Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 3, 2007 19:34 UTC (Tue) by ofeeley (guest, #36105)
In reply to: Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal) by sbergman27
Parent article: Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

System76 seem to only offer nVidia's cards with their Ratel systems

128 MB nVidia GeForce 6200LE PCI-Express x16
256 MB nVidia GeForce 7600 GT PCI-Express x16 (+$189.00)
512 MB nVidia GeForce 7950 GTKO PCI-Express x16 (+$345.00)
640 MB nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS PCI-Express x16 (+$495.00)

That doesn't seem like "getting it" when they could be building the systems with Intel motherboards with actual Free/Open drivers provided courtesy of Intel, as opposed to nVidia's disdain [1] for Free/Open drivers.

Yes, it's great that the nouveau people are working hard on getting those cards reverse-engineered, but in the context of urging us to vote with our wallets I'd rather buy a DELL system that uses the Intel X3000 GMA integrated graphics chip. Intel appear to be getting it, so lets reward them.

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 3, 2007 19:41 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (6 responses)

Unless, of course, the Intel X3000 GMA is inadequate for your needs, if it is even available given your other requirements (eg higher-end motherboards or non-intel processors, or perhaps your software needs something considerably better!)

System76 "gets it" -- they sell the system configuration(s) their customers demand. It's as simple as that.

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 3, 2007 19:54 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

System76 "gets it" -- they sell the system configuration(s) their customers demand. It's as simple as that.

Dell does the same, and they are obviously selling more systems than System76, so I don't think this is a very compelling argument.

If Dell starts selling notebooks with Intel hardware and Linux preinstalled at a reasonable price, that's probably enough to steer me away from a MacBook.

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 3, 2007 19:59 UTC (Tue) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]

Unless, of course, the Intel X3000 GMA is inadequate for your needs, if it is even available given your other requirements (eg higher-end motherboards or non-intel processors, or perhaps your software needs something considerably better!)

Sure. But I'm surprised a "linux-friendly" vendor couldn't at least:

Label systems requiring non-free software as such, and
point to alternatives where possible.

At a minimum, just a notice saying "this system requires proprietary nVidia drivers if you need 3D support" would be helpful.

System76 "gets it" -- they sell the system configuration(s) their customers demand. It's as simple as that.

Could be. I don't know what their customers demand. I only know why I haven't bought anything from them yet: the main reason for me to buy from a "linux-friendly" vendor is to save myself the trouble of having to research all the components for driver support. But since they silently include hardware requiring proprietary drivers, I still have to do all that work when I buy from them, so they don't offer me any particular advantage.

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 3, 2007 21:34 UTC (Tue) by ofeeley (guest, #36105) [Link] (3 responses)

Well, obviously that's true, but it doesn't reduce the central point which is that System76 are basing their systems on GPUs from a company that is incapable of releasing specs to e.g. the nouveau developers.

I'm looking at the whole thing from the very biased perspective of someone that wants to buy a replacement c.$1000 home desktop. I don't need amazing graphics capabilities (although I would like the GPU to be as fast as possible) and only care about the driver being solidly supported by Xorg. Right now that means an Intel G965 Express chipset:
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/g965/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_3000

Given that this can also take Core2Duo E63000 (which is also a selling point) I'd buy a system that was based on that and didn't try to bundle some horrible ATI/nVidia card that I will spend days trying to fix every time I update the kernel. As it happends DELL (at least in Canada) don't offer that combination: I can get a system like that but it comes bundled with either nVidia or ATi. Guess I'll have to just build my own again.

Although I'm not impressed with System76 (exactly because they don't appear to get it and continue providing dodgy hardware) I'm not impressed with DELL either.

If DELL actually come out and provide systems with clearly specificed motherboards (so that I can research and make sure there are no issues) and allow me to choose whether or not to buy an addon PCI-Express video card (should I have the need to dispaly weather simulations in real time) then I'm all for it. Ditto for System76.

If all they're doing is tailoring a particular kernel-version with particular drivrers and calling it "Installed linux" then I have no interest. I want a system that updates stably and with supported, open, Free drivers. Just because someone got it to work long enough to sell it to me isn't enough.

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 15:29 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

>I'm looking at the whole thing from the very biased perspective of someone that wants to buy a replacement c.$1000 home desktop. I don't need amazing graphics capabilities (although I would like the GPU to be as fast as possible) and only care about the driver being solidly supported by Xorg. Right now that means an Intel G965 Express chipset:

You could slap a Radeon X300/700/8x0-series card into your desktop and get vastly superior performance than the Intel G965, not even taking into account the performance penalty of the shared-memory approach of the G965. Using only Free Software.

(I have several machines where I put an old PCI graphics card simply because the performance hit from the shared memory graphics adapter was noticable. It's why server-class boards use very low-end discrete graphics (eg ATI's Rage XL) instead of shared memory arrangements)

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 16:59 UTC (Wed) by ofeeley (guest, #36105) [Link] (1 responses)

Do you have practical experience with the G965 Express chipsets showing a heavy hit on CPU performance? Intel's own bumf about this generation of integrated graphics chips (X3000) and the wikipedia entry I cited above claim that many of those problems from earlier chipsets have been mitigated. I'm very interested to know if you have observed these problems specifically with this latest chipset?

ps. As an aside, looking at the rantings on Intel's forums from people that see what AIGLX can do with these chips while Vista can't is interesting
http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/isn/Community/en-US/fo...

pps. It seems that Dell's 22" LCD displays won't support 1680x1050 with the X3000 from other threads on those forums (it seems to be WinXP users complaining about that, but someone else mentioned it was a problem for XOrg7.1 too)

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 5, 2007 21:45 UTC (Thu) by kamil (guest, #3802) [Link]

Regarding 1680x1050, all I can say is that it works with GMA950 (945GM) and Dell 20" LCD (2007WFP). I even got it to work with an old first-generation Centrino 855GM. So it's hard to imagine that it wouldn't work with the latest chipset, though I haven't read any of those forums you mentioned.

You do need the new "modesetting" XOrg driver to get it working, though.

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 3, 2007 22:23 UTC (Tue) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (4 responses)

So use the "nv" driver. It's not like the cards are unsupported for the things we really need.

Aside from silly OpenGL screensavers and TuxRacer, what need do we have for 3D?

Once you move into the areas of proprietary games or graphics workstations apps, what difference does using a proprietary graphics driver really make?

And Nouveau *is* on the way.

You can buy from Dell if you want. But after Microsoft drops by to slap their wrists and they withdraw support (and they will), I'm going to be back to say "I told you so". ;-)

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 0:47 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (3 responses)

The "nv" driver sucks. It sucks hard.

X CPU goes to 100% on a 2.2GHz cpu for whole seconds while I swap virtual desktops.

I'm using it anyway so I can play with -mm kernels but the nvidia driver and Compiz is sooo much better.

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 17:24 UTC (Wed) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (2 responses)

Really? I have a 6800GT, and I cannot tell the difference between the free driver and the proprietary one in 2D.

Switching virtual desktops is essentially instantaneous for me.

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 18:00 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

I use a laptop. It could be the amount of time it takes the CPU to scale up from 800 to 2200. Or it could be that with 1920x1200, 24-bit screen and sub-pixel anti-aliased text, it just takes that long to redraw.

Buy! Buy! Buy! - into Openness (Linux Journal)

Posted Apr 4, 2007 21:41 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

It's a old machine with 1.13ghz thunderbird proccessor and a PCI Geforce 440mx video card.

Something that would have a significant impact on that machine would often not be noticable on your machine. It's just so fast that your not going to notice.