The State Of Open-Source Radeon Driver Features

[bridgman]

Well, dynamic PM for the start... it's pretty bad if you can't even use the GPU at full clock! Also, please don't keep on pushing the profile approach as acceptable, it's not. Automatic frequency scaling is a must.

OK, so what you want is what we're working on. Good.

The only reason I talked about the profile approach was that it could have happened sooner, ie earlier than dynamic PM, and that people kept asking questions about it. At this point I don't think it's worth working on unless it turns out we can't expose dynamic PM for some reason. Not sure why you think I'm "pushing it".

crazycheese -- do you understand that I have absolutely nothing to do with fglrx development other than occasionally passing problems I see on the forums to the development team ?

duby229 -- what in the world could possibly make you think I don't like the open source drivers ? The fact that you concluded this from reading crazycheese's post is a bit disturbing

[crazycheese]

You both guys just sound like whiny children. Posting manipulative post to try and make Bridgman feel bad in order to booster the open source drivers is no only completely see through but will have no affect what so ever. I understand your frustration but you clearly have no understanding of IT from a corporate viewpoint. If there is one thing I have learn from being a developer for the passed decade it is that its extremely hard to convince management to make changes even when its a very good idea to do so, and changing from a closed development process to an open one is a huge change so I fully understand why things are constantly stalled. Changing a persons mindset is a very difficult thing to do, and when you are dealing with management which typically doesn't always have a technology background yet gets to make all the final decisions changing minds becomes all the more difficult.

Hi, I am going to break the rule for just one post to you.

I too encountered exactly same situation of "stubborn management", "corporate viewpoint" and "stalled things/minds/mindsets".
The morale I got however, is extremely different from yours.
I just let the founders of iD Software explain it:
http://rome.ro/games_ddici.php

GL

[timothyja]

Hi, I am going to break the rule for just one post to you.

I too encountered exactly same situation of "stubborn management", "corporate viewpoint" and "stalled things/minds/mindsets".
The morale I got however, is extremely different from yours.
I just let the founders of iD Software explain it:
http://rome.ro/games_ddici.php

GL

That post is in no way relevant to the conversation about open source drivers. I do not disagree with what they did many successful company's have been born in a similar fashion however that situation does not apply here. Are you suggesting the open source radeon devs should start there own company?

[Hamish Wilson]

You both guys just sound like whiny children. Posting manipulative post to try and make Bridgman feel bad in order to booster the open source drivers is no only completely see through but will have no affect what so ever. I understand your frustration but you clearly have no understanding of IT from a corporate viewpoint. If there is one thing I have learn from being a developer for the passed decade it is that its extremely hard to convince management to make changes even when its a very good idea to do so, and changing from a closed development process to an open one is a huge change so I fully understand why things are constantly stalled. Changing a persons mindset is a very difficult thing to do, and when you are dealing with management which typically doesn't always have a technology background yet gets to make all the final decisions changing minds becomes all the more difficult.

Personally I'm very grateful that Bridgman is thick skinned enough to take all the flak he gets in his stride, and still provide us with feedback.

Yes. Seriously, grow up people.

Thank you Bridgman for having the patience of a saint. I had hoped with Q's dismissal this kind of shenanigans would have died down. It does a disservice to us all.

[duby229]

duby229 -- what in the world could possibly make you think I don't like the open source drivers ? The fact that you concluded this from reading crazycheese's post is a bit disturbing

No I've concluded it from all the various things you've said in this thread. My response to crazycheeze was me telling him such. I was trying to tell him what I had observed so he would stop.

I don't want to hurt your opinion further though as I said and so I'm not going to say anything more.

[bridgman]

No I've concluded it from all the various things you've said in this thread. My response to crazycheeze was me telling him such.

Could I trouble you for a summary of your logic ? Are you perhaps assuming that when I answer a "why are you doing this" question you're thinking that I'm talking about *my* decisions rather than explaining how other people see things ? I try to be pretty clear about the difference but maybe I'm not being clear enough.

[duby229]

I would like to answer your request, but I feel like I need to stop posting in this thread. When the time comes for what you implied was going to happen I don't want to be the guy you can point to and say "It's because of guys like this."

I think it would be better if I stepped out of this conversation. I am truly sorry for offending anyone. And I hope that you can look past my bias and continue doing good work.

[bridgman]

AFAIK the only thing I implied was going to happen (based on what everyone is doing today) was that power management was hopefully going to improve.

I did say a couple of times that "if we did X then something bad might happen" but I also followed that with "so we aren't doing X".

Anyways, the worst I thought you were doing was maybe being sufficiently passionate about the open source drivers that you didn't always read what I typed carefully enough... or maybe I wasn't being sufficiently clear.

Hey, it's not like either of us ran over a donkey or anything

(yesterday's big news item : http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/17/donkey...swana-3355845/ )

[archibald]

Thank you for coming here and keeping us all informed Mr. Bridgman. As has been mentioned before; you have the patience of a saint (and the BSD comment was masterful!).

[V!NCENT]

The open source AMD drivers are fantastic for the desktop and budget games on Wine that used to be €50 top titles. I haven't checked the native Steam Source games yet, but these will run great.

Ofcourse they won't run Crisis 7 or whatever, but if the power management will get some much needed love, I won't even have a reason to use the proprietary drivers et al!

AMD realy has filled the last gap of complaint about Linux on the desktop for me, and I thank them for that