> 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.
You are right it is the drivers. With most hardware, I find the open source drivers eventually far outstrip any closed source proprietary ones (thinking network, disk, etc) because the open source ones integrate properly with other changes in the kernel and are actually maintained over the years to get the bugs teased out. Most commercial drivers are updated a few times (at best on Linux) and then dropped. However with 3D hardware, it is a bit different because the hardware is changing so fast. This has long been a frustration of mine, but I am more optimistic now that Linux will catch up significantly over the next few years. Mostly, because of the progress I see in the open source ATI drivers after AMD released the specs. No, 3D support still isn't there in many newer cards, but there are a couple of parallel projects working on it, sharing code, and there seems to be momentum. Until nVidia releases their specs, I'm buying ATI myself. If other Linux geeks do the same, perhaps nVidia will eventually feel some pressure to do that. tim _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
