radeon driver heading in wrong direction :-(.
Marko Vojinovic
vvmarko at gmail.com
Mon Feb 1 14:23:57 UTC 2010
On Sunday 31 January 2010 20:30:36 Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 16:16:06 +0000,
> Marko Vojinovic <vvmarko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You mean as in nVidia drivers taking a week or so to adjust to new kernel
> > version and reach rpmfusion? Wow, that's a bummer! So you suggest we all
> > opt to use ATI drivers which don't work at all on current X for several
> > months now, basically since F12 appeared? And who knows when (or if) they
> > will actually start supporting modern X?
>
> If one is trying to test out new kernels, it's a real bummer to have
> drivers blocking that.
Well, ok, but if you are testing out new kernels, the open-source 2D driver
shoud do, right? Or are you typically testing kernels and 3D graphics
simultaneously?
> I think the current suggestion is to buy Intel or ATI hardware and use
> the open source drivers
When we speak of 2D, all three manufacturers (nVidia, ATI and Intel) are
supported by open source drivers, more or less good enough.
When we speak of 3D, ATI just doesn't have decent open source drivers,
regardless of available specs (radeon(hd) works only on older cards, if you
are lucky), while Intel's 3D hardly deserves to be called "accelerated". So I
don't see the point of encouraging ATI and Intel, since if you want serious
3D, only nVidia provides (at least closed source) drivers that actually work.
Intel 3D and obsolete ATI 3D using radeon driver are not considered "serious
3D", at least from my perspective. Encouraging that would be like encouraging
the use of Pentium 3 over Quad Core just because it is known to work.
> in order to reward Intel and ATI for providing
> specs to their hardware
Would you please provide the link with the specs for the ATI HD family of
cards? Maybe I'm out of the loop here...
> so that open source drivers can be written with
> less effort.
So where are those drivers for ATI cards? The closed fglrx drivers don't work
on F12, and I don't know about any usable open source ones. Just please don't
say radeon(hd), it simply doesn't support modern cards yet...
> Not everyone is in a position to do that. If you do buy
> nVidia, it would be nice to still try out Nouveau once in a while
> (especially on test days for it) to help find and document problems.
I agree with supporting Nouveau wholeheartedly. They are progressing quite
fast now, and are doing a great job to RE all the features of nVidia hardware.
If only radeon drivers were being developed that fast... Given the alleged
availability of hardware specs, I'd expect the driver to progress much faster
than it actually does.
Best, :-)
Marko
More information about the users
mailing list