Libre graphics could become the standard if we push right now

[Svante Signell]

On Fri, 2016-01-15 at 04:57 -0500, shawn wilson wrote:
> 
> On Jan 14, 2016 5:11 PM, "Zlatan Todoric" <zlatan at riseup.net> wrote:
> 
> > > So I think it is very important that we support AMD right now on what we
> > > can, and ask manufacturers to include AMD graphics in those products.
> > >
> >
> > You do realize that AMD graphics need proprietary firmware to have
> > proper 3D acceleration without which you probably couldn't run any game
> > at all - so goodbye Libre graphics.
> >
> Besides that, AMD's fglrx require X to be running in order to run while nVidia
> does not (kinda sucks if you have a bunch of 8 card nodes using the cards for
> scientific applications). Also, in this setting, there were a lot more issues
> with AMD than nVidia (soft crashes, hard crashes, cards going offline until
> reboot).
> I'm not a big gamer, so maybe there are less issues with AMD in this setting.
> And I'd be thrilled if either fglrx or nv were OSS (would weigh heavily on
> purchasing decisions). However, because AMD really pissed me off here, I had
> to say something here.

Well, I don't think the issue is about the non-free driver fglrx, but the open
source radeon drivers. fglrx is as bad as the nVidia non-free ones. BTW: nv is
OSS (Open Source Software), however with limited performance due to lacking open
documentation of the nVidia graphics hardware. The closed firmware issue is
another story...