[PLUG] Linux Unified Kernel...

Mike Connors mconnors1 at gmail.com
Thu Dec 3 10:54:13 UTC 2009


Michael Robinson wrote:
> One of the complaints about Linux is that it doesn't support 3D hardware
> acceleration very often.  Why hasn't a company come out to design 3D
> video cards specifically for Linux?  It seems like there is a real
> business opportunity here.  I'm not an EE so I wouldn't be the one
> to design video cards for Linux, but I'm sure someone is.  Owning a
> licensed copy of Dirk Dashing and Rick Rocket, it is certainly 
> possible to write games for Linux that people want to play.  I'm
> thinking though that 3D hardware acceleration would be great for
> CAD and CNC software as well.
To the best of my understanding, the problem isn't with the 
video cards, but with the drivers. Many vendors don't provide
open source drivers, which isn't a problem for some distros that 
provide proprietary drivers. Unlike Debian, which is militant
about only putting unencumbered sw in their repos.

So what Linux users are left with is devs trying to build FOSS drivers by
reverse engineering proprietary drivers. There always a few steps behind
and the driver 3D functionality isn't an exact replica of the proprietary
driver. 




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