Graphics nightmare [LWN.net]

Graphics nightmare

Posted Nov 16, 2006 5:41 UTC (Thu) by rakoenig (subscriber, #29855)
In reply to: Your right by drag
Parent article: Resisting the binary blob

If the recommondation is "buy an Intel GMA" then this means: Buy a system with an Intel CPU based on an Intel Chipset. I'm working at a computer manufacturer and I know that there are a lot of customers, that want to buy non-Intel products because of pricing issues or just because they don't want an Intel monopoly on the market.

Those people don't have any option to get free 3D graphics support. Intel graphic is always on mainboards, but there is no PCIe plugin card that offers a graphic chip fully supported by free drivers.

The main manufactureres for graphic cards are ATI, Matrox and nVidia (alphabetically) where Matrox has a low market share. nVidia is evil by default because there is no free GPL driver available. ATI has some free drivers for older cards, but they won't fit into todays systems that come with PCIe slots instead of AGP.

The main problem why both ATI and nVidia refuse to GPL their drivers are IP issues I think. I doubt that releasing a graphics driver under the GPL will make it easier for somebody to "pirate" the hardware, but there is a high risk that one firm or the other has a software patent that is violated by the driver of the other party. In the long run the price of software patents is that we need to give up our freedom.

I'd love to run a machine with free software only, but I wouldn't like a monopoly of just one vendor. So I have to go with proprietary code even if its a pain in the ass. Sad, but there is too little market share of Linux overall to put pressure on the vendors.

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Graphics nightmare

Posted Nov 16, 2006 12:49 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

What about VIA? Their EPIA boards have onboard graphics which I think is their own, rather than intel's. The drivers are free. No doubt it's performance is weedy in comparison to the 3 main manufacturers, but for many applications (perticularly the multimedia the boxes often target) it is quite good enough.

So you can buy non-intel computers with free graphics. Still on-board, admittedly, and not at the high-performance end of things. Those people need to follow drag's advice on which cards have free drivers.

Graphics nightmare

Posted Nov 16, 2006 12:55 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

Oh bollocks - a grocer's apostrophe in public <FX: hangs head in shame>.

Graphics nightmare

Posted Nov 16, 2006 15:56 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> ATI has some free drivers for older cards, but they won't fit into todays systems that come with PCIe slots instead of AGP.

You can buy new R9250 (r200) cards in both PCI and AGP.
You can buy new X300 (r400 aka r300) in PCI, AGP, and PCIe.

Granted, their current-gen X1k stuff has zero opensource support, but even those are available in both PCI and AGP form factors too.

> I'd love to run a machine with free software only, but I wouldn't like a monopoly of just one vendor. So I have to go with proprietary code even if its a pain in the ass. Sad, but there is too little market share of Linux overall to put pressure on the vendors.

My laptop has only free drivers on it, including for the Radeon board. It does everything I need it to do.