"Last October we had compared the performance of the open-source R300 display driver against the closed-source fglrx driver for ATI Radeon graphics cards. In that comparison a Mobility Radeon X300 was used with X.Org 7.1, but we have decided to take another look at this driver comparison under X.Org 7.2. In this last comparison, the fglrx binary blob had greatly outperformed the open-source driver. While the fglrx driver remains faster, has the performance delta between these two drivers decreased?"
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Member since:2005-11-13
One problem with your outlook is that to many people Linux isn't an operating system to many people, but the symbol for Free Software. We like Linux because it's Free, not because it has technical merits. As a result competing with Microsoft by becoming like Microsoft is not a good position for Linux and any other GNU based system.
Member since:2005-07-08
I'm not a part of your "we." I use Linux because of its technical merits, many of which are directly related to the fact that it's free software.
The fact of the matter is that delivering binary drivers is really hard. It's got to be just right, specifically linked to a particular set of object files. If any of the symbols change, it breaks, and you can't fix it. You're stuck waiting for somebody at the green or red company to get around to rolling a new binary, by which time it might be broken again.
Delivering open source drivers is a lot easier. Unless the relevant APIs change, which is relatively rare and always announced ahead of time, the driver source will build normally against new versions. And obviously, the Linux kernel community likes to pull drivers in-tree whenever possible, so open source drivers will be automatically included with Linux distributions and will be updated by the kernel maintainers to reflect any API changes that may occur.
In addition to being much easier to maintain, open source drivers are vastly easier to debug and support. The proprietary nVidia driver is almost as big as my entire kernel image, and there's no viable way to figure out what's wrong if it doesn't work. You might be able to get support from your Linux vendor or from nVidia, but not very likely, and certainly not if you have any other proprietary drivers loaded.
Let's back away from the issue of drivers and talk about the general impact of OSS on the technical capabilities of the free software stack. The fact that we have and share source code allows free software developers to innovate at a pace unmatched in the proprietary software industry--at a fraction of the cost. Compare Linux to proprietary UNIX, which has been relegated to niche markets because it lacks an agile, nimble development ecosystem.
I didn't start using Linux because it was free. I started using Linux because it was fun, reliable, understandable, and most importantly, not Windows. The free software aspect was one that I grew to appreciate over time, but primarily as a means to these ends.
Member since:2006-04-21
What I notice is that allot of people in the open source community seem to for get people are in business to make money and if money is not being made then the community will not be.
No, we don't. What allot of people in the business community seem to for get people are not born to be sucked into your vendor-lockin. That's the only consequence of free software (I don't think the protections against this are strong enough in open source), not that software is free. The fact that is free is the fault of the Internet, which makes it possible to distribute software w/o exchange of goods, only the exchange of bytes.
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.
Member since:
2006-06-08
Good points. Do not like some of them but none the less good. Still think we should put the pressure on the hardware maker to come out with the drivers as needed as is the case with MS. New drivers come out all the time on MS. We need to decide where to focus our energy and do so effectively so we can get the type of support we need.
What I notice is that allot of people in the open source community seem to for get people are in business to make money and if money is not being made then the community will not be.
That is my 2cents.