2.6.4 vanilla kernel and ATI drivers for 9700 Pro don't work
Steve Bergman
steve at rueb.com
Sun Mar 21 22:11:26 UTC 2004
Dave Jones wrote:
> Bringing up the fact that part binary only drivers for 2.4 don't
> work on 2.6 kernels here isn't going to change anything.
>
This is not a problem that is going to go away. Perhaps as Linux
becomes more popular, the chip manufacturers will implement a thin,
proprietary, GLIDE-like layer in between the hardware and the high level
video driver. Would this be a workable comromise between the
manufacturer's desire to keep their hardware internals secret (which in
the area of 3D chip design is actually pretty understandable) and our
need to have the code available? Of course, in the case of a new
kernel, the ball would still be in ATI/NVidia's court, but at least it
would only be the lowest level internals being kept secret, instead of
the whole thing being a black box. Wouldn't this actually make
maitenance easier for the manufacturer as well as for distro developers
andmaintainers? It is my understanding that GLIDE was so thin and
efficient that it made essentially no measurable difference to performance.
-Steve
More information about the fedora-test-list
mailing list