fry my highend NVidia GPU (don't ask how). At the local 'puter store they only had a bunch of ATI's available at that moment and since it's not easy to use the machine without a GPU I had to settle for one.
I have to say, I've heard nothing but bad things about ATI cards under Linux as they're drivers are proprietary and rumored to be quite poor. Let me tell you, my X800 is working like a charm! It took me about 10 minutes to download the RPM from ATI.com, run it through alien [debian.org] and then install. It Just Worked.
Also the TV-out is awesomely overscanned form the get-go as opposed to the NVidias I have been using.
Sorry for the offtopic, but I am rather chocked that ATI has such a bad rep among you Slashdotters. Proprietary or not, the drivers works flawlessly for me.
(No I am not an ATI employee)
Why this won't happen with more popular cards (Score:2, Interesting)
It's time to shift your support to companies that support open source (and by consequence, oppose DRM).
Re:It's a racket and everyone knows it (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it really a racket, then or is it actually more of a manufacturing strategy? On the surface, we all want to think that price should be based on what it costs to make it. But there's more to it and, really, the only time material, labor and overhead costs come in to play when pricing an item is finding out where your break-even point is. After that, it's essentially demand setting the price. The fact is, that there are several markets... the home user market, the professional user market and on and on.
And forget that you're a technical type and think like a business man who doesn't know tech. When you are told you have these three graphics cards to choose from, each with comparable capabilities, one of them has this ridiculously low price for its class. Are you inclined to buy that one? Most business people don't because it causes them to doubt the lower-cost device. "Why is it cheaper? Must not be as good."
But back to manufacturing, it's important to lower manufacturing costs where ever possible... if it were your job to do it, you'd probably be no different. It's cheaper to make a bunch of the same product and then disable features and sell them as lower-end rather than to manage that many more product manufacturing lines.
Is it frustrating to the technical consumer to know this? Hell yeah. I've got a Dell Inspiron advanced port replicator and a Dell Latitude advanced port replicator that are freaking identical hardware and they work interchangeably except that some ports don't function properly. I haven't decided to crack these two things open to find out what's different, but there is a fairly significant cost difference between the two devices.
Is it a racket? No... I think that goes a little too far.
xgi (Score:3, Interesting)
I am extremely curious--they are cheap, but I want to know about performance.
Something i wonder is... (Score:3, Interesting)
I ask because outside nVidia, Windows drivers are usually lacking one way or another, specially when it comes to stuff like OpenGL. It could be interesting if someone worked independently on Win drivers for mainstream videocards.
PS: It's great to see some companies realizing they are on the hardware buissnes, not software. Thank you. I had interest in the S3 Deltachrome/Unichrome series, and now i'll most certainly try one out.
Re:Desparate times... (Score:3, Interesting)
They think their biggest asset is their feature complete and quite stable drivers, and that anyone can easily compete with them for hardware in the market. They feel their whole business model is based on "IP", which is to mean chip designs and driver source code.
In other words, they rely on a proprietary business model, and they wish to keep it that way, because it makes them more money.
XGI's "efforts" (Score:5, Interesting)
And the worst part is that my name is all across "their" source.
Finally, probably needless to say, the 3D part is not included.
Re:C3 systems (Score:2, Interesting)
Some are saying this is just VIA's way of dumping support for linux drivers on the OSS community while at the same time spouting how open source friendly they are.
Re:But what are we really getting? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Desparate times... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well...I don't know about you, but I'm about to write ATI and nVidia letting them know that as soon as the open source drivers come out, I'm dumping my ATI and nVidia graphics cards, switching to hardware from people who fully support Open Source, and recommending to anyone who asks me that they do the same.
If enough people do that, perhaps ATI and nVidia will pay attention.
ATI already has - a little (Score:3, Interesting)
NVidia didn't even release the source to a commodity item like their nForce LAN chipset, so we had to clean-room our own for that one.
The Volari cards look good. I'm pleased that the hard-working lab-rats there have finally managed to convince management to Open their 3D drivers too (they Opened their 2D stuff more than a year ago). Now all I need to do is fine someone in Western Australia who sells the XGI cards other than as a novelty item.
The VIA S3 cards suck. S3 cards have always sucked, from their horrid little every-one-different pre-Virge series on down. The CyberBlades sucked less, but were still not in the same league as their competitors, not even on par with Intel's basic integrated chipset. At least now we might be better equipped to work around some of the suckiness.