Rant about ATI

[Marek Wawrzyczny]

On Wednesday 09 August 2006 12:18, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> Marek Wawrzyczny wrote:
> > I cannot agree with this point. There is little chance that a commercial
> > company is going to release details necessary for drivers of upcoming
> > hardware. At least with closed-source drivers the development can start
> > more or less ahead of the release date.
>
> Have you ever noticed how the Linux kernel often has support for
> hardware at or before the release date?

That has not been my experience unfortunately :( but I like exotic hardware :)

Well, I exaggerate somewhat. Some hardware in my laptops do indeed work well. 
Other hardware still has no drivers for it. Still, to be fair, the important 
functionality is there and laptops are not the easiest beasts to work with.

But I'd like to reiterate my point. There is a place for closed source drivers 
as long as the publishers follow whatever API/ABI is given to them. 
If *nux had an equal or majority of the desktop market share (I am allowed to 
dream), hardware manufacturers (of consumer grade products) would  not 
hesitate to put money into drivers and we wouldn't really bother to have this 
discussion :)


Marek Wawrzyczny