Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

oh and before I forget:

For DESKTOPS:

Intel is much less desirable here.. mostly because AMD proccessors are SOOOO much nicer.

However I would like one for the specific reason that they have good hardware support. The fastest GMA integrated graphics you can get is with the 945 chipsets. I think the proccessor speed is around 400mhz. For 945 support you'd have to use the latest distros. The 915 driver may or may not work in earlier X.org versions.

For the 945 series motherboards you have to by ddr2 memory and stuff like that. I don't know about 915 boards. For 915 and 945 boards you have speed differences in the GMA chipset speeds. Goto Intel's websites because they have very good documentation on their boards and their features.

They also have nice advice (chassis engineering level) for buying heatsinks and fans. All this different stuff in PDF form. Like you have to get a 3-wire fans for the cpu hinksink to use Intel's onboard active fan controls. This allows your fan to scale along with your CPU to get quietest operation.

For AMD users you have integrated Via stuff, which is slow as slow can get.

The only workable option is to go with propriatory Nvidia stuff or 9200 and older ATI stuff.

With XGI there is a glimmer of hope...
They are thinking about releasing FULL OSS support for 3d graphics and everything for their 8300 series video card.

this is a low end video card designed mainly for low-heat, low-power stuff and multimedia. They claim superior image quality and that is their focus for these cards.

There is supposadly a 8500 series card to be released and these are the 'gamers' version of the card. They claim speed equivelent to 6800gt cards and whatnot.

So I guess email them and tell them what you feel about buying versus not buying their cards if they release OSS drivers.

Keep in mind that OSS drivers would probably be immature in the beginning and would take a few months to mature. That seems the track record for people spontaniously releasing OSS drivers for anything.

More information:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=32...

Oh, and don't forget about the OGP project.. Those guys making a video card specificly for Linux use.

This should be very fasinating for anybody interested in hardware hacking. For a price significantly more inexpensive then anything else you'd be able to get a very big FPGA proccessors and a 128megs of onboard RAM on a PCI or PCIe card... There is nothing else like this on the market. Should be great for hackers, hobbyiests, and educators.

Hell, with Sun releasing their Verilog stuff for the OpenSparc stuff maybe you can get a Sparc proccessor running on your PCI bus. :)

For everybody else they plan on releasing a ASIC version after the testing with the FPGA proccessor is over that should increase performance, reduce cost, and reduce heat.

Opengraphics wiki:
http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=Open-Graphics