Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 17th Sep 2007 20:09 UTC, submitted by Michael
"Not only is AMD providing the open-source community with their ATI GPU specifications, but they have also been partnering with Novell on the development of a new open-source display driver. We've been telling you about AMD's open-source work all month, and today the new driver is finally available for download. It is still very much a work in progress and isn't much further along than the open-source R500 Avivo driver. However, this new driver does support the Radeon HD 2000 (R600) family. This new X.Org driver is called RadeonHD."
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Member since:
2006-03-12
"Unfortunately, now the problem has simply changed focus from video to wifi. I've been playing this game for 20 years. And I sometimes wonder if we are really making progress, or if the problems are escalating about as fast as they are being solved. I think we are making progress. But it feels like a long walk up a fast treadmill."
There is no we. There have been large areas of missing support in GNU's past, but the days of compatible hardware being included with a distribution are long gone. I remember sound cards where the major problem, and then linmodems which I'm not sure if there was ever a solution, or whether broadband simply overtook it. wi-fi has been a problem but support has been available for a long time, and growing. Unfortunately those who have been forced to rely on older kernels due to things like binary blobs simply haven't been able to take advantage.
Linux development and company interest is escalating at a rapid rate, and the code submitted routinely doubles. In fact the move has been not to buy hardware thats supported in Linux, but to *expect* and *demand* all hardware works. In many ways I suspect this is a step backward, as hardware companies often do not get the credit they deserve apart from a few notable exceptions.
The major difference in graphics cards is that the specifications are held by monopolistic companies due to the nature of the market, compared to other hardware components, with Intel holding about 60% of the market and AMD holding another 20%, a major problem has been overcome. Although I suspect very strongly that Linus' practicality(sic) and I use the word in the correct place...or I should say *short term solution* has been damaging to GNU for a long time with its "good enough"(sic) drivers, and its had far reaching effect that includes application support that takes advantage of such hardware. Its a shame that the kernel has neglected support for the desktop for its server; embedded market.
I say this knowing that hardware support by Linux is not universal, and although I only paint a rosy picture of the future I'm well aware than many of the universal drivers that Linux enjoys and other kernels will soon be a thing of the past due to Vista's overreaching DRM hardware specifications. It will be interesting times.
Edited 2007-09-18 07:49