[CVALE] A Step Forward For Linux

[Landon Blake]

Thanks for the comments Pete.

Will this move then give AMD a competitive edge on Linux platforms? Even
if the hardware wasn't quite as good, I might buy one of their graphics
cards if I knew it was well supported on Linux.

I wonder if this will put pressure on the other graphics cards makers to
do something similar.

I wonder if AMD risks a patent suit with this move, since they will need
to publish a spec for their card. Isn't that one of the things that
prevented this from happening before?

Landon

-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Zaitcev [mailto:zaitcev at redhat.com] 
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2007 3:40 PM
To: cvale at cvale.org
Cc: Landon Blake
Subject: Re: [CVALE] A Step Forward For Linux

On Thu, 6 Sep 2007 14:05:05 -0700, "Landon Blake" <lblake at ksninc.com>
wrote:

> Is this a step forward for Linux?

Yes, it is, or, rather, it will be. But it does not have to happen the
way end-users might expect. There aren't going to open a gate in the
sky from where reliable and fast drivers would fall and parachute into
your laptops. But it is a big deal for programmers.

The X and especially 3D in X is a rather corralled area, due to all the
investment one has to put into hacking there. Barriers to entry are
high.
Breaking into there is harder than into Linux kernel, there's some
information hoarding going on. If AMD can provide a platform to which
everyone can develop even if they do not know key people it's going to
lead to enormous progress, even if their hardware is inferior to
nVidia's.
I am quite hopeful here.

-- Pete


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