OpenGL 3 Updates

[sylware]

Be careful what you wish for, isn't this what AMD/ATI is doing ... care to take a stab at how long it will take before you see SM4.0 support in the open source drivers for the HD cards on Linux?

AMD/ATI has not released 3D programming specifications. But they are still working on it with sample code. Heard Intel did release its GPUs documentation with 3D included and there is already working code.
Mesa works on Gallium, the new ultra light 3D driver framework (hope opengl3 will be *very* simplified too...)
Well, almost everybody is moving forward, except NVIDIA . The only thing NVIDIA has left: they make the fastest hardware... if AMD and Intel reasonably catch up in speed, meaning nvidia chips become not that faster that other chips, they are screwed because they will be *very* late and they will look bad. So the rumor that they would plot an open source strategy is not surprising.

[bertgp]

Be careful what you wish for, isn't this what AMD/ATI is doing ... care to take a stab at how long it will take before you see SM4.0 support in the open source drivers for the HD cards on Linux?

AMD/ATI has not released 3D programming specifications. But they are still working on it with sample code. Heard Intel did release its GPUs documentation with 3D included and there is already working code.
Mesa works on Gallium, the new ultra light 3D driver framework (hope opengl3 will be *very* simplified too...)
Well, almost everybody is moving forward, except NVIDIA . The only thing NVIDIA has left: they make the fastest hardware... if AMD and Intel reasonably catch up in speed, meaning nvidia chips become not that faster that other chips, they are screwed because they will be *very* late and they will look bad. So the rumor that they would plot an open source strategy is not surprising.

Hmmm... That is not quite true. NVIDIA also have their excellent OpenGL drivers going for them. It is not trivial to write good driver code to provide an efficient OpenGL implementation. You need full-time dedicated programmers for that and much testing, especially considering that there is no single central test suite to test for OpenGL conformance. It's not something you can just do as a hobby and hope to achieve the same performance as the vendor's driver team. If you can, I'm sure they would love to offer you a good salary for it

[sylware]

Hmmm... That is not quite true. NVIDIA also have their excellent OpenGL drivers going for them. It is not trivial to write good driver code to provide an efficient OpenGL implementation. You need full-time dedicated programmers for that and much testing, especially considering that there is no single central test suite to test for OpenGL conformance. It's not something you can just do as a hobby and hope to achieve the same performance as the vendor's driver team. If you can, I'm sure they would love to offer you a good salary for it

I was not talinkg about their proprietary driver for Linux. I'm talking about free (as in freedom) drivers and available hardware programming manual. And what you say is almost exactly what said the proprietary UNIXes guys when Linux started... but I won't troll anymore on this, since our worry right now is "where is opengl 3?".

[Timothy Farrar]

I was not talinkg about their proprietary driver for Linux. I'm talking about free (as in freedom) drivers and available hardware programming manual. And what you say is almost exactly what said the proprietary UNIXes guys when Linux started... but I won't troll anymore on this, since our worry right now is "where is opengl 3?".

First, I'm also a fellow Linux GL programmer.

I would suggest you take a second to thing about this objectively for a second. NVidia's GL advantage isn't just speed (which could be arguable), it is that they actually produce good GL drivers, and they have a good market share. There is definitely an objective balance between open information about the hardware for programmers (which if you read through the NVidia's CUDA docs and PTX they are more than being generous with free information) and needs of a business to maintain a competitive advantage (private information) in order to keep producing great hardware.

When a company is going out of their way to both produce good drivers for platforms which might not even really be profitable like FreeBSD, and also is going out of their way to generate GL2 extensions which allow you to use their hardware features long before GL3 will be ready, you've got the best you could ask for.

As for graphics, vendors are bound to get lots of feedback from game developers which they roll back into optimizations, updates, and bug fixes on drivers. With NVidia's unified driver source, these fixes would be basically "free" for those using Linux drivers. This simply would happen with open source drivers. Sorry, but there is no objective advantage for either Linux users or Linux programmers to have open source drivers when a company is handling providing binary Linux drivers (and detailed information, ie PTX) as well as NVidia is.

A wise thing might be to instead thank those at NVidia who are making it possible for you to have and enjoy a no hassle working GL2.1 SM4.0 driver on Linux.

Please do us and ourself a favor and be supportive! Serious professional vendor support is doing a lot for helping Linux become an alternative for many of us.

Now think about this in terms of GL3, which vendor do you think will have fully functional working GL3 drivers for Linux first, and how long before the other vendors get there?

[Korval]

Serious professional vendor support is doing a lot for helping Linux become an alternative for many of us.

Sylware is talking about an ideological point, not a practical concern. He wants liberated drivers, those that are written under the guidelines set down by the Free Software Foundation. Whether they work better or worse than professional drivers is entirely irrelevant to the FSF ideology of free software above all.

Some Linux distros have a policy against including any non-"free" software, which makes nVidia's drivers useless.

[elFarto]

Serious professional vendor support is doing a lot for helping Linux become an alternative for many of us.

Sylware is talking about an ideological point, not a practical concern. He wants liberated drivers, those that are written under the guidelines set down by the Free Software Foundation. Whether they work better or worse than professional drivers is entirely irrelevant to the FSF ideology of free software above all.

Some Linux distros have a policy against including any non-"free" software, which makes nVidia's drivers useless.

There's also a slight legal issue. The NVIDIA kernel module is technically a derivative work of the kernel, and therefore must be licensed under the GPLv2. So they (the kernel developers) could sue NVIDIA, but that'll get us nowhere as they'll just withdraw the driver.

Also the kernel is being (or was going to be) modified to make it legally impossible to make a closed-source driver. (There's more information here).

Regards
elFarto

[Korval]

Also the kernel is being (or was going to be) modified to make it legally impossible to make a closed-source driver.

Wow, Linux just doesn't like being usable, does it? This doesn't even sound like Torvalds, who tends to be less ideological and more practical in his decisions.

[Seth Hoffert]

Also the kernel is being (or was going to be) modified to make it legally impossible to make a closed-source driver.

It would be quite unfortunate if this were to happen. I would switch back to XP without hesitation, to be perfectly honest.

[wien]

Also the kernel is being (or was going to be) modified to make it legally impossible to make a closed-source driver.

I wouldn't go around announcing that just yet. Linus seems quite adamant he won't include anything like that unless most other trees (distros etc.) include it first.

[elFarto]

I wouldn't go around announcing that just yet. Linus seems quite adamant he won't include anything like that unless most other trees (distros etc.) include it first.

Very true, You need to read the (very long) thread I linked to for the full story.

Regards
elFarto