[GW-C] Re:Tom's HW Guide: Linux for gaming

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Fraser Campbell <fraser-eicrhRFjby5dCsDujFhwbypxlwaOVQ5f at public.gmane.org>

| Tim Writer wrote:

| > ATI is working very hard to improve their Linux support. They release a
| > driver every month so improvements come quickly.

I'm glad to hear that.  ATI lost me as a customer after a few too many
disappointments.  I was biased towards the home-town team.  Some
things that I think I know:

- the fastest 3d card with open source drivers, of any brand, is the
  ATI Radeon 9250.  Get them before they die of old age.

- In January, I needed a video card that supported Dual Link DVI.  At
  that time, reasonably-priced ATI x1000 family cards (like the x1300)
  would not work in Linux with an open source driver.  Not even as a
  2d card.  (Well, the VESA driver could do it, but only at
  resolutions wired into the cards BIOS extension, and those did not
  include the resolutions I needed.)  At the time, 6 months after the
  product was released, ATI had not disclosed enough about the new
  fiddly bits for 2d output to enable the open-source Radeon driver to
  support these cards.

- at that time, the ATI web site claimed that the proprietary X
  drivers supported any card newer than the 9600 (I think that was the
  number).  Pre-sales support repeated this misinformation.  I bought
  nice fanless x1300 card and discovered the mistake.  Was the site
  corrected when I reported this?  No.


- the open source drivers for nVidia cards are limited to 2d.

- I bought a very expensive nVidia card in January because it was the
  only reasonable choice for a Dual Link DVI card.  Even though most
  of the $450 went into 3d stuff I cannot use.

| From: Fraser Campbell <fraser-eicrhRFjby5dCsDujFhwbypxlwaOVQ5f at public.gmane.org>

| One of the presentations at OLS was titled "Open Source Graphics Drivers -
| They Don't Kill Kittens".  I didn't attend but others that did thought it was
| a good presentation.

I went.  It was an excellent talk.  (Thanks, Fraser, for the ride to
OLS and back.)

|  The author has
| prepared an open-source driver for ATI R500 chipsets but has been waiting on
| ATI's approval to release it (for more than 6 month).

He is asking for approval because an NDA is involved.  He does claim
that nothing scary is revealed in the code.

Maybe somebody inside ATI could champion this (you know who you are).
Many of us would be willing to help.

| According to the paper I mentioned the support from both ATI and nVidia for
| free drivers is severely lacking (non-existent).

A decade ago I tried to talk to some ATI engineers that I had met, but
there no interest.

Intel is the best player, as far as revealing graphics chip details.
They have released open-source drivers and are maintaining them.  The
most recent message from them was written by Keith Packard (one of the
key X folks).  If he is working for them, that is an even better sign.

Apparently most computers use Intel graphics chips.  But they are
low-end.

(Intel is also good about 802.11g drivers.  This is why the last
notebook I ordered was Intel end-to-end, even though I've been pretty
solidly AMD on my desktop for the last couple of generations.  My
AMD-based notebook has been an unending source of adventures, none of
them due to AMD itself.)

| Perhaps the AMD/ATI merger will help as well once new products start coming
| online.

If ATI takes on the Intel attitude towards open source, things would
be great.

3d looks to be becoming more important due to the Red Hat and SuSE
projects (one each) to base the desktop on top of OpenGL.  Scary.

(ATI made the chipset in my desktop.  It took a few months before the
kernel folks reverse engineered enough of the quirks.  Again, no help
from ATI, as far as I could tell (I'm not an insider).  There still
are a few issues.)
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