Intel opens 3D support for Linux!!

Intel has released open-source Linux drivers for its Intel 965 Express Chipset
family graphics controller.The XWindow System developer of Intel, Keith Packard
announced today.
Intel's new graphics support touches three key open-source projects - Mesa, the
an implementation of OpenGL specification, X.org X11 server, the O.S kernel.
This is really great news for Linux fans!!

Read more about it here

B

One thing I cannot understand is why companies have to open source their drivers. I can't understand this part at all. As long as drivers for a certain product are available & as long as they work well, how does it matter whether those drivers are open or closed?. Is this another one of those 'ideological' battles that Linux fanatics seem to be fighting?.

Awesome! Does this mean a big step towards achieving compatibility for high-end graphics hungry games or what?

Yeah, baby... Yeah!

@borg

Anything you compile on your system will run better because it has been honed for your hardware. As far as I know, it's not just an ideological battle. There's more to it, of course, my friend explained this to me once but I've forgotten since.

It's not a ideological battle!! It means better support for hardware in Linux. So from
now on Linux users can enjoy games similar to the Windows users. If it's open-source,
it can be used by one & all. If it's proprietary, you have to pay for it!!

G

Even I don't find a reason for the drivers to be open source, can't they just make drivers for a standard X Window environment, which is consistent among all the distros

I mean, I wish it could be like this

1 standard X Windows, common among all the distros, cos each distro always modifies the kernel for themselves, so with a standard X Window, even with modified kernel, still the standard compliant closed source drivers will work

After this the distribution can simply release plugins or addon, to enable extra distribution specific features

Open Source drivers is a bad concept, this could very well kill the hardware business, suppose NVIDIA releases Open Source drivers, now they have their own propriety technology in them which makes the UI run faster or games run faster, if they make it open source, all the other vendors will copy it in no time, & the money used in developing the drivers will go to drain

Even if it means better graphics support for Linux, it's of no use if game developers continue to create games using DirectX only.
They shd also release the OpenGL versions of the game (like ID Software does: Counter Strike, Quake, Half-Life etc.) only then the true potential of the graphics drivers can be utilized.

B

Propietery technology has always existed & will always continue to exist. There is nothing 'evil' in it. One cannot expect companies to open up everything & offer everything 4 free. If they did that, the company will loose it's edge & besides the fact that it will go out of business.

Regarding this topic, i will simply say that the fact that the driver exists (whether in closed or open form) is enough for me.

@montylee
yep u r right. But even if games r available 4 Linux. i'm not very sure anyone would buy them. Gaming on Linux is not a very pleasant experience. I tried Quake 4 demo on FC5. All i can say is that I'd rather forget about the whole experience.

Hey, I have been doing a little research, it turns out that using propeitery modules with the Linux kernel is 'illegal'!!!. So anyone who makes drivers for Linux has to make sure that it is open source, or it is illegal!. Is this stupid or what. I think this is the surest way of making sure that most companies will not write Linux drivers.

I am appauled & stunned by the arrogance of the FSF community.

M

Hmm let me recount again, Wasn't it you gx and borg who were complaining of bad support for graphics out of the box for linux?
If linux distros have to be supplied under GPL they will need drivers that are open source, only then can they be integrated into the kernel.
And, now you'll critisize the move of open sourcing the drivers!
Man I wonder at how much logic power do you'll have. Contradicting your own statements.
Borg that's not arrogance. If they have to give out those proprietory drivers they need to pay for it, If they have to pay for it, end users can't get distros for free, There are some distros that will make you pay and will include proprietory softwares like linspire and xandros.

gxsaurav said:
Open Source drivers is a bad concept, this could very well kill the hardware business, suppose NVIDIA releases Open Source drivers, now they have their own propriety technology in them which makes the UI run faster or games run faster, if they make it open source, all the other vendors will copy it in no time, & the money used in developing the drivers will go to drain

Rather to the contrary, it is a great concept. Do you think you have more brains and business sense than Intel? Or they just foolishly made a move towards opening up the source. If you think so, please wake up from your sweet dream.
Open Sourcing makes a lot of business sense as well as technical sense otherwise Intel wouldn't have gone for the move.
I will keep this off for another day and some other people who have more understanding of the topic and are willing to have a fair discussion rather than just fight at anything.

G

When I said, there is bad graphics support in Linux, I never meant games for first, and they better concentrate on the usability before jumping for games

& by the way, do u think, the solution I wrote is bad? Right now we have propriety driver for ATI & NVIDIA, with open source drivers Intel will just gain more Linux acceptance, cos most of the users out there use Intel onboard graphics to run Linux. They just saved a lot of developement cost for linux

however, despite the fact that NVIDIA & ati has closed source drivers, it's not that they suck in Linux support, they are good even though they are closed source, what I wanted to say, is that there are so many Linux distros & each one modifies the kernel, or X windows according to them, which breaks the standards completely (ok, maybe not completely). & because of this, one driver doesn't fit all; now don't say again, that NVIDIA, creative, Broadcom should make 100 drivers for 100 distros

The move from Intel is good for Linux community, however keep in mind, Intel graphics solution do not support much features, because of which they are easy to manage etc, which results in much lower cost of development. & with open source drivers, they won't have to make drivers themselves, the community will, but this cannot be said about ATI & NVIDIA

Open source softwares maybe good to some extent, but open source drivers are something I m seriously against, I mean, u just can't reveal your OpenGL or DirectX compiler technology u use in the driver to your competitors, now u tell me if this is good for business

by the way, i found an article regarding this

*www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=528&num=1

B

@tech_ur_future

So basically what ur saying is that, if the drivers are to included into the distro itself, they need to be opensourced, otherwise they will not be included into the distro itself, rather they can be downloaded by the user itself. Am I getting it right?.

Also why do u have to pay for drivers???. Drivers are free of charge, last time I checked I can download any driver I want, free of charge. Nobody 'sells' drivers.

The point I am trying to make is that not every company will or CAN open source it's drivers. By open sourcing, the company opens up its technology (which no one wants to do). I don't know that the way forward for Linux is with such restrictions.

G

borg

u pointed out the thing i was trying to say, drivers are free, there is nothing propriety about them

M

yes borg no distro can include proprietory drivers or for that matter any proprietory software out of the box, if the distro is released under GPL. Plain and simply because GPL states that you have to give out the source of each and every software and component of the distro to those who ask for it. Now, how are you going to give the source of proprietory drivers? For that reason, no proprietory driver can be included in the distro. That is why linux distros released under GPL, have problems configuring our graphics card out of the box.
GX if the drivers of your graphics card were open sourced, you would have had Ubuntu detecting and configuring ur graphics card out of the box. You wouldn't have needed to go to CLI to install the drivers and all.
And, the drivers are given free of cost to the user because, you have bought their products. Whereas if the distros want to include the drivers they will have to most probably pay for them cos those who make distros aren't exactly the customers of the company. Well anyway this point lies to the descretion of the company and what it feels it should do.

gxsaurav said:
drivers are free, there is nothing propriety about them

I was slammed on an IRC channel for saying the same thing. It's only now that I begin to understand. Read this : *www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

One obvious problem is that, with a proprietary driver, a Linux system loses one of its best characteristics: independence from vendors. A user of a proprietary driver depends on the vendor for fixes and updates, but the vendor is under no obligation to provide them. Computing hardware has a notoriously short product life; if the vendor drops driver support when a product hits the end of its life, there is little that a user can do. If the vendor goes out of business, there will be no further support for the driver. If the vendor decides to start charging for driver updates, the user has little option but to pull out the wallet. If the driver has a bug which affects the stability of the system, only the vendor can fix it.

Basically it has to do with the fact that the linux kernel, being open source, changes frequently. Since companies can't devote resources to updating the drivers for each kernel change, drivers often break. Since the open source community is definitely capable of writing quality drivers, drivers which won't break, they are asking for the oppurtuniy to do so.

The above quote comes from *lwn.net/Articles/159313/
Also try reading this : *lwn.net/Articles/191765/

M

Skyora no use explaining to gx. He won't even read a word of it, I know through many futile attempts of explaining him. I have even told him quite a few times now, if you aren't interested in Open Source well and good, keep away from it, no one's ask you to learn it. But, don't come and give out any stupid theories with your half knowledge.
And, no gx I am not even saying proprietory is evil. Both have their own ways and philosophies.
But, Open Source is something to contend with, bigwigs like Intel, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Novell and more won't be backing it if it were any stupid anti-anything movement. It certainly has some positives and negatives. People aren't just jumping into the bandwagon for no reason.

If this is getting to serious everyone can chill out with this piece of humour *humorix.org/articles/2006/07/genes/. And please don't take that seriously and don't start commenting on this article.

G

mehul

bundling propriety drivers & configuring them are 2 different things

right now, quite frankly, we don't have good out of the box drivers in both windows & Linux, so what do we do, we go to the hardware manufacturer site, & download them for free. No one is saying to bundle it anyway, just bundle basic drivers with the OS, so that it at least works, even the default drivers in paid Windows OS are no good, we download new anyway

what Linux lacks, is configurability. What the point of editing xconfig file manually using some text editor, can't they make it like some menu or something, when I used ubuntu live, I saw this option that I could chose my graphics driver from a drop down list (some where in the control panel) there were names like nv, ati, Intel etc, this is what I m saying to make better.

Even if Linux doesn't bundle prosperity drivers, this is not a point to say that hardware manufacturers should open source their drivers, cos even with closed source, like we have right now, works fine. linux can excel even with closed source drivers, & going open source decreases the development cost this is the only reason I fine valid from a business point of view, because of which companies are going Open source

In this regard I like gentoo, just give the source code as some .zip file or something else like that, & double click on it, to start the driver building for your computer, but in an easy way, not in that dos screen way, which I saw long ago in mandrake 10 while installing NVIDIA drivers

or better yet, make a standard, that each Linux distro must support 90% of the graphical features of the kernel out of the box, so that one driver fits these 90% with all the distros & even with modified kernal, atleast this 90% stays same, & after that u can simply install addins in it, to further enhance for your particular distro (like if u have a good gfx card, u can install the module for XGL, or if not stay with that 90% & 2D UI)

It's not that I hate linux, it's just i hate it's usability in it's current form, just make it user friendly, increse the developement rate (remember GAIM still has no support for webcam) etc, & it can easily be widely adopted. I mean, for a user point of view, who can hate free stuff anyway

now if they only bundle free bear with it

gxsaurav said:
what Linux lacks, is configurability.

That's a first for me.

gxsaurav said:
cos even with closed source, like we have right now, works fine.

That's the whole point. Not everything works fine. There are a lot of imporvements that can be made, and would be made, if open-source writers could write their own drivers for the graphics cards.

gxsaurav said:
increse the developement rate (remember GAIM still has no support for webcam) etc

Open source is about doing things because you _want_ to. If you want GAIM webcam support, write it yourself. You can't _make_ others do it, because they're doing it because they want to. If they don't, they won't.

gxsaurav said:
Even if Linux doesn't bundle prosperity drivers

prosperity?

I think you meant proprietry.

M

gx yahoo protocol is NOT open source. There is one project that I read about yesterday - libgaim2 that does support web cam on yahoo. But, it does miss some features that are supported by the library used by gaim. So, at the moment there are quite a few features that gaim is missing. But, yahoo isn't making it any better for gaim. It keeps on making quite a lot of changes, this makes the people working on gaim play catch up. This is the same point I was trying to make the other day with you in conference, if protocols are closed, it makes it very difficult for others to implement the protocol. Think about tcp/ip in that context and wonder where internet would have been then.

G

ok this is something I understand from that day, closed protocols, but then again yaar, they paid a lot of money to develop, u just can't expect them to open it, it will be copied soon & they will loose money

GAIM thing was just an example

Skyora

Ever heard of driver feedback or support, if u need something at least make a request, there are official NVIDIA, ati, 3dlabs forums out there already. By the way, Linux is all openGL, so most of the features are already supported in the current Linux drivers

Open source is about doing things because you _want_ to. If you want GAIM webcam support, write it yourself. You can't _make_ others do it, because they're doing it because they want to. If they don't, they won't.

Ok, so u r again clearly saying, that everyone who uses Linux should be a coder, cos if there is a single feature missing which I want, should I learn to code, despite of being a simple user. U need to remove this mentality, not everyone out there is a programmer, Linux can never excel in desktop like this.

I said to make Linux easy, cos the average Joe out there doesn't want to code something for it work, they don't need to in case of Windows or Mac OS, they give feedback & then the company makes it for them.

Mehul u said, one can charge for Linux, then why not charge man, I mean, Rs 1000 for an OS is not bad, but it should have these features that a general user wants, & he should be able to request it to the company. Mandriva & Linspire are good in this regard though, then why not the others.

Only because of these shortcomings, Linux is treated like an OS for geeks, or programmers, not the general user out there, because of which they are afraid to try it

M

They can't charge and don't want to charge because it's their belief that software should be free of cost too besides free of charge. Look at debian community. It has grown so large and is becoming more and more popular and they'd like to rather stick to GPL then accept proprietory licenses. Me for one too believe open and free softwares(see Free Software Foundation's site or GNU's site for definition of freedom), are more accpetable then proprietory ones.
Why is a big thing to explain. if you have time read Eric Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar. It explains a lot of things. And you need not agree with all whatever he's written.
I am not saying make yahoo as open source protocol or something, just that don't make it difficult for other clients to use yahoo protocols.

B

I for one wouldn't be bothered by the open source vs closed source debate. If drivers are closed source... so what?. As long as the drivers are available, a mass majority do not care whether they are open source or closed source. Last time I checked almost all Windows drivers were closed. Do people care?. I don't think so.

G

hey, Mandriva & linspire do charge, don't tell me they don't wanna get paid for what they do, how r they gonna get their living then

borg, your points are correct man

gxsaurav said:
that everyone who uses Linux should be a coder

I did not say that. I said that it is unreasonable to make demands of open-source writers, because it is their time after all. You can make demands of Microsoft, if you pay for their products. Open source is a community thing. You can benefit from it even if you are not a programmer. Nothing prevents you from asking ( read : making polite suggestions) for new features and improvements. If they are kind and believe in benefit for the community (which the normally do, since they are working in open source), they will listen to your suggestions and try their utmost. They do not have to. You can help them by doing some programming, but it is not necessary. Like has been said before, if you don't want to go near the Open source movement, don't.

borg said:
If drivers are closed source... so what?

I posted half a page of literature for nothing? Ah well, I can't say that I wasn't warned.

borg said:
Do people care?

Be specific. People who use their computers merely as tools to get their jobs done, will not care, and we can respect that. However, those whose job _is_ computers, coding, and the like, and who want to get the most out of the machine, and allow others to get the most out of their machine, do care.

@Sykora, that is a good point. Open-source gives access to drivers to one & all.
The whole Linux community will benefit from it. Closed-source means , you have to
pay , like @gxsaurav has pointed out. So open-source is the way to go. And Intel
has done the right thing.

B

I think this brings to light the difference between mainstream computer users & Linux users. 95% (Linux's desktop marketshare is about 3%) of the Computer world doesn't use Linux. Closed source is not a problem with these many people. A vast majority of users don't care about open or closed as long as it works. Ati/Nvidia drivers have always been closed on Windows. Nobody sees a problem with that. A vast majority of computer users are not programmers. How does it affect a non programmer as to whether a something is open source or not. It doesn't.

Now i am not against Open source at all. But it shouldn't be a prerequisite to anything. There are some zealots in the open source community who are against anything closed. These people are fanatics. As far as I am concerned, it doesn't matter to me whether the drivers are open or closed, as long as they are available & work well. A vast majority of computer users cannot be bothered with philosophies & dogmas. They just want to use their computer & will use whatever works best (closed or open).

gxsaurav said:
what Linux lacks, is configurability. What the point of editing xconfig file manually using some text editor, can't they make it like some menu or something, when I used ubuntu live, I saw this option that I could chose my graphics driver from a drop down list (some where in the control panel) there were names like nv, ati, Intel etc, this is what I m saying to make better.

Mandriva , Mepis and Open SuSe 10.2 ( The most widely used Distro's ) all have this feature of configuring your Graphics Adapter ( Onboard / Graphics Card ) from the Control Center .
And , don't say that Fedora Core doesn't have this facility - Fedora Core is not an OS portrayed as a Home entertainment operating system .

gxsaurav said:
linux can excel even with closed source drivers

If this should happen , Linux will cease to be Open Source anymore . Please RTFM - *www.opensource.org .

For any software ( including Device drivers ) to be classified as "Open Source" it's source code should essentially be distributed along with it's Binaries AND for free .

B

If this should happen , Linux will cease to be Open Source anymore

And why is that?. Device drivers are different, the OS is different. Going by ur argument, all the apps that run on the OS should also be OSS or Linux would cease to be open source, by your logic. I don't where we are going with this.

I don't know what people are thinking, but is this some sort of open source fascism?. It seems to me like Microsoft all over again.

abishekkulkarni said:
Please RTFM...

lol. I've always wanted to say this to someone, but you beat me to it. Haha

gxsaurav said:
Only because of these shortcomings, Linux is treated like an OS for geeks, or programmers, not the general user out there, because of which they are afraid to try it

I used Linux as my primary OS before I switched to OS X. I am not a programmer or a coder. I'm a B.Com student from a third grade college. I wasn't afraid of trying it out. So, please do not generalize and yes, please don't troll in here

Frankly, I have seen around three threads in Digit where you have mentioned the same points about Linux. If you don't like the OS for some reasons, please move on.

G

Damn...lots of work, anyway back to the topic

I said previously, & I m saying again, Linux is excelling with closed source drivers & it can pretty well excel with open source drivers. Closed source drivers are not making any difference, configuring Linux is

abhishekkulkarni

what else did I say...even I liked the ability to chose my graphics driver from control panel in ubuntu, now this is usability which should be implemented & should be made better

Andy

jai ho aapki jo aap yahan aaye, without reading anything u started bashing again. Don't tell me, u didn't faced a single dependency hell, driver trouble etc in it

jo bhi ho, maybe it's a good move from Intel, but in my opinion, open source application might be good, as it cuts implementation costs, but open source drivers should not be there. Linux is getting popular, something the hardware manufacturers saw & they themselves released closed source drivers for u, previously u used to bash them for not providing drivers, now even if they release it as open source, u will say, they did not give source code for everything or every feature, & still bash them

change your mentality, innovation & invention for hardware can't be given for free ok, u need to charge for it, cos u deserve it. It is not software which anyone can make in their free time like skyora said, in the community

borg said:
And why is that?. Device drivers are different, the OS is different. Going by ur argument, all the apps that run on the OS should also be OSS or Linux would cease to be open source, by your logic. I don't where we are going with this.

I don't know what people are thinking, but is this some sort of open source fascism?. It seems to me like Microsoft all over again.

Yes , all the apps that are shipped with any Distro HAVE to be FOSS ( Free & Open Source Software ) .

It is not MY logic . I repeat please RTFM - *www.opensource.org .

Let me quote a few lines from the website here -

Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:

1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Rationale: By constraining the license to require free redistribution, we eliminate the temptation to throw away many long-term gains in order to make a few short-term sales dollars. If we didn't do this, there would be lots of pressure for cooperators to defect.

@ borg

I said that because of this statement by gxsaurav -

gxsaurav said:
linux can excel even with closed source drivers

Now , where does the question of facism come in ???

In the above sentence even the term Linux and 'closed source drivers' are contradictory .
Linux -> Open Source , Closed Source Drivers -> Closed source

How can they ever coexist ?

Please think before commenting on a post ..

@sykora

LOL

@gxsaurav

I agree with you completely .

Linux should be standardised , to make it more freely usable .