What is Digg?54 Comments
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+41*applause for Dell*
- schestowitz, on 10/10/2007, -1/+41Dell's pressure is paying off. The AMD driver is now open source (Dell asked them to at least improve performance, but some give credit to Novell also). So Bernard Golden was right when he predicated that OEM Linux support would open up and improve drivers.
- mucnix, on 10/10/2007, -1/+30Awesome. Glad Dell spearheaded the Linux desktop effort.
- qwuinc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+24One reason why there is demand for open source drivers is that binary drivers tend to break when development goes ahead and interfaces change. If the vendor does not have interest in continuing to support a platform/old hardware, the users are kind of screwed. With open source drivers, when there is enough demand, someone will more likely go ahead and make the needed changes.
- twljagflba, on 10/10/2007, -0/+23"Intel had also mentioned that AMD's (well, referenced as a "major graphics card vendor") open-source driver efforts as "good news." "
Also from the article. - cbreaker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+15You've explained the key advantage to open source software. It's no obsolete until the users say it is.
- SimonGray, on 10/10/2007, -1/+16This is a potential revolution for Linux and other open source operating systems. Linux' biggest hurdle are proprietary drivers and with them mostly gone, most people can readily adopt Linux.
- cbreaker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14A) nVidia drivers aren't open source
B) nVidia developed Direct3D with Microsoft. Their cards are D3D first, OpenGL second. (That doesn't mean the OGL Performance is bad.)
C) 3DFX had cards and support in Quake before nVidia released the TNT. The interface ID used (as did many others of the time) was GLIDE. It was a 3DFX-only interface.
D) Wikipedia and Google are SO easy to use, and have lots of information about this stuff. Why not try to study up on computer history? - arjie, on 10/10/2007, -2/+16Don't you just love it when things...just work? I do! Thanks Intel!
- cynicist, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14It wasn't due to Dell that open specs for ATI cards were released. Some people inside AMD were trying to push this since ATI was acquired, it just took a lot of negotiation before everyone agreed to it. Remember the rumors we heard a while ago?
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Rumor_ATI_to_open_speci ... - sirhomer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13And it's also worth to note that the changes needed are usually trivial. But if the driver is binary only, even trivial changes will make the driver completely unusable.
- jonnyeh, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10What are you smoking? Did you say a single factually correct statement?
- patosan, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8If Dell is behind this, it is because they want to weaken MS' and strengthen their negotiating position with them. Presently, Dell has substantial leverage against all of their suppliers, except MS. MS can dramatically impact Dell's business through their pricing and scheduling, and naturally Dell doesn't like that one bit.
- djGentoo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8But Intel supports the reverse-engineering, which is a step forward...
- schestowitz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Thanks. I wasn't aware of this, but Henri Richard /did/ make the promise some months ago and he's an AMD guy (well, his roots, before his departure), not ATI.
- CCmachined, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7though my intel 950 card is 100% working out of the box in Ubuntu, i get ~40% of the performance than i do in Windows. And i'm benchmarking an OpenGL game, Sauerbraten! (http://sauerbraten.org) grr!
- maz2331, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Michael Dell runs Ubuntu on at least one of his personal machines.
- LinuxKitty, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5I'm genuinely but pleasantly surprised by Dell's initiative here. Sure, it may be for selfish reasons (support issues, as someone else posted above), but this benefits the end user regardless of their OS, so this is definitely a Good Thing. It will lead to better performing drivers, faster fixes and fewer bugs. When I still had a Windows partition, I always used the Omega drivers because the official releases performed worse, though there was only so much that could be done. There is plenty of other hardware, besides video cards, that will really benefit.
In short, this isn't only a victory for Linux/BSD/OSX users, but equally good news for Windows owners. Let's hope that Dell sticks to this and that other vendors follow. - Slashriffs, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Lets not take it too far...
- dasunst3r, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5*submits resume to Dell* /me needs an internship.
- SleighBoy, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5It should be no surprise to everyone that after AMD bought ATI they published specs on their newly acquired chipsets. AMD has a track record of this and it was only a matter of time. Intel on the other hand, has a bad track record, this is not the first presentation i've seen from them that contradicts what they really do. I would not expect great things from Intel, not without a price to be paid in freedom.
- mucnix, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4did you just make that up?
- cbreaker, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4At least there's a push inside Intel to make these things happen. Their graphics cards work well in Linux with open source drivers and SOME of their WiFi chipsets do too. There's been massive open source support from Intel with all of their network cards for years. They just have to convince the rest of management that it's a good idea. I think these presentations help convince not only other companies, but people within Intel as well.
- SleighBoy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Specs are gold, binary drivers are garbage. Compare Intel to their rival AMD and you see how it should be done, AMD publishes full specs.
- CCmachined, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3intel's wifi cards work out of the box on Linux too :D
though broadcom and others are sketchy.... - SimonGray, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4... assuming they are talking about Dell, of course.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3are you serious? who else could it be? /rhetorical
- SleighBoy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Just one example..
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2006/04/27/openbsd ...
http://kerneltrap.org/node/6270
http://digg.com/programming/OpenBSD_creator_wants_ ... - init100, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3"Intel on the other hand, has a bad track record"
In what way? At least the IPW2200 driver (driver for IPW2200/2915 wireless chip) works perfectly on my laptop. - anshuman, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3i never seriously imagined Dell will PUSH for this move.
- tehmoth, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3the problem with just requiring an open source driver is that there is no requirement to provide open specifications or to make the driver efficient or readable (i.e. not loaded with magic numbers like most drivers from NDAed specifications). And yes, Intel are hardly the pinnacle of open source supporting companies they seem to be suggesting.
Also, when Intel release open source drivers instead of specs they tend to be pretty bad (the driver they supplied to the BSDs for their gigabit NICs, for example) - cynicist, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3bleh what is up with the unknown errors on digg? I keep having to logout just to digg or comment..
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2 Well it's about bloody time!!!!
So once we have our drivers,I'm betting dollars to donuts the game makers will cave in next and start releasing to the Linux platform...
Oh yeah! Happy day! - shakin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2HP
- Trel, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2IBM
- marx2k, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2And yet I hate proprietary (as in hardware)
Thanks Dell and Apple! Grr - Ribald_Jester, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Good news. A step in the right direction.
- fires, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I recently bought a thinkpad T61 with Intel 4965 wireless which worked straight away on ubuntu gutsy. Absolutely no problems! This is how it should be and it's all because of Intel's great linux driver support.
- JohnnyXmas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1They work because (surprise surprise) a lot of people with Centrino notebooks need packet injection.
GOD FORBID. - AdHaR, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Work going on for the pic section?
*edit* w00t no captcha! - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Try the soon to be beta Klikit linux for that.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1 Agreed...I think the writing is on the wall now and it's going to be smooth sailing for Linux here on out.
Ohhh! pretty,shiny drivers for everything!!!!! - Xanium4332, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2or Dell...
- anshuman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1http://tinyurl.com/2ls65w
working out of box fo my intel wifi card. on HP 6114tx laptop. and Linksys 54g router running WPA2 personal with tkip security setup.
http://linuxtruthiness.blogspot.com/2007/09/beta-t ...
full info about the Fedora8 test2 cd . - chiisu, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Good news. So what about wireless?
- mheath, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Does this mean we'll finally get support for being able to hot swap laptops in and out of Dell's port replicators?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-so ... - BHSPitMonkey, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2I want my $500 gift card.
- spikes, on 10/10/2007, -4/+3Oh and don't get me started on their "Regulatory Daemon" *****.
- joeljkp, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1Why Dell? An all-or-nothing requirement for open-source drivers sounds like something a big-business or scientific workstation company would do. IBM perhaps?
- spikes, on 10/10/2007, -8/+5Intel are a bunch of hypocrites, they still wont release their wifi chipset firmware binary blob as source code. Instead the community has to reverse engineer these wifi chips!
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