On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 07:36:43AM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> 
> Nvidia and ATI are losing this business soon, I think (ATI has had a big
> chunk of it in the past), and it will be picked up by companies that are
> more friendly, such as Matrox.
> 

Now that should make them take notice - more so than some random
telling them that unless they opensource their driver they won't buy
the product.  Losing something they had should make more impact than
something they never had.

> The problem is that Nvidia and ATI make their money on PCs, selling to
> mostly gamers. That audience runs Windows, largely. Until that changes,
> Nvidia and ATI will keep on playing their silly games.
> 

Yes.  It is changing a bit but there is a long way to go.

> I'll be encouraging our company to move away from ATI, so we can work
> with a supplier who actually wants to provide documentation to create 3D
> graphics products. I don't care if the documentation is under NDA, so it
> won't necessarily do the FOSS community any good, but it will mean that
> companies like XiG can keep on getting documentation.
>

Same here - if XiG had a driver for an ATI 9800XT a couple of years
ago I would have plunked down the cash right then and there for that
driver.  Unfortunately I found no such driver, only a note saying that
XiG could not obtain details for the card from ATI even under NDA.
 
> This also means you'll probably be able to play OpenGL games on Linux
> with these boards, if you can afford the hardware and software to make
> them work. :-)
> 

I already can play OpenGL (and DirectX) games on Linux - some native
binaries and others using cedega (commercially supported Wine).  I do
pay a premium to avoid windows but really it is no worse than having
to pay for windows every few years.

> On the bright side, Intel and Silicon Motion seem to be a bit more open.
> Maybe someone needs to work harder to make a Linux/Unix friendly laptop.
> Sort of like a geek's version of the OLPC.
> 

I don't know about Silicon Motion but, in general, the Intel 3d
accelerators are not the best performing devices at the moment.

-- 
Brett Lymn