AMD Ports Open-Source Linux Driver To Windows Embedded

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Ports Open-Source Linux Driver To Windows Embedded

Here's something interesting or perhaps odd: AMD has been porting the open-source Radeon Linux driver to Windows Embedded Compact 7 (WEC7) as its graphics driver.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=16520

[Vadi]

A good thing I guess, it'll get more attention and they'll give it more people to work on the performance and stability of the driver if this experiment works out. I'm sure the GPL whiners are quite happy that the driver will be closed-source due to the permissible MIT license.

[Laughing1]

It would be nice if gallium/drm/winsys was ported to windows, then the driver could be compiled and run even for old hardware.

[AnonymousCoward]

Wasn't the original plan for AMD to provide the docs and for the community to write the driver?

I wonder if taking the code written by the community, port it to windows embedded and add some proprietary sauce to it was also part of the original plan. So maybe AMD sees Linux community as a form of cheap labor?

Of course that plan didn't work out very well. For some reason there aren't many people in the Linux community lining up to contribute to the graphics stack. I wonder if the license of the graphics stack has something to do with that

[NomadDemon]

my first reaction "WOOOOO0000T???"

hmm.. does it change something for linux users?

[DaemonFC]

Catalyst is a clusterfuck, especially on Linux. Anyone that loads it better check their sanity at the door.

Saying it's old and crufty doesn't do it justice.

[libv]

Wasn't the original plan for AMD to provide the docs and for the community to write the driver?

I wonder if taking the code written by the community, port it to windows embedded and add some proprietary sauce to it was also part of the original plan. So maybe AMD sees Linux community as a form of cheap labor?

Of course that plan didn't work out very well. For some reason there aren't many people in the Linux community lining up to contribute to the graphics stack. I wonder if the license of the graphics stack has something to do with that

The 2007 plan was quite different indeed, in countless many ways, as you all could see just a month or so ago when Michael posted our proposal to AMD.

[bridgman]

I'm sure the GPL whiners are quite happy that the driver will be closed-source due to the permissible MIT license.

Why do you say the driver will be closed source ?

I wonder if taking the code written by the community, port it to windows embedded and add some proprietary sauce to it was also part of the original plan. So maybe AMD sees Linux community as a form of cheap labor?

Nope. This is a fairly recent project, conceived and started years after we got back into supporting open source graphics drivers, and the request was for a driver that could be released in source code form.

[Kano]

Thats an interesting project, however i do not see so many benefits for Linux users. At least it shows that you can reuse parts for multiple os, so why dont write a complete win/reactos driver Radeon cards are still one of the problematic parts, older ones do not work correctly even with backported drivers from debian backports and kernel 3.0. i especially mean the early radeon series. When it comes to efi boot for macs then it does not work too, intel onboard works (and nvidia binary). Not even fglrx works on mac booted via efi. More current systems work a bit better, radeon oss works mostly out of the box with limited 3d support (compared to fglrx). fglrx however is getting worse with every update. fglrx 11-9 works ok for xserver 1.7.7, but for xserver 1.10.4 it crashes with kde 4.4.5 when a simple thing like maximizing the konsole window is done and kde effects are in use. So most likely nobody here will test you WinCE driver, but there are still lots of things that could be improved by your driver team(s).

[cb88]

I think some people are forgetting the goal of the embedded driver and those of catalyst are different... a 90Mb driver is probably not acceptable for an embedded system so it was probably easier to just use the smaller and nearly as proformant mesa driver with a few modifications.