VMware Acquires Tungsten Graphics

[[Knuckles]]

I was just idly browsing, and ended up on Tungsten Graphics [http://www.tungstengraphics.com/] site (the ones from Gallium3D, TTM, etc fame), and it seems 2 weeks ago they were acquired by VMware.

Does anyone know anything more about this? I see TG as a very important company doing very important work for the future of linux graphics, so I'm not really sure how I feel about vmware scooping them up.

[elanthis]

This is probably due to VMware wanting full graphics acceleration from within VMs on all platforms. I wouldn't worry too much -- one for-profit company was bought by another for-profit company. If Tungsten agreed to be bought, then either Tungsten was in danger of going out of business anyway, or the folks at Tungsten believed it to be a truly beneficial merger in terms of both their own goals and VMware's. It's not like Tungsten was a purely Open Source company to begin with -- iirc, one of the GEM developers' complaints against TTM was that TTM had a lot of cruft in it that was there only for the support of certain proprietary drivers.

So in short... I wouldn't worry about this at all.

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VMware Acquires Tungsten Graphics

There seemed to have been little buzz generated by this announcement when it first came about, but Tungsten Graphics has been acquired by VMware. They were acquired in late November for undisclosed terms and their only news mention of this acquisition is below (from their website). "November 26, 2008: Tungsten Graphics has been acquired by VMware...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjkyNw

[wiscados]

... or the folks at Tungsten believed it to be a truly beneficial merger in terms of both their own goals and VMware's.

Well, it's normally the owners who decide this kinds of things, I don't know if Tungsten is public or not, or who the owners are. But owners typically only care about the money, not necessarily about the goals. Again, it depends on who the owners are, if the owner helped build or found the company, then they might care more about what happens to it.
But let's just hope that whatever happens to it, it will be beneficial to the open source community, because that's all I care about.

[superppl]

You know, maybe they'll get better D3D support for Linux in future releases. That's a solution I'd go for; many of the games I play, or want to play, on wine have trouble working not because of the graphics, but because of anti-cheating software. Playing the game on Windows without having to reboot would be nice.

[cruiseoveride]

Very interesting. Very.

[oibaf]

See also the FAQ at tungstengraphics.com site:
http://www.tungstengraphics.com/FAQ/

[matti3]

heh, interesting indeed. I would be delighted to try out the latest kDE4daily image with 3d acceleration!

[[Knuckles]]

matti3: You might want to try this --> http://knuxblog.blogspot.com/2008/06...ithout-3d.html . Not 3d, but it gets you some of the bling [also if you have problems try disabling drop shadows].

[matti3]

yes, I actually read that blog post It is a nice tip, but ultimately, I would like to be able to have 3d opengl acceleration so I can play a bit around with the kwin effects code without having to ruin my current environment (I only know opengl, no xrender api)