Re: [RFC] Small PCI core patch

Jon Smirl
2005-11-22T02:20:58Z

On 11/21/05, Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
> On Maw, 2005-11-22 at 11:47 +1100, Dave Airlie wrote:
> Nvidia are at least trying to do what they can within what for them is
> not a very easy set of market conditions for open sourcing. ATI were
> doing very nice things until they won the Xbox 360 contract. An
> observation that perhaps would not go amiss reaching the US legal
> watchdogs.

How is graphics going to be dealt with on Linux? Is the Linux desktop
going to stay stuck in 1998 since that is the last year the graphics
vendors released specs? If the choice is "open source or die" then
that's the answer. Of course that answer is bad news desktop Linux
distributions and they may die.

If the choice instead is to embrace current graphics hardware, then
given the current state of the market, I don't see any other
alternative than using the proprietary drivers and OpenGL stacks. The
path in that direction is something like Xgl. We can wish for a
non-proprietary choice on the current hardware, but the reality is
that we are not going to get it.

--
Jon Smirl
jonsmirl@gmail.com