OSS Drivers Changing Your Next Purchase?

[Svartalf]

Svartalf:

What silence are you referring to from ATI?

Well, there's things like Sideport initially being a functionality supported in the Linux drivers and then it's pulled, never seemingly to return. And then there's the absolutely dismal performance of these chips compared to the Windows drivers (never mind the comparison between the theoretical performance on the spec sheets versus the Linux speed...). There's a raftload more of these things, but they know about them all, and don't seem to be interested (or lack the resources, more like...) in fixing the problems in a timely manner (I've had issues since I owned the ATI chipset based Athlon64 laptop, nearly a year ago today- issues that don't seem to be getting resolved...). That would be relative silence in many's books (incl. mine...).

But, as it's been indicated in my previous posting, I've got info from a pretty reliable source that this is about to change for the better. No, can't say any more than that- it'd probably get me in trouble, it would...

[Michael]

Well, there's things like Sideport initially being a functionality supported in the Linux drivers and then it's pulled, never seemingly to return. And then there's the absolutely dismal performance of these chips compared to the Windows drivers (never mind the comparison between the theoretical performance on the spec sheets versus the Linux speed...). There's a raftload more of these things, but they know about them all, and don't seem to be interested (or lack the resources, more like...) in fixing the problems in a timely manner (I've had issues since I owned the ATI chipset based Athlon64 laptop, nearly a year ago today- issues that don't seem to be getting resolved...). That would be relative silence in many's books (incl. mine...).

The lack of silence from corporations isn't anything ground shattering. NVIDIA is the same way, if not worse, as there isn't even a public unofficial BugZilla. The release cycle for NVIDIA can also be debated. ATI is very interested in correcting bugs and improving the quality of their drivers, they simply have priorities and other objectives that they must accomplish first. If you will recall from the months past with the dynamic display management options and all of the other mobile-related improvements, Lenovo announced their Linux support for the T60p right after that... Coincidence?

[drag]

Oh, this is a nice one:
http://download2.rapid7.com/r7-0025/

Security vunerabilities in Nvidia binary drivers.

With active proof-of-concept exploit for Linux. This is not only a local vunerability with X + nvidia drivers, but it can be remotely exploitable.. for instance if your browsing to a malicious website it's possible for somebody to have your browser display something _which_could_give_them_root_access_.

This is a problem with how Nvidia accelerates rendering of text. This is a very very serious problem.

This bug has been around for years now. First reported in 2004 it took nearly 2 years for Nvidia to aknowledge the problem, which was in July 2006 and they still haven't fixed it.

To me this is headlines-style stuff.

[da.phreak]

First reported in 2004 it took nearly 2 years for Nvidia to aknowledge the problem, which was in July 2006 and they still haven't fixed it.

Fixed in 96xx Beta drivers :-)

[Svartalf]

If you will recall from the months past with the dynamic display management options and all of the other mobile-related improvements, Lenovo announced their Linux support for the T60p right after that... Coincidence?

Heh, I'd think not. As for priorities...You'd think they'd FIX something that is patently broken rather than adding new features...

[MU_Engineer]

The availability or lack thereof of OSS drivers does not really influence my purchase. I happen to have run both NVIDIA and ATi cards on open and blob drivers and they all run fine. My laptop's Radeon M9000 (RV250) runs nicely on the OSS drivers and my desktop's x1900GT runs nicely on the fglrx drivers. I used to use an NVIDIA 6200 and it ran fine with its blob drivers too.

Oh, and my motherboard is an NVIDIA Nforce4 chipset model. All of the devices on it work with OSS drivers:

SATA: nv_sata
IDE: generic NForce IDE drivers
Ethernet: forcedeth (better than the prop. nvnet module as forcedeth supports GbE.)
USB: generic OHCI/UHCI drivers
Sound: snd_intel-8x0
i2c: i2c_nforce2