[Discuss] open source graphics drivers

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Richard Pieri)]

Jack Coats wrote:
> Still, finding energetic young geek or a few, that we could get to do the
> reverse engineering right could be a cost effective solution AND support
> them in their cyber-geekieness :)

If it were that easy then the Nouveau project would have produced a 
better video driver than nVidia's own. Fact is, Nouveau has had people 
just like you describe trying to reverse engineer nVidia's GPU drivers. 
They've been at it since 2008 and for the most part Nouveau and Prime 
barely work. Barely.

And just so as I'm not seen as biased about this, the open source Radeon 
driver is pathetic on the current HD 7000 series GPUs. The reasons are 
the same: trade secret-motivated obfuscation in the hardware and 
extremely limited information published openly. How pathetic is it? 
Catalyst is 10-25 times faster than the open source Radeon driver.

If you want to see a good -- I mean a genuinely good -- open source 
video driver with proper support from the vendor? Intel's HD 4000 and HD 
4600 graphics embedded in the Sandy/Ivy Bridge and Haswell CPUs are 
where to look.

-- 
Rich P.