How To Request Better ATI Linux Support 192
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Larabel, the editor of Phoronix, has outlined some strategies for contacting ATI's customers (OEM/ODM/AIBs) to seek ATI Linux fglrx driver improvements. He opines that contacting ATI or AMD directly is the 'wrong approach.' He also states, 'I know for certain that at least one major OEM would like to see improved Linux support but is afraid that the Windows support would then be at risk.' Michael cites examples from the past where Lenovo had sought improved Linux display drivers, which resulted in several new features last year. He provides links to the feedback pages for a number of the vendors to whom ATI actually does listen."
Intels onboard stuff is, I think. (Score:4, Informative)
Intels i810 and above are. Of course you can't get any graphics cards with them, since they're onboard solutions, so you're stuck with an Intel processor too. Which may or may not be a drawback.
Not realy accurate statement. (Score:5, Informative)
They have completely and 100% open and free software drivers.
They are ahead of Nvidia when it comes to Linux desktop support. They will support sleep better, then will support hotplugging monitors better (when support for that sort of thing is added in X.org 7.3).
They supported technology like AIGLX before Nvidia.
They are quite fast enough for 3D desktop. The onboard GMA 950 can comfortably run either compiz or beryl 3d desktops with high efficiency.
As the display technology for Linux progresses the Intel onboard video cards will be the first.
Other advantages over Nvidia propriatory drivers include that they are much more inexpensive. The motherboards they come on have much better Linux support then the typical motherboards you find Nvidia onboard video drivers.
Laptops with Intel onboard video drivers will have advantages in price and battery life as well as stability when it comes to sleep and other advanced power management features.
The advantage that Nvidia video cards have over Intel is performance.
If you require performance for LInux desktop that goes beyond free software 3d games and good 3d desktop support and have requirements for newer video games or need 3d performance for your work then you have no choice but to buy nvidia.
There exists no open source 3d drivers that can support high end 3d performance nearly as well as what Nvidia provides.
But if your looking for cost effective and stable (much more stable then Nvidia) 2d/3d performance then Intel onboard video cards are the logical choice.
Plus they are open source.
Using Intel hardware I have absolutely no need for any propriatory software to drive my hardware. No SATA drivers, no video drivers, no wireless drivers, no nic card drivers, or no audio drivers need to be proprietory in any way.
(Intel is no freind of Free software, or realy even open source. They just see the financial advantage to supporting Linux properly.)
The current chipset for Linux to look for if you want as trouble free install as possible is the Intel 945g with the integrated GMA 950 video device. For non-bog-standard resolutions (ie widescreen) you will need to use the 915resolution hack for now, but this should go away in the future.
For special setups (for onboard devices) such as TV/componate/HD-out, DVI-out, and even dual DVI out you can purchase ADD2 cards for those features which plug into the PCI express port and interface the onboard intel cards. I don't know how well these work, but I am told by X.org folks that they _should_ work and will be _very_ interested if they don't.
Re:Not realy accurate statement. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Buy NVidia (Score:5, Informative)
Support Open-Graphics (Score:5, Informative)
http://wiki.duskglow.com//tiki-index.php?page=Abo
The FAQ
http://wiki.duskglow.com//tiki-index.php?page=Fre
Join the mailing list.
http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-g
And
http://www.traversaltech.com/ [traversaltech.com]
Re:So wich modern graphics card IS fully opensourc (Score:4, Informative)
With older hardware there were more options. I have an old Ati Radeon 9200 in my closet, just in case I need AGP graphics card. It's the last Radeon that works completely with open source drivers. (also 7000 and 8500 and 9000 work).
So it doesn't look too good, does it..
Well there is hope. Intel is working on discrete graphics chips. read more here [beyond3d.com] and here. [theinquirer.net]
I believe Intel has no reason to change their Linux friendly policy. So I hope they come up with a decent discrete graphics card and release open source drivers with it.
Since Intel is such a big player it just might encourage others to do the same.
I game with the Intel GMA 950.. (Score:4, Informative)
I am using Debian unstable, which currently uses the X.org 7.1 release.
The drivers that are supplied with that are not well optimized. They are good for compiz and can run Beryl very well, even with high amounts of eye candy except (almost everything turned on) for the one or two features that require special shading support. (basicly water effects).
It is capable of playing Quake2 and Quake3 well.
Return to Castle Wolfenstien is _very_ playable.
Enemy Territory is starting to push it and my currently favorite game, which is a full modification called True Combat: Elite is barely playable (it adds several more advanced features to the ET like HD lighting)
Nexuiz is not realy playable. Tremulous is fine, warsow is very playable. Cube/Cube2 is mostly playable except certain levels.
Benchmarks suggest that they offer decent enough performance for UT2k3 and UT2k4, but I don't know that for a fact.
If you use:
export INTEL_BATCH=1
and run 16bit RGB then everything is mostly playable. Also manually allocating memory to AGP and Texture stuff helps. And then allocating memory to a special buffer will enable HD-sized XV support. (see the 810 man file) A little tweaking is very helpfull. Expect a 75% boost in performance from that alone.
Now X.org, DRI, and Mesa folks (the DRI drivers are basicly made by taking Mesa and accelerating what they can), are working on efficient ways to manage video card memory, which is required for newer cards and usage patterns.
They are working on a special branch of DRI drivers called 915tex_dri.so (were the normal is just 915_dri.so). This adds lots of optimizations and efficient dynamic memory management and allocation. Using this you get quite a performance boost over the default drivers.
ET is very playable. As is True Combat: Elite and you rarely get framerates that drop below 20FPS. I keep my framerates limited at 70FPS and most of the time it's sitting at that limit.
If your using LCD display there is no point beyond having the limit set at 60 FPS. But you need to have good performance to keep it dropping down under 30FPS for good online play.
So the drivers are definately improving. I am expecting good things to happen with X.org 7.3. But due to the shared memory sceme and lack of accelerated texture and lighting effects these things will never be usefull for gaming, not like most 'gamers' expect.
Now with the GMA X3000 aviable with G965 video cards they will offer acceptable gaming performance once the drivers are optimized. They offer hardware acceleration for texture and lighting effects as well as shader support and other such things.
Technology-wise, at least on paper, they are on par with ATI's and Nvidia's entry-level video cards.
You can find benchmarks on Phoronix for the GMA 3000, which is from the Q965, which is a bit lower end then the X3000. It completely lacks T&L hardware acceleration and other such features. So it's sort of like a X3000 core, but with the GMA 950 features.
The X3000 should perform better then that, by quite a bit, but I don't think right now the drivers are realy all that optimized. Not until the memory management stuff gets worked out. Then it should meet the lower end requirements for Doom3 and Quake4 pretty well. At least enough to be playable.
But realy if your a 'gamer' that is more then casual then Nvidia is about it.
The nice thing about this is that you can get a 945G motherboard right now, get good 3d/2d support and if it doesn't work out for you then a Nvidia card is a easy add on.
Probably with Feisty the G965-based motherboards will probably be a good choice, but unfortunately I don't own one right now for personal testing. If Ubuntu was smart they'd be paying close attention to those chipsets, especially since they will be in the majority of next-generation laptops that people will be trying to use Ubuntu with.
An alternative approach. (Score:4, Informative)
Dirk Meyer [mailto]
His executive bio is here [amd.com]. Please ask him, nicely, to open the hardware documentation, and if he could provide some resources (people, money, hardware) to the X.org team so they can build drivers.
Re:Oh, and stay the fuck away from ATI. (Score:3, Informative)
nVidia used to be a tech support nightmare back in '97. Gateway 2000 used them on a lot of their system and the drivers were always screwing up. I think I did more nVidia driver reinstalls than any other single thing. They got serious about quality of their drivers and now they are some of the best. ATI could take this a step further by open sourcing their drivers (at least the Linux ones.)
I'd even bet that if ATI open sourced their Linux drivers, they'd be better than the Windows ones within 2 years, and within 4, they would be the basis of the Windows drivers, which would probably then go open source as well. (These are pessimistic numbers, because I'm not much of a betting man.)
So if I'm an nVidia fan, why am I saying that I hope ATI will do this? Simple: ATI has always had better hardware. All it would take for me to change loyalty would be to have ATI open source their drivers. I'd go buy one of their best cards tomorrow if they open sourced today. (I tend to be an early adopter. Go Feisty Fawn!)
Re:Not realy accurate statement. (Score:2, Informative)
Intel graphics cards, to the best of my knowledge, only come on Intel motherboards, which are only compatible with Intel CPUs. As AMD and ATI have merged, this means that buying Intel graphics cards causes ATI/AMD to lose out on three sales, not just the graphics card.
Re:I would mod you up. (Score:2, Informative)
But... first of all, we're talking about documentation, not code. Second, even if we were talking about code, I'm not sure what you mean when you say that manufacturers "need to protect certain parts of their code" (trade secrets at least shouldn't really apply, since we'd only be talking about the code for a driver, not the VRML sources for the chips themselves). And third, while there might be NDAs involved even when we're only talking about documentation, I think that asking for documentation can still be a good thing in that case since it shows that there is demand for open documentation and that entering NDAs might therefore be detrimental.
Put another way, as a user, you've got something to gain and nothing to lose, but I can tell you right away that you won't win if you don't try. I don't have a crystal ball, and I can't tell you what the best course of action would be (FWIW, I don't actually believe that there is a single course of action that's *always* best), but that, too, shouldn't be a reason not to *try*.
As for "his game"... I'm not sure what you're referring to there, really, unless you mean that it's pointless to post on Slashdot saying that open documentation is needed/good since it amounts to preaching to the choire. That's certainly true, but I don't think you can deduce from that that discussion of these matters is pointless; outside of that fact that Slashdot is not as homogenous as one might believe, anyway (there is a certain majority opinion in many cases, but there's also a considerable "long tail"), the fact that you participate in this discussion also proves that you do not consider it a priori pointless to discuss these matters.
That being said, I apologise if I misunderstood what you were trying to say.
Re:Oh, and stay the fuck away from ATI. (Score:5, Informative)
You won't have absolute open source and you need to get used to that idea. You will always have a mishmash of open source and closed. What's important is that the OS and the underlying major technologies be open source. Drivers and applications do not need to be Open Source, and rightly shouldn't always be. You can see this by looking at gaming. No gaming developer is going to release their game into open source upon launch. It may be released 10 years later. There's absolutely no need to and should never be a pre-requisite for running on linux. The Kernel to the OS or the OS itself is licensed this way but that doesn't give zealots in the community the right to demand everything be open sourced or be no good.
Just accept that. It is important to bring in commercial ventures and you won't do it with the pure open source ideology. In fact, that would be killer to any attempt to bring in companies such as game developers. The OS yes, quality productivity apps yes, utiliites yes, drivers yes, games and other such products such as photoshop NO (and don't even consider it).