Video Drivers Are All that Is Holding Linux Back (Maybe Windows 7, Too)
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The title statement is one that became immediately clear with the unsuccessful installation of Windows 7 Release Candidate on a machine of mine that has perfectly serviceable video with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and many versions of Linux, but no support from either ATi/AMD (onboard graphics) or nVidia (PCI Express card) for Windows 7.
These same graphics solutions that work well in general Linux distributions, don’t deliver the performance of optimized drivers in Windows, when speaking of game play.
About a year ago (relatively – not sure of the exact timeframe) we were told that AMD was releasing the source code for their video drivers to the Linux community. No such release came from nVidia. In both cases, nothing really happened, because, there are still no drivers that unlock the performance of the latest video chips.
With each iteration of the chipsets, drivers for Linux get that much further away.
It doesn’t work sometimes for Windows 7, or Vista now.
You might ask what I mean by that. Well, the newest AMD video cards, the ones featuring the 4770 chipset, the very first 40 nm chip produced by AMD, have no support in the latest AMD/ATi driver package.
There are bare drivers, but that is it. Some of the reviewers that have looks at this little David in the land of Goliath, think that this $100 video card will change the landscape of the video industry … Not without a full driver set it won’t.
So, it appears that ATi and nVidia both need some competition, as they are not helping the Linux community, and their Windows offerings are getting sloppy, and sometimes, really late. Hardware doesn’t work without software, and these guys should know.
Linux users should write to nVidia, and ask for better support. ATi users should write to AMD, asking for the same, and reminding them of their promise.
Where is S3 anyway? Or XGI? Those stores of intellectual property did not just vanish. As I’ve said before, we need a scrappy number 3, to give the big two some competition, and keep them honest.
This would be good for all concerned, and maybe Linux won’t continue to get the short shrift.
(Perhaps AMD/ATi and nVidia could come up with support options for their cards, that would allow owners of older cards to get new drivers for a nominal fee. If the fee was not huge, the honor system would work, and more revenue, and good will from customers, would flow.)
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10 Comments
Agung Prastowo’s Blog» Blog Archive » Video Drivers Are All that Is Holding Linux Back (Maybe Windows 7 …
May 6th, 2009
at 12:44pm
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May 6th, 2009
at 5:17pm
[...] See the original post: Video Drivers Are All that Is Holding Linux Back (Maybe Windows 7 … [...]
Sanders
May 6th, 2009
at 5:19pm
Well, it is not just the drivers, most X related stuff in Linux land is dated, broken, redundant or useless.
X and anything screen related is screwed big time.
Look at the sad state of X.org today, and let’s not talk about how it was when they picked up from Xfree86.
Gosh Linux is the land of the network tools, and we have nothing even close to the efficiency of MS Terminal Server
X has been unusable outside the local Lan for 20 years! and look not even the intel stuff works properly most time, performance problems and flickering is constant using intel drivers…
I want to cry.
Hi
May 6th, 2009
at 8:25pm
When I bought my Dell-Ubuntu I got an nVidia card because it had worked great with the Gateway I replaced. 11 months of use and the graphics card died. The replacement card was acting strange after about 6 months. My solution was to take it out and use the on-board Intel graphics. I have yet to see a graphics issue. My mistake was thinking that there was some reason I would need a high power graphics card. Since I don’t play FPS games it was a waste to buy a special graphics card. I’ll stick with on-board Intel/AMD graphics on my next PC.
the oracle
May 6th, 2009
at 8:58pm
Hi, Hi [g] The problem with integrated graphics, as I tried to show above, is that the driver support is likely to dry up long before the processors available for use in those same motherboards are too low in performance to work well.
Video Drivers Are All that Is Holding Linux Back (Maybe Windows 7, Too) - Linux Blog
May 7th, 2009
at 4:35am
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James
May 8th, 2009
at 12:36pm
> “As I’ve said before, we need a scrappy number 3, to
> give the big two some competition, and keep them
> honest.”
That would be the Open Graphics Project, still soldiering along:
http://opengraphics.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_graphics_project
the oracle
May 8th, 2009
at 1:57pm
James, when they start turning out cards in major numbers, I’ll concede that there is a number 3, until then, not sure if it’s worth mentioning.
Phil
May 13th, 2009
at 9:04am
The biggest think holding Linux back is not lack of support for any kind of hardware. What is holding it back is the need to hunt for or know where every config file is located anytime you install a new software. This is especially daunting when it comes to server software like apache. Every distro seems to have its own apache and they all put the files in different places. As a result you end up spending way too much time configuring before use. A uniform menu system is what linux needs, so that it is the same on redhat as it is on suse, and all the others.
the oracle
May 13th, 2009
at 2:50pm
Phil, good points, but I would also point out that even in that disjointed state, it is still better than trying to work with portions of the registry in Windows.
Thanks for the comment.