Pragmatic Questions about Binary-Only Drivers

I have an ATI 8500 with 256meg. Although not the latest and greatest, it was an overbuilt card and the later 9200 series is actually less capable. For the 2D Graphics that I usually work with it functions superbly, and it's just fine for video and the like.

I made the decision about 8 months ago to go with the generic xorg driver rather than the proprietary driver, partially because of the ethical concerns, and partially because it was a royal PITA to get the official ATI drivers to work correctly. Only 3D (open GL) is ever a problem without the proprietary driver. I notice now that ATI has actually dropped support for the 8500, a concern expressed in the article.

Imagine my surprise when, In running the latest incarnation of xorg, I went through the selection of screensavers, and one of my old time favorites, 'Euphoria' (an open GL saver) worked just fine, as did glxgears. All of this with very low CPU usage.

So, xorg is getting better and more capable, and I now see real practical value in doing things the right way. A standard xorg driver now works fine, a standard Debian install supplies exactly what I need, without compiling or hassle. Upgrades are simple and direct from the Debian repos.

This is how Linux 'should' work, and 'will', if we continue to insist on it. Proprietary only takes us further down a very slippery slope.

You're absolutely right. We need to continue insisting on - and contributing what we can to - libre drivers.

In context of 3D drivers, an example would be that if you settle for ATI's proprietary drivers, you no longer have the ability to innovate without having to convince them to follow you. E.g., AIGLX still doesn't work with ATI's proprietary driver, but does with the reverse engineered Free Software driver, as when people wanted AIGLX in the proprietary driver, they couldn't simply make it so - they had to attempt to convince ATI to do it for them, and ATI so far hasn't listened.

A good read re the issue as applies to proprietary kernel drivers:

http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html