ATI Committed To Fixing Its OSS Problems

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?"

Likely binary drivers only.

[danomac]

I'd wager a guess they're going to fix the binary drivers only.

Why would they open a spec when they can compete with the binary drivers?

Does this mean .......

[Timesprout]

Why dont you ask ATI what it means. How is Slashdot supposed to be privy to ATI's roadmap?

Re:Likely binary drivers only.

[morgan_greywolf]

Why would they open a spec when they can compete with the binary drivers?

Because they can compete with open source drivers. Otherwise, why would Microsoft fear Red Hat and Novell?

This is not news

[cyphercell]

If you read the original article that all of this questioning is derived from you realize the article summary has more content than the linked story. This means aproximately nothing. ATI pays lip service to open source software news at 11.

People tend to say OSS support ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... when they only mean 'Linux support'. And personally, I don't consider closed source binaries OSS support at all. AMD has been good about making the information available for open-source programmers so their chips can be supported. Perhaps their purchase of ATI will force a shift in the corporate culture there too. Well, we can hope.

Fast track?

[huckda]

I doubt ATI will fast track anything for OSS...

they may eventually solve SOME problems but I sincerely doubt they'll be throwing a team on resolving all of the issues resulting from using one of their cards with Linux.

Re:Does this mean hardware hacking is dead?

[the_humeister]

Uh, people have been working hard to understand how the hardware works in order to write open source drivers. See here [freedesktop.org] for example. The problem is that ATI doesn't open up the specs for their recent cards so there are very few and tedious avenues to having open source drivers (eg. reverse engineer the binary drivers, probing hardeware settings, etc). As far as I know, there's practically full opne source 3D drivers for R100-R200 based cards, somewhat full 3D drivers for R300 based cards, and no support for later models. So the OSS community is working on the driver issues, it takes time without documentation.

Re:Marketing?

[CaptnMArk]

Marketing is not a problem. Lawyers and managers are.

Re:Open Source supporters within ATI

[krbvroc1]

So much for showing a little leadership? Basically, we will just follow nVidia. I've got 1U Supermicro rackmount servers that have ATI 'Rage MX' chipsets on them and there is not even a solution for these chips other than a very slow unaccelerated driver. They don't even have a working binary driver.

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.

Re:Does this mean hardware hacking is dead?

[Ruie]

So far I'm hearing "commercial company hasn't written Linux drivers for their card". That's a legitimate complaint, but if the OSS community's reaction is to whine about it on cheesy blogs rather just hack the hardware...?

No, it is not, but it is strictly for pleasure only.

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.

An operating system MUST be license neutral

[iamacat]

How do we feel about Microsoft's decision to exclude open source drivers by requiring signatures on everything in XP/Vista? Would we want them to rule out GPLed software based on MFC and .Net? It's no better for Linux to enforce a particular license for drivers or impose license restrictions on KDE/Qt apps. An operating system should be license-neutral for any applications and plugins it supports. A user should not be limited in what kind of hardware he can buy for his Linux computer.

HTPC use *better* get them motivated

[TheGratefulNet]

right now, as much as I dislike it - nvidia IS the linux owner for HTPC use.

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.

Re:In other news

[Dan Ost]

Make sure you contact ATI and nVidia and explain to them what you did and why you did it.
The more detailed the explanation, the better. This is how we educate manufacturers.

Put on the cheerleader uniform

[fo0bar]

I attended the Red Hat summit last year. Lots of good information (there were a ton of talks about Xen, a good one about the finer points of LVM, etc), but the price wasn't worth making it a yearly thing.

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.)

ATI? Who F**cking cares ATI.

[Delifisek]

They don't give any f**ck to Linux drivers. More than 5 years, oss people begging them to do something for Linux drivers.

So ? DONT BUY.

Thats simple.

Re:ATI? Who F**cking cares ATI.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people don't have a choice. When the IT department at work buys you a laptop with an ATI chipset in it, if you want to run Linux on it, what are you going to do? Suck it up and deal with it, that's what.

Re:Likely binary drivers only.

[Shazow]

Actually, it's more likely that the reason all their software is locked away and kept secret is because it's probably infringing on numerous software patents. When Joe Sixpack can go down to the patent office and register a doubly linked list as his own invention, lots of possibilities for lawsuits open up.

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

Re:Likely binary drivers only.

[div_2n]

I thought we were discussing ATI, but I don't disagree with you. I've always felt the reasons many hardware vendors are reluctant to be more open doesn't solely revolve around "trade secrets" and such. Being open shines lights in dark corners that can make some people nervous about.

Re:Open Source supporters within ATI

[crush]

no competitive contemporary open source 3D any more, and the quality of nVidia's binary seems to be better.

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 X3000 integrated graphics chips. The latter chips apparently do T&L shaders and other good stuff [wikipedia.org] which is actually better supported under GNU/Linux than Windows Vista.

Of course, if what you're talking about is CAD or something really GPU intensive then you may be more out of luck, but I'm interested to know exactly what that is?

* Intel are also a great bet for wireless compared to e.g. broadcom or marvell

Re:Open Source supporters within ATI

[scobiej]

Same problem here. I have waisted numberous hours trying to get an on board ATI Radeon Xpress 200 card to work dual head with no joy. Their aticonfig utility seg faults all the time and even when I can get it to work, it's just nonsense that it produces and the driver crashes upon initialisation. I'm not new to this. I've been hacking away at X11 drivers since they appeared on the scene. It's pathetic. You have an ATI card, you expect their drivers to work. I may not like NVidia's open source policy either but at least their drivers work, and work well. Unfortunately, they don't have low profile cards that do 3D like ATI. Matrox do but they charge silly money. ATI need to up their game. Trying to stay with NVidia should not be an option, not that they are even close with their drivers.

ATI is pulling your (our) leg

[fudgefactor7]

Read my Journal for the scoop, but it works like this: they (ATI) know their OSS/Linux support is "teh suck," but choose not to fix it. Why? The answer is simple: why should they? In the 3D realm, you have two choices ATI or nVidia. That's it. Linux isn't where the bread-n-butter is, Windows is where the revenue is. As a business, you go where the money is, not where your heart may lead you.

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.

IP

[pedestrian crossing]

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.

Re:Likely binary drivers only.

[LWATCDR]

"I'm sure that they could even get a performance boost if they let millions of hackers with tons of free time optimize things for them."
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.

Re:Likely binary drivers only.

[slaida1]

Right, because no other vendor has ever been accused of that!

This isn't kindergarten chat, buddy. Didn't your mom tell you that it's no excuse if others are doing the same? That logical fallacy has a name: Appeal to Common Parctice. Don't use it.