George Staikos on Linux Drivers and KDE (LinMagAu) [LWN.net]

In this LinMagAu article John Knight interviews George Staikos about the state of video and audio drivers for Linux. "Linux users need to demand drivers or hardware documentation for the hardware they buy, or do what they have a right to do - buy elsewhere. Promote the competitors' products. I think we've seen this repeatedly in the Linux world already. More Linux users demanding open specifications or drivers will mean more drivers in the end. Eventually it will become profitable." (Found at KDE.News)

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George Staikos on Linux Drivers and KDE (LinMagAu)

Posted Aug 11, 2003 19:43 UTC (Mon) by mem (guest, #517) [Link] (1 responses)

Can I have a bit of the crack George (or the interviewer -- I'm not sure) is smoking? What does "ATI have been providing open source Linux drivers provided by an employed 3rd party" mean? The DRI project? Since when is the DRI project an "employed 3rd party"? Some money changed hands (from the weather channel to Tungsten) in order to develop a driver for the Radeon 8500 (2 generations old in the meantime). There are "other" third party drivers for ATI cards (which support the current generation of cards, AFAIR), but they are not open source. And then there's ATI's "own" drivers for Linux (which are actually developed by a third party AFAIUI), and those are very binary-only, but support the current cards -- for some people they seem to work very well and for others they are horrible. And to add confusion to the whole issue, there's the fact that you can download drivers from ATI's website (here's a direct link, for which to have clicked on some EULA, take notice) or from Schneider Digital. The ones from Schneider eventually show up at ATI's website. Last time it took about two months IIRC.

Don't take this the wrong way. I love ATI, they are a great company, I've been buying their hardware for over 15 years. The only other company's hardware I like better than ATI's is Matrox, but Matrox stopped being a competitor in the 3D area long ago. Matrox's still got superb picture quality, but that's about it. ATI's picture quality is not as good, but it's better than NVIDIA's (not hard, really). But I still haven't got a Radeon 9x00 because that card is NOT supported by any open source driver, and the binary ones have sucked monkey ass every time I've tried them (slow, crash-prone, error-prone, pick any three). And as far as I _know_ (I'd be gladly proven wrong) ATI is not providing documentation to support the "advanced" features of the R300 chip. The NVIDIA proposition is way far from perfect, but at least they tend to treat Linux the same they treat Windows (which might or might not be positive -- NVIDIA has a not-so-nice customer-relations record)

George Staikos on Linux Drivers and KDE (LinMagAu)

Posted Aug 12, 2003 10:05 UTC (Tue) by fredi (guest, #13519) [Link]

Yes I too miss Matrox graphic cards. And the good quality of their drivers.
About ATI helping oss developement of drivers, I can confirm that. From time to time they post patches in DRI's list. I dont know how it used to be before (I have an ATI card from 2 months, all my previous ones were Matrox) but now it seems they are willing to help.

Just my two Lek

George Staikos on Linux Drivers and KDE (LinMagAu)

Posted Aug 11, 2003 21:23 UTC (Mon) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

Yes i couldnt agree more,..., and i even asked plenty of times before, in support requests, but...

INFORTUNATLY THIS IS NOT HAPPENNING: in a rogue manner we can say that all started 20 years ago, in an attempt to get technical information to wright a driver for a printer...,so there as being lots of pressure for a long time. 20 years later, and after the formation of the "Free Hardware Foundation", i belive "IT'S PRETTY CLEAR" that the "gross" hardware industry "WILL NEVER" colaborate with Open-Source in a open-source manner... It's not me, and everyone can clearly agree that is time to look for alternetives, because "REVERSE ENGENEERING" is the only choice now.

Those that cry for patience, are not being reasonable, and instead of demanding, would not be more polite to ask the "hardware industry" what they need ?... But than when the summits, like the last Ottawa symposium, none of those representatives of "hardware industry" specialy in Video & Sound are ever invited... and what is discussed is super-computers like 64 Gb memory in 32 bit systems. I'm affraid that this will lead to a time when you want to run Linux, than you have to buy a $3000 machine...

I wouldnt mind to run a Power5+ or Power6 system, but can i afford it ?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/32232.html

When a IBM engeneer got flamed in a forum for stating there is a unseen "price" to a Linux system... i can now see that to !.