Last I heard (very recently) the NVidia closed source drivers are still the most practical option, because the AMD closed source drivers are fickle and the AMD open source drivers are incomplete. Wrong?
No, you are dead right. Even though a lot of NVidias stuff is closed source, the binaries have always had much better support for graphics and power management than ever the Radeon drivers. I could never get things like graphics hibernate to work as well as it did with those from NVidia.
I believe I read earlier that they have promised to open source a lot of their drivers for OSS.
True, if you are really serious about 3D in Linux then NVidia is the better option.
With AMD there is still some pressure that someday NVidia could follow. With AMD gone, NVidia does not need to worry any longer, because Intel really isn't a valid competitor in the professional 3D space.
Right, but it was improving. If there's no high-performance 3D hardware target with a hope of having FOSS driver support, it'll put a stop to any innovation in that space. Hence, this is bad.
> Intel graphics card don't count if you're doing serious 3D work.
(I started work on the 3D driver team at Intel in July, but everything I say is my own opinion.)
Historically, I think you might be right. Lately (the last few years) I think Intel significantly improved both its hardware and drivers.
The i965 driver is the only free software driver that supports OpenGL 3.1. The team I'm on is responsible for a huge number of improvements to the 3D stack, including rewriting the GLSL compiler which benefits the Radeon and Nouveau drivers as well.
We've had engineers visit Valve in person and make sure that their stuff will work well on our drivers. I'd consider what Valve is doing to be "serious 3D work."
Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge are pretty respectable. Haswell will be even better. You should reconsider your position.
> The i965 driver is the only free software driver that supports OpenGL 3.1
And how does it perform in regards to ATI and NVidia cards?
Valve is surely doing serious 3D work, that is why on their Linux blog, they talk about a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680, not Intel graphics card.
And let's not forget that L4D is a DirectX 9 game level, so the requirements are pretty low in today's hardware terms.
> Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge are pretty respectable.
Not if you're blasting polygons. I have a dual core system that beats a Sandy Bridge system with the hands down, thanks to a NVidia GeForce GT 240M.
> You should reconsider your position.
Does the Intel's GPA finally support OpenGL?
Back in 2009 at Games Developer Conference Europe, I had the pleasure to talk with someone from Intel, stating that OpenGL support was important. This after hearing the guy spending one hour talking how to analyse DirectX with GPA.
Down goes the only graphics manufacturer offering proper graphics cards with documentation for open source developers.
Intel graphics card don't count if you're doing serious 3D work.