In the Linux land 99% of the applications are open source. It is part of the nature of the GNU/Linux community ecosystem to endorse open software. But there are a few applications that are not open and as they fill up a niche, they are pretty popular. Come in and vote for your favorite.
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Member since:2005-07-06
There are not really enough results yet to say this definitively but it is interesting that the graphic cards drivers are considered so popular. Is Desktop eyecandy really that important to everyone ?
The nVidia and ATi accelerated drivers are important for more than just "eyecandy" as you apparently are implying. Without them, 2D performance is fairly limiting. In fact, both of the drivers (at last check) also provided acceleration needed for video playback (dvd, etc.). Finally, some of us have work that actually requires 3D acceleration -- which has nothing to do with eyecandy or games.
Member since:2006-07-13
Member since:2005-06-29
So does the radeon and nv driver. The ATI proprietary drivers aren't any better on video, and neither is nvidia's.
They're really pretty much only helpful for GL. Although, the radeon driver hasn't been working right on my dual monitor setup so I had to switch to the proprietary one (the free one made white horizontal lines when there were large numbers of changes on the screen).
And the Nvidia driver provides a lot better dual monitor support than nv+xinerama, but the radeon driver provides its own similar stuff so it's really in the same class for dual head.
Member since:2006-02-21
Member since:2006-07-26
I wouldn't say eye candy is all important for me, but in my experience the nvidia drivers are more reliable than the nv drivers and give me my favorite resolution of 1280*1024 which the nv drivers did not support, that's mainly why I use them. I don't really play games either (at least not under linux), but still the nvidia drivers are just about the first thing I install when (re-)installing a linux distro
Member since:2005-06-28
Member since:2006-05-12
Actually, the nvidia drivers cause my laptop to freeze 2-3 times per day. Since I switched back to the nv drivers it's been solid as a rock. Yeah, glxgears and some of the screensavers play slower now, but they both work fine at 1600x1050 and I reboot for games anyway.
Member since:2005-09-10
Is Desktop eyecandy really that important to everyone?
Its not just eye candy. There are many FOSS OpenGL games that cleary benefits from good OpenGL acceleration (jDoom, neverball, planet penguin racer [former tuxracer], cube, the patched SEGA genesis emulator generator-gtk comes to mind) and a pile of commercial ones (UT2004, Quake3/4, Neverwinter Nights, X2, Darwinia...).
Moreover, the multiple-screen extensions, HDTV resolutions or on-the-fly switching between different screen configurations are nice and progressing, sort of (these things are somewhat broken in different ways and combinations in each binary release from both companies as far as I know - try setting up a 1080i modeline with a 6200 card the latest nvidia driver and you'll [not] see).
I use my operating systems to get real work done.
Me too. About 8-9 hours a day. But I also use GNU/Linux for desktop/games machine and HDTV multimedia machine at home as well, so I need more than a database, text editor, ftp and lynx for my computing. I can see no reason not to expect or aim for this functionality when using FOSS.
That said, I think most of us FOSS buffs would benefit a lot from community driver improvements if the driver sources were released...
Member since:2005-11-13
Member since:2006-01-01
Hardware-accelerated OpenGL makes software people use for productive purposes usable. Therefore people value high-quality drivers that permit them to use such software on Linux with their expensive accelerators. Maya, XSI, VeriCAD, and the like. Further the drivers appeal to people that like to play videogames in Linux either with native clients offered for id and Epic titles, or with Cedega. Then last you'll have interest in "eye-candy," but that's still a work in progress.
Member since:2005-09-23
Firstly, the other options are mostly irrelevant. Things like Opera, Skype, Adobe Reader, Real Player, Nero Linux, Intel Compiler, Parallels and others have open-source equivalents which has resulted in VERY low popularity of these applications on GNU/Linux.
Out of those which do not (vmware, flash, graphics drivers, etc), I do believe nVidia/ATI drivers are the most essential. It's not just eye candy: it's getting the most out of the money you forked over for that fancy graphics card. Nv 2D performance is almost as sluggish as the non-existent 3D performance. Finally: what eye candy? It's difficult as hell to get Xgl to compile and run for any average user (or an advanced one like me: I chose to give up and wait until more work is done) and xcompmgr and friends have nasty screen drawing and performance bugs which leave them unsuitable for non-experimental use.
Regarding the point on video support: I don't know how good nv's Xvideo support is, but it's all hardware accelerated with the commercial drivers. Others have mentioned dual-screen (TwinView), overlays (Quadro) etc as reasons.
Member since:2005-07-08
If you think that "desktop eye-candy" is all graphics cards are good for, and that anyone buying them is really just shallow you've got another thing coming.
It's vitally important that GPUs are available via drivers for software such 3D GPU assisted rendering, video compositing, 2d render acceleration, 3D CAD(D), 3D CAID among many other applications and uses that I've even bothered to get into.
Desktop eye-candy is pretty low on the list.
Member since:
2006-02-28
There are not really enough results yet to say this definitively but it is interesting that the graphic cards drivers are considered so popular. Is Desktop eyecandy really that important to everyone ?