[NCLUG] Intel open source drivers

[Chad Perrin]

On Sat, Jan 27, 2007 at 02:58:58PM -0700, Sean Reifschneider wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 10:49:53PM -0700, Chad Perrin wrote:
> >once in a while it would be flaky for a few minutes, for no reason I
> >discerned other than perhaps pure gremlin-infested orneriness.
> 
> ToyKeeper has had that happening a lot.  I've been told by someone in the
> know that the Atheros have superior RF hardware, but the IPWs have worked
> much better for me in reality.  When I got my last laptop, I got an
> upgraded a/b/g card, which turned out to be the atheros.  I also had the
> included ip2100 b-only card.  I tried the atheros for several months, but
> finally just switched back to b-only because the atheros was annoying.
> 
> That was probably 1.5 years ago though, the drivers have, possibly,
> improved.

Could be.  I really wouldn't know -- the last time I used an Atheros
adapter was a little over a year ago.


> 
> >It appears that Intel finally released its newfangled high-end 3D
> >accelerated graphics adapter, with the 965 Express Chipset, last summer.
> 
> It looks like this is an "embedded only" sort of release.  Searching at
> newegg I don't see any standalone Intel-based video boards.  I do see that
> my backup server has a 965 in it:

Ahh, yeah, that could very well be.  I don't seem to be finding any
references to stand-alone adapters.


> 
> I guess I could put beryl on it (it's running FC6 instead of CentOS,
> because CentOS had issues with the dm-crypto causing corruption), so beryl
> should be easy to get going there.

A backup server seems to be a strange place to run beryl.


> 
> >community at large -- it pertains to the troubles with getting open
> >source drivers for GeForce and ATI adapters as well.  I'll see if I can
> 
> Are you talking about things like the proprietary drivers including
> third-party software that ATI/nVidia can't release?  That's what I
> understand to be part of the problem with these companies opening up their
> drivers completely.  However, I think some of it is just ego as well.

Specifically, it seems like the biggest point of contention is the
reliance of both nVidia and ATI drivers on Intel's proprietary agpgart
technology.  They're both fully capable of "writing around" it, but they
choose not to, from what I understand.  Similarly, that seems to be the
reason that the Intel drivers are judged to fail to measure up to the
nVidia and ATI drivers: nVidia and ATI release binary blobs that include
the proprietary agpgart support, and Intel just doesn't release anything
with agpgart except for Windows.

At least, that's what the other guy told me.  I haven't double-checked
any of this, so it's all second-hand.  Regardless, I don't see any
particular reason that ATI and nVidia couldn't just release everything
but the proprietary parts under an open source license, and let the open
source community build from there if they wish.


> 
> >Y'know, ATI has been legendary in the crappy quality of its drivers
> 
> I don't know, I've heard the same thing about nVidia drivers though.  In
> particular, I've heard the same issue with suspending in the nVidia
> drivers, though at the time I was having problems, bsoft's nVidia based
> laptop did not.
> 
> I do remember like a decade ago the Mach64 was a really reliable video
> board for Linux.  At the time, Matrox was the speedy card, but only if you
> used Xi's X server, which caused me nothing but troubles, and had HORRIBLE
> support.

Way back in the day, when the ATI Rage was all over the shelves of
stores like Best Buy, I was still basically just a Windows weenie.  I
was starting to experiment with RH 5, as I recall.  Anyway, from the
Windows perspective at the time, ATI was known for its crap drivers and
the crap chipsets on the Rage cards, but the Radeon cards were coming
out then or shortly thereafter and they had an excellent reputation with
regards to hardware.  Within a couple of years of the arrival of the
Radeons, it was beginning to look like ATI was producing the better
hardware, and nVidia the better drivers.

Of course, none of that had anything to do with driver support on open
source operating systems.


> 
> >drivers is sketchy installation -- it fails more often than it works,
> >and it seems like every successful install for me has involved a wholly
> >unique Frankenstein's Monster of stitched-together workarounds so dense
> 
> The installs I've done recently haven't been much trouble at all, it was
> pretty much just using the right repository for packages and following
> their instructions.  ISTR that it was just adding the repo "yum install"
> something or other, and then running one command.  Ditto for Ubuntu.

Maybe I was just UNlucky, in that respect.


> 
> >any problem with ATI proprietary driver operation for any Radeon or
> >FireGL -- even with suspend to RAM or hard drive.  I think I must just
> 
> About 1.5 years ago, for around 6 months, they had a driver for the r300
> card my laptop had that definitely did not support suspending.

I guess the moral of the story is this:

  It's a crap shoot.


> 
> >credible laptop model (and by "credible", I mean self-respecting high
> >enough quality so it wouldn't be caught dead being sold at Wal-Mart) has
> >ever used an Intel graphics chipset.  High-end graphics could become
> 
> My ThinkPad T43 uses the Intel 915 mentioned above.  This is only 1024x768.
> My previous 1600x1200 T42 (which I had to replace in a hurry because of
> hardware problems that IBM/Lenovo couldn't ever seem to resolve, and
> replaced with a locally-purchased T43 where I only had one option) used the
> ATI chipset for the 1400 or 1600 resolution graphics options.  These are
> the laptops that ESR calls "elite linux hacker" laptops, IIRC, so I would
> assume they qualify as credible to you.  :-)

The best laptop I've ever owned was a T42p.  I loved that thing to death
(meaning, of course, that I loved it right up to the point where I
smelled a burning stench from it, and I had to turn it off so I could
rescue my hard drive).  Pretty much everything Just Worked with my
Debian install.  It was a beautiful thing.


> 
> >Anyway, since I'm using mostly FreeBSD for everything these days, the
> 
> "Dude, you look EXACTLY LIKE Linux."

Hah.  I saw that parody.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"The ability to quote is a serviceable
substitute for wit." - W. Somerset Maugham