Intel's move should (and I hope "will") put a lot of pressure on the Taiwanese peripheral makers, which, until now, have been selfishly ignoring the Linux market by failing to provide even the most rudimentary drivers for Linux, not to mention participating in the open-source (or even open-spec) movement (and got away from it). This is a very exciting development, and I hope AMD will respond soon. Wayne
This could be win for linux, but could turn out to be a lose for other platforms. Many vendors are inclined to provide binary-only drivers. This would definitely aid the vast linux community but might make it harder for other operating system communities to convince vendors to provide the information needed to write drivers for their platform. Lets hope the pressure encourages the release of technical information that enables open source driver development.
Tim Newsham http://www.lava.net/~newsham/