[PLUG] A bit confused about 2.6 kernel and X drivers

[Elliott Mitchell]

> From: Brian Beattie <beattie at beattie-home.net>
> 
> Why is this not a problem for ATI?  I don't buy it for one second.

That would be an excellent argument; except it is a problem for ATi.
There is an open source driver for ATi's cards, however, as with the open
source nVidia driver, the open source ATi driver is *strictly* 2D, none
of the 3D capabilities. If you want to make use of the 3D capabilities,
you must go for a binary-only module.


> From: Brian Beattie <beattie at beattie-home.net>
> On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 11:26, AthlonRob wrote:
> > On Friday 04 June 2004 08:08 am, Brian Beattie wrote:
> > > Why is this not a problem for ATI?  I don't buy it for one second.
> > I haven't looked at ATi cards for quite some time... but when last I did,=
> > their drivers worked similarly to nVidia's... a chunk of binary-only and =
> > chunk of code to make that binary stuff work.
> > Are their drivers fully opensource now?
> 
> All I know, is that the video cards I have used over the years, have all
> been supported by X, no kernel modules have been needed.  But of course
> I'm not a l337 gamer.  I do not believe that patents are the real reason
> that Nvida refuses to provide the information needed for drivers to be
> written, unless they really are violating somebodies valid patent.  I
> think they a just paranoid and afraid that is anybody actually saw their
> design they would laugh.  I see it all the time companies are so
> convinced that they have some magic jewel of a technique that gives them
> a leg up on everybody else, and they are almost always wrong.  In every
> case, it would be easier to implement the functionality from scratch,
> based on public knowledge, that it would be to aquire the magic jewels.

No commentary on whether the patents are valid (non-obvious and
non-trivial).

They provide enough information for a 2D driver (well not exactly, they
wrote the 2D driver and have no problem with that being open source).
Just nVidia does not provide information on utilizing the 3D capabilites,
but then again no one else does either. If open source is the critical
factor for you, the driver is "nv"; no problems with 4K stacks, no evil
closed source; but you sacrifice the (software 3D works, but is hideously
slow in comparison with hardware).

Looking at the companies involved, it does seem likely they've got those
magic jewels. They're large enough to hire very smart people, and create
very fast and efficient hardware and software.


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