"It has been one year to the day since XGI Technology had last released a Volari Linux display driver and about 14 months since we had first delivered word of XGI considering open-source 3D display drivers. Where do things now stand for XGI Technology? We will tell you all of the details today where things are for this Taiwan graphics company."
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Member since:2006-01-06
Member since:2005-06-30
Yeah, well, like a lot of things with SkyOS, we do our best to work something out, and if it doesn't happen, we just move along. 
I was personally hoping they would open all of the necessary specs to us. This would have allowed Robert to create the underlying sub-system for hardware 3D support (both for composition on the desktop, as well as gaming for Quake 3 and such), and since NVIDIA and ATI had/have no interest in working with us at present, the XGI cards would have been the de-facto 3D hardware standard for SkyOS. However, their hardware is simply not that good, nor are the drivers for the hardware, and while we were willing to overlook this just to get some support in the system, it just wasn't worth it if we had to jump through a bunch of legal hoops to get there. For NVIDIA or ATI support, definitely, but not for XGI.
Member since:
2005-06-30
We (SkyOS) tried working with XGI about two years ago. They wanted us to sign a bunch of NDA's and such to get access to their hardware specs, which we didn't feel like doing. They are a very small hardware company, we are a very small OS group, and we were hoping we could find some common ground quickly to help each other out, but that didn't materialize so, oh well.
Personally, I think they should just open everything up and go for broke. Their technology is years behind NVIDIA/AMD, and even Intel. The only risk they have is of more platforms supporting their hardware. I know for a fact that a lot of SkyOS users would have picked up a $40 video card from them if it meant they could get 3D hardware acceleration. Oh well. It is what it is.