On Tue, 2008-05-06 at 13:09 +0000, Michael Fothergill wrote: > Dear folks, > > I noticed from reading an article by Eric S Raymond > (http://catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html) > that according to him Intel released the source code for its own graphics > processors to the Linux community. > > He therefore encouraged Linux users to buy the intel hardware to encourage > the company to keep doing this. > > I tried googling to see how easy it was for an intel PC with e.g. the extreme > graphics chipset stuck in it to have Debian installed on it and also how easy > the OS recognised the graphics chip relative to e.g. putting an Nvidia or ATI > graphics card into the machine.
Trivial. > Someone told me that now ATI have released the source for their graphics > cards to the linux community. > > Is this true? There's been a large code dump. Nothing useful has come of it yet. > What would suit me is being able to buy a 64 bit PC with a graphics chip in > it which Linux (Debian) recognizes very easily. Plenty of such machines available. Laptops or desktops or DIY. > I don't mind if the graphics 3D acceleration is not quite as fast as say an > Nvidia card if the installation is reliable and predictable. ATI under Linux is about 3x slower than NVidia under Linux. ATI with open-source drivers is about 3x slower than that. Does "9x slower, give or take" come under the heading of "not quite as fast"? > Talking to intel about this was hard work. It wanted me to talk to PC > resellers who thought I wanted to buy something unusual that they didn't sell > very often. > > > It was a bit like trying to buy a washing machine from a hardware store in > Soviet Russia in the 1960s. Or perhaps more like trying to buy washing machine belts from their corporate HQ, rather than a consumer machine from a consumer company? > Has anyone heard of someone who bought or built such an Intel based PC and > made it work? Lots. Try http://system76.com/index.php?cPath=27 or https://secure.dnuk.com/store/workstations.php#core2duo as first-effort links. -- ______________________________ / Jo Shields <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> \ | Systems Manager, | \ Oxford Supercomputing Centre / ------------------------------- \ ,__, \ (oo)___ (__) )\ ||--|| * -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
