ATI opensourcing graphics drivers

GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
edited May 2007 in Science & Tech
ATI is planing to opensource there graphics drivers.

Hopefully they will chose a good license and they will find there way into the kernel.

I personally will no longer have any plans to buy nvidia cards..... unless they were to open source there drivers as well.

Nvidia's close sourced drivers aren't updated nearly enough. And now that ati has open source drivers expect there performance and features to increase VERY quickly.


The future looks good for linux (Primary ubuntu and debian) as well as the vendors supporting it (Dell,amd/ati,intel).

Despite Microsofts constant fud campaigns.

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited May 2007
    It seems to me that ATi's drivers have been trailing nVidia's for as long as I can remember on *NIX. Seems like a desperation maneuver, no matter how beneficial the result.
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited May 2007
    Thrax wrote:
    It seems to me that ATi's drivers have been trailing nVidia's for as long as I can remember on *NIX. Seems like a desperation maneuver, no matter how beneficial the result.

    Its the best solution to the problem and it frees up programmers to work on the windows drivers. (Something NVIDIA should really be doing)
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited May 2007
    It could be the best solution, or another path to a mess... It is another way for ATI to say we are way to lazy to do it ourselves...

    I will say ATI has a better foot on Drivers in the past 7 months...
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited May 2007
    Sledgehammer70 wrote:
    It could be the best solution, or another path to a mess...

    The only way I can see this getting messy is if they pick a bad license for there drivers.
  • septimusseptimus Toronto, Canada
    edited May 2007
    Don't hold your breath guys... AMD will just pull an nVidia and release drivers that consists of some "open source" code and some precompiled binary blobs. If either AMD or nVidia would open up their drivers the world would see just how much they have been violating each others patents :eek:
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited May 2007
    septimus wrote:
    Don't hold your breath guys... AMD will just pull an nVidia and release drivers that consists of some "open source" code and some precompiled binary blobs. If either AMD or nVidia would open up their drivers the world would see just how much they have been violating each others patents :eek:

    They already do that. (Hence why you have to compile the kernel module after installing the proprietary binary blob).

    Im sure there taking a path similar to intel's
  • septimusseptimus Toronto, Canada
    edited May 2007
    GrayFox wrote:
    They already do that. (Hence why you have to compile the kernel module after installing the proprietary binary blob).

    Im sure there taking a path similar to intel's did.

    Somehow, intel is not worried about intellectual property and patents which is awesome :wink:

    Cheers to AMD for promising to open source their driver codebase, a huge undertaking for sure...
  • clear_darknessclear_darkness TX New
    edited May 2007
    Open source Infrastructure ftw.
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited May 2007
    This probably wont happen (although most are living in hope). ATi promised this more times than you can count on a hand... and as you can tell nothing ever came of that. Lets just hope this came from AMDs department and not what is left of ATi...
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited May 2007
    Enverex wrote:
    This probably wont happen (although most are living in hope). ATi promised this more times than you can count on a hand... and as you can tell nothing ever came of that. Lets just hope this came from AMDs department and not what is left of ATi...

    Im pretty sure ati never promised anything but better linux drivers. (NOT open source)... they didn't really deliver.
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited May 2007
    Ah, what I'd been hearing was people saying they'd been claiming that. Ah well.

    This makes me laugh though: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=611&num=6

    On that same site you can find benchmarks of some games which show that the nVidia GeForce 6600 completely outpaces the ATi Radeon X1950XT. Kinda puts the ATi drivers in perspective.
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited May 2007
    Enverex wrote:
    Ah, what I'd been hearing was people saying they'd been claiming that. Ah well.

    This makes me laugh though: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=611&num=6

    On that same site you can find benchmarks of some games which show that the nVidia GeForce 6600 completely outpaces the ATi Radeon X1950XT. Kinda puts the ATi drivers in perspective.


    Any Linux user already knows this.
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited May 2007
    Oh most know they are bad, it's just different to see them all lined up in a row to see how poor they are, kinda puts it in a different (read: worse) perspective.
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