[plug] Frustration

[Simon Wise]

On 07/09/12 13:20, Leon Wright wrote:

>
> I really want to support AMD + Radeon, but between buggy Linux drivers and
> buggy windows drivers (I am a gamer, so dual booting is the path of least
> resistance when I'm time restricted), I just can't bring myself to buy one.
> I hate that the Nvidia card requires a binary blob, but it's a blob that
> has worked pretty well for me, for quite some time on both Linux + Windows.

yes ... nvidia have supported linux with their closed drivers for a very long 
time, and they work consistently quite well. The big hassle is when upgrading 
your kernel. ATI/AMD haven't supplied drivers of any sort much, and I'd guess 
few companies using linux would be inclined to pay developers to write linux 
drivers for AMD when Nvidia supplies good working ones with their hardware and 
keeps them up to date.

for a laptop there are plenty around with very decent performance with the 
open-source drivers that Intel writes for linux - so there is a choice of fully 
open source Intel or propriety drivers supplied for linux by nvidia. The Intel 
drivers got a lot better a couple of years ago, even old hardware suddenly 
gained a lot, and for many uses the extra power Nvidia has is not needed.

This leaves very little incentive to do AMDs work for them for free ... writing 
a driver from scratch based on supplied hardware specs only is a huge job, why 
not just buy other hardware which is actually supported by the manufacturer on 
linux?

Simon