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- redhatcat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+40"With AMD at the helm, I can envision ATI finally open-sourcing the code to its proprietary drivers."
That would be beautiful wouldn't it. I'm not holding my breath. I will say I would reward ATI by buying and advocating their hardware, if GPL compatible drivers were produced.
Here's to hoping! - joeshlub, on 10/12/2007, -0/+29Likewise, after buying a laptop with an ATI graphics card in it, and then trying to work with it in Linux, I fully intend to buy only nvidia unless ATI does exactly that.
- joelito, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13I'm really looking o see what happens here. If this merger/buyout means that we will finally see proper specs and/or Open source ATI drivers then my next pc will be an AMD ATI combo(I'm typing this from a PC that has one of the last ATI cards with OSS driver running on a board with an AMD chip).
- shrewduser, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11it would definately make my future GPU decisions more difficult (currently its nvidia all the way for linux, but ATI are improving so i hear) not too long ago a friend of mine wouldn't buy an extremely cheap laptop because it had an ATI card and he wanted to run linux.
- i440, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Calling all companies with free (gratis) drivers:
Just give us the source. Pleaseeeee. We'll be really good and stay out of trouble, even! Promise. And you're not making any money off them anyway. - Yez70, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Comapnies should understand loyalty by now though.
Look at Google. - bigtomrodney, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8The nVidia drviers from nVidia are not open source, the shim to the kernel is, but the the driver is proprietary. However the xorg nv driver is FOSS but it does not provide 3D acceleration.
- XAsmodeaNX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8While I'm glad to see this merger for Linux I'm hoping that ATI won't suddenly go more of the "onboard graphics" route because of AMD.
- Stonekeeper, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I'm not too sure what they'd gain by NOT opensourcing the driver (if they are indeed able to). It would suddenly make ATI more desirable over NVIDIA and this is *exactly* what AMD want.
- babbling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7ATI/Nvidia wouldn't really learn anything about each other by looking at the drivers. The hardware is where all of the secrets are.
Also, if Nvidia wanted to know about ATI's drivers, they could just reverse-engineer them. - ebrandsberg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7This is a very good point. If you rely on ATI to release the code and everybody just compiles it up, they don't have to tell you what the card CAN do that it isn't doing now. This can leave sub-par performance over closed source drivers. If, however, they release the information needed to utilize all the features, then the community can work to improve the quality of the drivers over time, even if ATI doesn't do it themselves. That's the power of open source.
- plaes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Actually what we want from the graphics driver manufacturers are the data sheets... If we have these the open drivers will be made by enthusiasts. GPL-drivers are only half-way (or actually quarter ;)) of the whole road to the success...
- shrewduser, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7i think by now we know thats not the way to get companies to open source, the only words they understand are: cost/benifit and demand/supply.
- babbling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6There's heaps of money with the Linux geeks. How many extra sales do you think ATI would get by releasing their drivers as Free Software?
Almost everyone running Linux would care about proper graphics card drivers, and there are tens of millions of Linux users. Most Linux users also have more than one computer. I have about three to myself, so I would be 3 sales for ATI.
ATI could make a lot of money by releasing their drivers under the GPL. Nvidia is currently the obvious choice for Linux users, since at least their proprietary drivers work well. I think there's at least 30 million sales within the next 3 years for Linux graphics cards. - nofxjunkee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The title mean helps existing Linux users. Not "help whiny [other OS] users switch to linux" ... christ.
- johneffort, on 06/06/2008, -1/+5That would be great, if they really opensourced their drivers!
Here's one hoping. - nofxjunkee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I know what you mean, and I think they should continue producing cards like they are now. But if they increased their work on onboard chips while keeping the rest on track, I think that would be great. For those of us who still run old S3 cards and the like on servers, having cheap, low-mem, onboard graphics is awesome. Increasing choice for consumers is good. Lots of AMD's customers don't want nor need anything more than a chip that can display the POST screen and 80x25 chars.
- MikeCerm, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Yeah, as nice as it would be if one company would open source their drivers, and then the other would follow suit to remain competitive, it hasn't happened yet. Linux just hasn't reached the level where the GPU manufacturers can't afford not to open source their drivers. There's barely any games anyway (a chicken/egg situation), but the hardware companies are less likely to make the first move. If they see the gaming enthusiast crowd flocking to Linux, they'll go open source. For as long as possible, they're going to protect their intellectual property.
For a while, they're still going to be functioning independently of each other. This article fails to provide any real, hard justification why AMD would be likely to open up ATI's drivers than ATI was before the merger. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@ MikeCern
Games?!?!? We have a beautiful hardware-accelerated desktop environment by way of XGL/Compiz and the only use you can think of for OSS ATI drivers is to play some retarded FPS?
Wow. - dioxmat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5While I would love free as in speech ati drivers, it's pure speculation from the author of the article. He has nothing to back up that claim. I seriously doubt AMD cares about this stuff, and even if they did, there might be some NDAs and other stuff like that that prevents them from doing anything.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Not to mention all the OTHER applications for proper hardware accelerated graphics BESIDES gaming. Don't get me wrong, gaming is nice and all... but damn.
- srg13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3What I think would be cool would be having an onbard high power GPU in a socket with dedicated ram. You could then make the link between the gpu and cpu a lot faster.
- Dracker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I actually have decent 3d performance with my ati graphics in linux, using fglrx.
However, every improvement is most welcome. Turning a blob into source would be excellent, but I'm not counting on it. - antdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I will believe it when I see it. :)
- rumor, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4nvidia's drivers have always owned.
its ati's that have always been trash.
thats why i plan to never buy an ati video card again. third ati video card that i've owned, and while its leaps above the first in terms of drivers, it doesn't come close to nvidia's.
i just hope that i'm not forced to use nvidia and intel, i want to chose what components go in my computer.
also, what does this spell for nforce? - sailor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Since AMD is my processor of choice, linux is my OS of choice, nvidia is my video card of choice...there is a problem for me. I will not buy another AMD machine if my only choice is ATI video card.
The majority of Linux users I know use AMD so it could affect sales unless some work is done to improve upon linux drivers. - estvir, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Well, anything is better than what they currently have for open source.
- generalsticky, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2On-Board GPUs might be good for cheaper Windows Vista machines.
- shucklak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I don't know, I don't think we'll see AMD procs in a mac for a long time. I hope I'm wrong, but I think Apple is comfortable with a name like Intel.
- sapo916, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4More desirable by the high end gamers who buy the expensive cards? or the Linux Geeks...
No real money with the Linux Geeks - norris, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@MikeCerm
"Linux just hasn't reached the level where the GPU manufacturers can't afford not to open source their drivers."
I just wish that less companies would not count out the small minority of Linux users who aren't able to utilize their non open source drivers due to the small subset of distros using a non proprietary setup.
PS: I am not even going to bother trying to figure out if the negatives in that last sentence cancel out enough times. - heus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I just read your previous comments again and I still can't figure out what the hell you're talking about
- baalzebub, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2just have to wait & see, i like AMD CPUs, and i love Nvidia graphics cards, i am not too stubborn to change brands when needed, so after the dust settles i will keep in mind this merger and see what people are saying about their new AMD/ATI computer works with Linux...
- anarchy99, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2i know in the past apple used allot more ati cards than nvidia eg my g5 9650 radeon, my ibook 9200 radeon as well as many other times
ati's healthy relationship with apple may bring us real amd macs not just hacked pcs osx86 style
thats one of the better things to possible come from this heres hoping - romulasry, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Here is some interesting information on how the ATI Linux fglrx drivers are progressing: http://www.phoronix.com/redblog/
When the performance FTP wise, is equivalent to Window$, things such as Wine and Cedega will blow the FPS benchmarks out of the water because they are so well optimized! - romulasry, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Here is some interesting information on how the ATI linux fglrx drivers are progressing: http://www.phoronix.com/redblog/
When the proformance FTP wise, is equivalent to Window$, things such as Wine and Cedega will blow the FPS benchmarks out of the water because they are so well optimized! - JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2The situation for these comments sucks ass. The people who know what they're talking about (like me and payrok) are getting burried.
God damn . . . Digg should require an IQ test for membership. - lwatcdr, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I do doubt that we will see OSS drivers from ATI or nVidia anytime soon.
I doubt that is has a lot to do with them not wanting to release them and everything with them not being able to.
I have a feeling that both cards use licenced technology that they don't have the right to open source.
It would be nice but the best I think we can hope for is much better support for Linux with binary drivers. - Promantarius, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Yes, look at google, still only used for search by the large majority of it's userbase, and the only reason they're used for search is because the competition is far worse than they are. I'm sure the majority of their users would leave in a heartbeat if the results they got started to deteriorate beyond the competitors.
Releasing the drivers as open source would probably just open the way for some patent suing anyway :/ - dig412, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3The problem with opening up drivers is trade secrets. If either company can see the driver source, they can see how the system interacts with the card, and possibly exploit it. With linux's almost miniscule share of the graphics card buyer market, i'm grateful for any drivers, open or not.
- joeshlub, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1I'm sure they won't. The power put into graphics is far too great to ever make that feasable. They're far smarter than that.
- payrok, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2"With AMD at the helm, _I can envision_ ATI finally open-sourcing the code to its proprietary drivers."
"I can envision," is NOT concrete evidence that this merger will help open source. The article is wishful hoping at best. The only thing I could see happen as far as driver support goes, is that AMD might fund the Linux driver project a little better. That would work for me, because a good proprietary driver, is better than a crappy driver, and everyone sitting around koombyaa'in about how great it would be if they were open sourced. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Yay, another "_________ may help linux" article.
By this point you'd think people would have figured out that NOTHING HELPS. - JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0I would _love_ to see drivers released under a decent license like the GNU General Public License. But . . remember, the enemies of innovation (in many fields of computing, they are legit in some of coarse), patents.
If AMD (soon complete owner of ATI) released the source code, Nvidia would have what it needs to sue the ***** out of it and so would for the big cash reward! If Nvidia released the code . . the other side probably would sue!
Noooooo! =(
Umm, oh yeah, the guy who wrote this, obviously doesn't know that ATI would need a LOT of work to compete with Nvidia. Proprietary or not, drivers released by AMD for ATI-made GPUs on architectures such as PPC and PPC64 for GNU+Linux and *BSD just to screw with Nvidia (because Nvidia hasn't had the decency to) would be great. - Atomic1fire, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1going into open market is a risky move tho linux could very well incress its market as soon as people see nividas there but at the same time most people dont care about linux and thus if people move to nux becuase of it its market choice was a good move
if people dont care there isnt any gain - Atomic1fire, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2and quake clones wolfenstein enemy territory is pretty good but war games dont impress people that dont play war games
open rts
a couple other games probobly - k33l0r, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2How is it that pretty much anything will help Linux these days?
Microsoft scraps Windows 98 & Me - helps Linux
Microsoft delays Vista - helps Linux
AMD merges with ATI - helps Linux
George W. Bush buys a monkey - helps linux
Turns out Bush is the monkey - helps Linux
and so on and on and on... - JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1"ATI would need a LOT of work to compete with Nvidia. "
. . . I was referring to drivers, cause Nvidia is kicking some ass with drivers right now. Not like, my little brother's ass, I mean like, that fat kid across the street's ass. Not Chuck Norris' ass though, that's impossible. - deanlowe, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2Where do you get the source code to GeForce drivers? All I see on their site are binaries.
Are you sure they are "open source"? - cg0def, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1now what the hell would I care if the driver is under GPL or not? All I want is the driver to work and I am sorry but it is lunuses fault if there aren't enough drivers for the OS. Anybody who knows anything about writing drivers would tell you that opening the code for a brand new device is pretty much financial suicide for the company. How long do you think it would take nvidia to produce a similar gpu if they can get their hands on the driver code? Won't be 100% the same but the ideas would all be there. So AMD ATI merger would have absolutelly no effect on linux drivers. If you want better drivers wait for novel to finish the driver layer that they've been working on for about an year now.
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