Raspberry Pi's Nonchalant Graphics Stack For Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Raspberry Pi's Nonchalant Graphics Stack For Linux

Many were talking yesterday about why the forthcoming $25/$35 Raspberry Pi system won't ship in kit form, but of more interest to Phoronix readers out of that blog post would be the details concerning their Linux graphics driver stack and what they will be supporting...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA1MTc

[ebsi]

@Michael :

Do you have any clue what OpeMAX stands for and how it's architecture looks ? Stop jumping to wrong conclusions and do your homework.

OpenMAX is a common mutimedia interface and framework by the Khronos Group. This interface is used on almost every Android phone out there. It can provide a complete chain of components from media reading, decoding, encoding, presentation. In this world you'll not find VA-API, VDPAU or your loved Gallium3D. OpenMAX is quite more than just the simple decoding from VA-API, VDPAU, Gallium3D.
OpenMAX IL is just the integration layer, which builds on the OpenMAX core components. The IL can come from the vendor or OSS projects, like lima or even xbmc.

For everyone who is interested in what OpenMAX is take a look at : http://www.khronos.org/openmax/ to get the right informations.

lg

Ebsi

[XyC0]

The problem with no open source 3d driver could be made easier solved by donating a bunch of raspberrypi to gallium3d programmers, at least it is cheap enough to be a hardware platform that most people can afford.

[oliver]

The only downsides are that the user-space libraries are closed-up and that the open-source kernel driver is not part of the mainline Linux kernel.

Maybe the only downside, but for me a major showstopper.

All devices I have, that need binary blobs, in any form whatsoever are a pain. a Big pain.

All devices that I have that work with all opensource stuffs, 'just work'. Mostly anyway, but slowly and always improving.

[chuckula]

Raspberry Pi has had about 3 stories a day show up on Slashdot for about the last year. The level of hype has outstripped the actual device. While it looks like a nice, low-power board that could be handy in many cases, the Raspberry Pi is not the pure-open source Windows/iPhone/Apple killer that the hype machine has portrayed.

Frankly, my 3 year old Intel Core 2 notebook with boring HD4500 graphics is *more* open-source friendly than the Raspberry Pi is. Of course, my notebook doesn't fit on a USB stick, but it also comes with I/O, wireless networking, real storage, etc. that the Raspberry Pi lacks. Moral of the story: New devices are nice, but they often don't live up to the inflated expectations and hype that get dumped on them. Second Moral of the Story: Underpromise and Overdeliver instead of the other way around.

[peppepz]

Frankly, my 3 year old Intel Core 2 notebook with boring HD4500 graphics is *more* open-source friendly than the Raspberry Pi is.

But your notebook does not cost $25 and is not a "handeld" device, which is what the Pi is all about.

[mattst88]

I'm... not sure 'Nonchalant' was the word you were looking for.

[chuckula]

But your notebook does not cost $25 and is not a "handeld" device, which is what the Pi is all about.

Actually, to be useful the Raspberry Pi needs to be plugged into something else that likely isn't handheld like a monitor and keyboard, not to mention the fact that something needs to give it power (no batteries built in!). Sure you can hack on a battery-powered USB power supply and some type of portable I/O or something, but you very quickly leave the "handheld" aspect behind when it comes to actually using the device. Transporting the Raspberry Pi in a disconnected state is easier because its smaller, but it is much less useful than a smart phone when there is nothing to plug the device into.

[droidhacker]

Raspberry Pi has had about 3 stories a day show up on Slashdot for about the last year. The level of hype has outstripped the actual device. While it looks like a nice, low-power board that could be handy in many cases, the Raspberry Pi is not the pure-open source Windows/iPhone/Apple killer that the hype machine has portrayed.

Frankly, my 3 year old Intel Core 2 notebook with boring HD4500 graphics is *more* open-source friendly than the Raspberry Pi is. Of course, my notebook doesn't fit on a USB stick, but it also comes with I/O, wireless networking, real storage, etc. that the Raspberry Pi lacks. Moral of the story: New devices are nice, but they often don't live up to the inflated expectations and hype that get dumped on them. Second Moral of the Story: Underpromise and Overdeliver instead of the other way around.

As has already been mentioned, different devices for different purposes. I'm hoping to get my hands on several RPi's for a few different purposes.
1) If it can handle XBMC, it'll make a decent little HTPC able to play videos over the network, and totally hide-away when glued onto the back of a television. Don't need to have a whole lot more for that.
2) Outside of the HTPC use, I can't see much need for open source graphics... or for that matter, ANY graphics at all. Plug a network cable onto it, a few USB connectors, maybe something plugged into its GPIO, etc. Just a nice little brain box for interfacing and controlling things, and no need to turn it off....

[mangobrain]

While it looks like a nice, low-power board that could be handy in many cases, the Raspberry Pi is not the pure-open source Windows/iPhone/Apple killer that the hype machine has portrayed.

Well, the Raspberry Pi Foundation themselves have never claimed the machine would be "pure-open source", or a "Windows/iPhone/Apple killer". People have taken it upon themselves to assume this, but they've never claimed everything on the board will have open-source drivers. I for one have been aware of the closed-source GPU blob for about as long as I have been aware of the device itself.

Frankly, my 3 year old Intel Core 2 notebook with boring HD4500 graphics is *more* open-source friendly than the Raspberry Pi is. Of course, my notebook doesn't fit on a USB stick, but it also comes with I/O, wireless networking, real storage, etc. that the Raspberry Pi lacks. Moral of the story: New devices are nice, but they often don't live up to the inflated expectations and hype that get dumped on them. Second Moral of the Story: Underpromise and Overdeliver instead of the other way around.

They're delivering exactly what they've always promised. I could be wrong, but I personally don't remember the specs changing since they were announced, because AFAICT they took the wise step of not announcing specs until the design was largely finished.

Their target market is education. From the first answer in their FAQ: "We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming." The device is meant to be cheap enough that schools can provide pupils with them en masse, meaning the pupils can have one each and take it home. Having no fixed on-board storage means the device can't be bricked, just re-flash the SD card and away you go. However, they're also cheap enough to replace if the hardware gets physically broken - much more so than trying to provide and maintain several classrooms' worth of laptops or tablets or iThings. For their intended purpose, they're absolutely awesome. Open-source drivers would be nice, but for the price and feature set they've got, there really aren't many (any?) alternative options in existence.

It's not the Foundation's fault that some people have fabricated unreasonable expectations of the device. Remember that they're a charity, not a for-profit company, and their target market isn't geeks in their mid-20s, it's schoolchildren. The Foundation have decided they are going to make the devices available for public sale, so naturally us geeks are jumping at the chance, but it's not us lot they had in mind when they set out. I can understand why people might be disappointed that not all the drivers are open source, or that the device isn't more powerful, or that it ships without a case, or that it doesn't have hardware acceleration for their favourite video codec, or various other things... but to publicly complain that the device doesn't "live up to the hype" is just petty.

Remember what the device is for, read the FAQ and "About us" sections on the website, and realise that the Foundation themselves haven't been trying to generate hype. In my opinion, all they've done is been honest and realistic about what they're producing, why, and who it's for. The rest of the world has generated all the hype for them.

TL; DR: Dear Internets, stop moaning about the Raspberry Pi not being what you want it to be, and go and find out what it actually is.