4 ms·

Exactly. Nvidia has got away with crap for far too long. And given the rise of Intel and AMD GPUs which come with fully OSS drivers, they need to get their head

Exactly. Nvidia has got away with crap for far too long. And given the rise of Intel and AMD GPUs which come with fully OSS drivers, they need to get their heads out of sand and realize that they can't get away with it anymore and they need to either invest resources in getting their GPUs supported under Linux - be it Android or Desktop - or at least make their specs open like AMD. (The way they supported Tegra on Android is also similarly crappy - look at how many popular Tegra Android phones or tablets were released post the Nexus 7 2012.)

a8000 13y ago
The last time I tried to use an AMD video card with 3d acceleration under Linux it was a horrible experience. Nvidias binary drivers just work out of the box even with the most recent hardware and have OpenGL 4.3 support. Has the situation changed with AMD cards?
- rcxdude 13y ago
  It works pretty well for me using the OSS drivers. Better experience than any of the binary drivers (NVIDIA and AMD), and the performance and features are good enough for gaming via WINE (though still not quite as good as the binary drivers AFAIK). I think the current pain points are support for the latest hardware and power saving for laptops.
  - zanny 13y ago
    Kernel 3.13 got full dual graphics ACPI shutdown on the discrete part, and they have had DPM enabled on all parts since 3.12. Should be good now on the power saving end.
cookiecaper 13y ago
They can get away with it because their drivers actually work. The OSS drivers are improving, but it's taken them a half-decade or more to come even within 70% of Windows performance parity. nVidia's drivers have performance parity on day 1, and generally, far fewer show-stopping bugs.
- zanny 13y ago
  Really, FOSS driver development has been confined to the last 2 years. AMD has a half dozen developers in Mesa, and I think Intel has around 20. They have pushed it from Core Profile 2.1 to 3.3 in 2 years, and will probably have it at 4.0 or 4.1 by years end. Before that, AMD wasn't making free drivers, and Intel didn't care about their integrated graphics as much and never had higher GL support on them. They have come pretty far in a short time frame, and by the time GL 5 comes out (I assume, the one with the low level primitive support to match DX12) Mesa should only be a version behind or so. Also, I wouldn't really agree Nvidia drivers work. I had a GTX 285 in an older machine I put Ubuntu on, and their blob didn't work with resume / suspend at all. Dunno if they'd work now, I just switched that system to Nouveau, which... works with suspend flawlessly. And manages fan speeds a lot better than the blob, too.
  - cookiecaper 13y ago
    AMD's been making free drivers for seven years. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=826&num=1 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=826&num=1 I said the last half-decade to be generous. It's taken this long to finally get some of the older cards to a mostly usable state for 3D gaming (usually the point of a consumer-grade 3D graphics card). Mesa has been picking up new GL versions which is good, but it's taken a really long time.
    - blinkingled 13y ago
      >AMD's been making free drivers for seven years. It takes lot of time and effort to get GPU drivers usable with all features. I would say they actually did a great job hiring OSS people, contributing documentation after lengthy legal reviews and they kept up with most older and newer GPUs. And they now have dynamic power management! That's great progress for me.
      - cookiecaper 13y ago
        You're fooling yourself if you don't think they could've done better. There's no reason they had to start from scratch. Bridgman constantly stated the the free drivers were intended for basic functionality and free software development purposes only, and that AMD would continue to provide proprietary drivers for people who needed performance. ATi started the free drivers in a last-ditch move of desperation to inflate sales in whatever small way possible when they were on the ropes. They'd hoped that this would get some of the *nix geeks to make significant buys. They only sponsored 2 developers if I remember right. I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I don't think they really deserve all that much credit. Seven years is far too long to start skirting Windows performance parity, and please note that most newer hardware is still way behind. The open-source AMD drivers primarily remain of interest to people who want to develop free software or whose cards stopped working on the proprietary drivers. When I tried last September, you still couldn't reasonably play games with open-source radeon drivers on newish hardware.

a8000 13y ago

The last time I tried to use an AMD video card with 3d acceleration under Linux it was a horrible experience. Nvidias binary drivers just work out of the box even with the most recent hardware and have OpenGL 4.3 support. Has the situation changed with AMD cards?

rcxdude 13y ago
It works pretty well for me using the OSS drivers. Better experience than any of the binary drivers (NVIDIA and AMD), and the performance and features are good enough for gaming via WINE (though still not quite as good as the binary drivers AFAIK). I think the current pain points are support for the latest hardware and power saving for laptops.
- zanny 13y ago
  Kernel 3.13 got full dual graphics ACPI shutdown on the discrete part, and they have had DPM enabled on all parts since 3.12. Should be good now on the power saving end.

cookiecaper 13y ago

They can get away with it because their drivers actually work. The OSS drivers are improving, but it's taken them a half-decade or more to come even within 70% of Windows performance parity. nVidia's drivers have performance parity on day 1, and generally, far fewer show-stopping bugs.

zanny 13y ago
Really, FOSS driver development has been confined to the last 2 years. AMD has a half dozen developers in Mesa, and I think Intel has around 20. They have pushed it from Core Profile 2.1 to 3.3 in 2 years, and will probably have it at 4.0 or 4.1 by years end. Before that, AMD wasn't making free drivers, and Intel didn't care about their integrated graphics as much and never had higher GL support on them. They have come pretty far in a short time frame, and by the time GL 5 comes out (I assume, the one with the low level primitive support to match DX12) Mesa should only be a version behind or so. Also, I wouldn't really agree Nvidia drivers work. I had a GTX 285 in an older machine I put Ubuntu on, and their blob didn't work with resume / suspend at all. Dunno if they'd work now, I just switched that system to Nouveau, which... works with suspend flawlessly. And manages fan speeds a lot better than the blob, too.
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  AMD's been making free drivers for seven years. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=826&num=1 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=826&num=1 I said the last half-decade to be generous. It's taken this long to finally get some of the older cards to a mostly usable state for 3D gaming (usually the point of a consumer-grade 3D graphics card). Mesa has been picking up new GL versions which is good, but it's taken a really long time.
  - blinkingled 13y ago
    >AMD's been making free drivers for seven years. It takes lot of time and effort to get GPU drivers usable with all features. I would say they actually did a great job hiring OSS people, contributing documentation after lengthy legal reviews and they kept up with most older and newer GPUs. And they now have dynamic power management! That's great progress for me.
    - cookiecaper 13y ago
      You're fooling yourself if you don't think they could've done better. There's no reason they had to start from scratch. Bridgman constantly stated the the free drivers were intended for basic functionality and free software development purposes only, and that AMD would continue to provide proprietary drivers for people who needed performance. ATi started the free drivers in a last-ditch move of desperation to inflate sales in whatever small way possible when they were on the ropes. They'd hoped that this would get some of the *nix geeks to make significant buys. They only sponsored 2 developers if I remember right. I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I don't think they really deserve all that much credit. Seven years is far too long to start skirting Windows performance parity, and please note that most newer hardware is still way behind. The open-source AMD drivers primarily remain of interest to people who want to develop free software or whose cards stopped working on the proprietary drivers. When I tried last September, you still couldn't reasonably play games with open-source radeon drivers on newish hardware.