A First Look At The 2010 Linux Graphics Survey Results

[illissius]

A lot of the questions were multiple choice, yet you're using pie charts with the percentages adding up to 100 -- presumably by just adding all the responses together, and then dividing each one by the total.

This is wrong. The way to go would be to take the number of *respondents*, take that to be 100%, and for each available option, look at what percentage of the respondents selected it. The results could be displayed in a bar chart which goes from 0 to 100, for example.

[JantarMantar]

less than 10% of the users caring about licensing would be very depressing if correct.

I never understood why people deeply care about open source drivers. Does Microsoft spend any of their resources to develop drivers for various hardwares? To me, developing open source drivers makes sense only if the manufacturer isn't willing to provide Linux drivers. IMHO, writing and improving applications that compete and beat similar applications available on other platforms is better use of talented people's skills.

Cheers

[Chewi]

I never understood why people deeply care about open source drivers. Does Microsoft spend any of their resources to develop drivers for various hardwares? To me, developing open source drivers makes sense only if the manufacturer isn't willing to provide Linux drivers. IMHO, writing and improving applications that compete and beat similar applications available on other platforms is better use of talented people's skills.

Cheers

I believe you are entitled to your opinion and I'm not saying that this figure would be or should be 100% but it must surely be more than 10%. Michael has a duty as a news channel to report the results of this survey accurately. Vendors may read this statement or see it quoted elsewhere and consequently abandon any plans they might have had for open source driver development.

[nanonyme]

I never understood why people deeply care about open source drivers. Does Microsoft spend any of their resources to develop drivers for various hardwares?

No, they just spend their resources in a certification process that hardware vendors won't pass unless they produce the drivers. That's not very useful unless you're running a monopoly operating system market.

[pingufunkybeat]

I never understood why people deeply care about open source drivers.

People deeply care about open source drivers because people care about open source software. The ability to inspect, understand and modify the software running on your computer. This has been the driving force behind the development of Linux, GNU, BSD, GNOME, KDE, Firefox, and a million other programs.

Drivers are no different. In some ways, they are even MORE important because your computer won't work without them. You can run your computer without OpenOffice, but you can't run it without video drivers.

Does Microsoft spend any of their resources to develop drivers for various hardwares?

Who cares? Microsoft is a company who makes profit by selling software. They don't spend their resources for increasing literacy or reducing domestic violence, but that doesn't mean that nobody should care about these things.

Many people use Linux (or similar operating systems) because they enjoy the freedoms they get with respect to inspecting, copying, upgrading and developing the software they run.

To me, developing open source drivers makes sense only if the manufacturer isn't willing to provide Linux drivers.

This is your point of view. From my point of view, Free Software is important because it lets you know what's running on your hardware, because it is generally free of charge (so people in poor countries can also use it), and can be kept running by a knowledgeable programmer long after a company stops updating a similar program.

I don't see Free Software as a second-rate replacement which is only used if you don't have the money for a Microsoft product. I see it as a more ethical and sustainable approach to software. Free drivers are important because they ensure that the whole system can remain free and can not be shut down by a single company.

Not all Linux users feel like this, and many simply run Linux because it's cuter, or faster, or cheaper. That's OK. But as a Linux user, you should be aware of what Free Software is about. You can start here: http://www.fsf.org/about/

[lem79]

For the next Linux Graphics Survey, it would be nice if the "Which version of the X Server do you run?" question could include which major distributions are using what version (e.g. X Server 1.7 (Ubuntu 10.04, ...)).

[droidhacker]

I never understood why people deeply care about open source drivers. Does Microsoft spend any of their resources to develop drivers for various hardwares? To me, developing open source drivers makes sense only if the manufacturer isn't willing to provide Linux drivers. IMHO, writing and improving applications that compete and beat similar applications available on other platforms is better use of talented people's skills.

Cheers

Why?
How about because my hardware literally CAN'T do what I want it to do with blob drivers. The ONLY possibility is open source drivers. This hardware CAN'T work properly in wondoze, this hardware CAN'T work properly with blob drivers.

Read this thread: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24480
You will see what kind of weird hacks I need to use.

On top of that;
1) To implement all of the features applicable to the platform rather than just features applicable to wondoze --- i.e. KMS.
2) To not be dependent on anyone to support the latest kernel/xorg.
3) Because withOUT EXCEPTION, the open source graphics drivers are FAR MORE STABLE than any of the blobs.

etc.

[droidhacker]

I would like to point out that some of the questions don't offer any applicable answer.... i.e. the one about classifying your use of linux.... i.e. how about a professional who is NOT involved in 2d or 3d graphics?

[rohcQaH]

3) Because withOUT EXCEPTION, the open source graphics drivers are FAR MORE STABLE than any of the blobs.

you obviously haven't tried the evergreen 3d code yet

ok, those should be classified as "beta".. still, stability is not an intrinsic property of open source software. It's just somewhat easier to achieve in the OSS gfx drivers due to reduced features, thus reduced code complexity.

[GreatEmerald]

This would have been an opportunity to cross-reference data - this is unfortunately not possible with the reduced charts. Example:
- how many users of multiple displays actually want hot-plug? How many need hot-plug, but use only 1 monitor (i.e. plug in the projector for a presentation)?
- compare the percentage of binary vs. oss users by interests. Are people interested in video accel more likely to use binary drivers? Do "professional" users prefer the performance of binary drivers or the robustness of the OSS stack?
- are gamers more likely to pick nvidia over ati for wine gaming? By how much? Are there gamers with intel hardware?

Write a script to cross-reference everything that sounds reasonable and make a graph for each (labeled "GPU vendor for people who picked 'gaming enthusiast'" etc). Pick the graphs that deviate from the global average and point out the differences. I'm sure there are plenty of interesting results in there.

I agree, data sorted like that would definitely be far more useful and interesting to read.