radeon driver heading in wrong direction :-(.

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 08:27:04 -0700,
  "Christopher A. Williams" <chriswfedora at cawllc.com> wrote:
> 
> Nouveau only supports 2D, and the OpenSource Radeon driver has had at
> least as many ...ummm issues as the proprietary driver.
> 
> So, if you need true 3D graphics support without a lot of issues, at the
> moment nVidia with their proprietary driver is your best option. This,
> of course, could change with the next set of releases from any of the
> players.

The problem with this recommendation is that it doesn't take into account
that once you have bought the hardware, you are committed to it. Unless you
throw away your video cards every year or so, there is a good case to be
made the buying an r5xx radeon right now makes more sense. The r5xx cards
are supported OK now and will continue to be improved going forward for the
forseeable future.

If you buy nVidia and want 3d features, you are stuck with the proprietary
driver until Nouveau provides them which might be two years out. And you
can't easily jump back to radeon. With all of the things going on with
Mesa and KMS, Fedora might be a particularly unfriendly distribution for trying
to use nVidia's drivers.

> Accepting reduced function - especially when needed - for the sake of
> OpenSource dedication will lead down the path of people not adopting
> OpenSource software. We must face the reality that most people could
> care less about the type of license their software has, compared to if
> it meets their particular needs. As the CEO of Black and Decker once put
> it, people don't buy quarter-inch drills; they buy quarter-inch holes.

I think for people like that, steering them toward Ubuntu is better than
having them use Fedora. Fedora's fast rate of change and stance on freedom
don't mix very well with people who just want things to work.

I do believe that getting better open source graphics drivers should be a
priority for Fedora. Since that is a matter of doing work and not something
undoable because of software patents. Redhat already has at least four
employees that are pretty much graphics system developers. I don't know
that it is reasonable to expect them to hire more. But it would be nice
if they could get a few that were more focused on getting 3d features
working, in addition to the people whose first priority is keeping the
2d functionallity working.

Also remember that when dealing with corporations, cheering them on, generally
means buying their products. If you are buying nVidia hardware now out of
practicallity, they are the company you are cheering on and not the ones
supporting open source efforts.