Are drivers still under construction for more upto date gfx cards? Seems like its been an age and none of the newer cards are being supported, which is a major issue for me and probably others? Dont want to be stuck on vesa modes on a HD monitor! Any updates guys?
Thanks
Many modern Radeon cards now have or should soon have support in Haiku for native resolutions and good 2D performance.
For example, the Radeon HD 4850:
I think this was the first post in regards to it:
For what it’s worth, my Radeon X850 is well supported in Haiku. 
My Nvidia 460GTX is not supported except in VESA mode. I suspect, however, that it’s because the Haiku devs aren’t using one. It’s very hard to keep on top of supporting new hardware - particularly for small groups that may have limited access or resources to such devices.
and that there are no spec for develper to get it going 
Nvidia doesn’t release any specification at all for their chips, so drivers is incredibly hard to do.
Try convince Nvidia to release specs, or just buy from companies that do support open source (AMD, Intel).
+1
Vote with your feet: these companies have to understand “no specs = no business”
+1
Vote with your feet: these companies have to understand “no specs = no business”[/quote]
I personally do not subscribe to this philosophy. While I do love open source and appreciate the companies that do support it, I do not feel that any company should be “forced” or coerced into releasing code or specs. They are not (and should not be) under any obligation to cooperate with the open source community. I buy products because I like them not because of any particular business philosophy or practice. They have just as much right to remain closed as the open source community does to remain open.
If you want just open source drivers you need open source hardware to maintain up to date system.
Even AMD/ATI don’t release all there latest hardware info. There is always a period of time that lags closed source drivers that fully support all the latest hardware functions. Also (might have changed recently) AMD/ATI have never supported power management in video cards. That is in linux at least with opensource. It would not be any different with Haiku probably, unless another type of licensing could be used or devised. I think the reason they don’t give out full info is because it would be easy for the competitor to see there latest technologies. You would need to have some type of licensing that allowed opensource yet was still able to keep the secret. Is that possible?
There might also be a problem with Microsoft imposing terms to these companies, to try and maintain an advantage, since Microsoft has and wants to maintain a monopoly.
It’s not a philosophy, it’s just a problem to write drivers without knowing how. If you want to use your hardware properly you need drivers that are written according to specs. So either get used to be stuck with inferior (like vesa) drivers or buy hardware where there is enough specs to write proper drivers.
It is more of a problem than just getting hardware that is supported. Haiku has not reached enough development and support so if you want or need 3d graphics you need Windows or even Ubuntu. If you only used Windows and Haiku then you could maybe get by with AMD/ATI graphics because it is fully supported in Windows but that is not my experience in Ubuntu. I did have a ATI graphics card and in Ubuntu there was no proper support with open source or closed source. I had just got a card that was not too old but ATI closed all support for closed source; gpu chips below r400 (might have been higher)
I tried the open source driver and 3d acceleration was inferior.
After that I went to Nvidia and had much better support (closed source), even for an older card.
There are a lot of linux people that are interested in Haiku. How can there be a smooth change or compatibility in support?
I do admit though that was 2009 and I don’t know what might have changed with AMD/ATI since.
I wonder if Nvidia will support proprietary drivers for Haiku? How compatible would their Linux driver be with Haiku? I know the source would obviously need some changing but if it was not to great they might do it.
What would it take to get Nvidia to do this?
Both Nvidia and AMD/ATI have advantages/disadvantages in different areas. That is according to this:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120223054055AAsXJ0U
It is in a Linux context but a lot might come to apply to Haiku. That link mentions Nvidia supporting Opengl and AMD/ATI supporting Directx more with their drivers. It also mentions that the closed source Nvidia driver has better performance than the equivalent AMD/ATI driver but the AMD/ATI hardware is better value.
I wont say everything see this link.
+1
Vote with your feet: these companies have to understand “no specs = no business”[/quote]
I personally do not subscribe to this philosophy. While I do love open source and appreciate the companies that do support it, I do not feel that any company should be “forced” or coerced into releasing code or specs. They are not (and should not be) under any obligation to cooperate with the open source community. I buy products because I like them not because of any particular business philosophy or practice. They have just as much right to remain closed as the open source community does to remain open.[/quote]
several manufacturers are turning away from the “PowerVR” GPU from Imagination Technologies.
for instance ? Intel ( Intel Is Planning To Drop PowerVR Graphics - Phoronix ) but also android phones manufacturers because they can’t provide open source drivers.
Imagination Technologies is not far from dead… Who will be the next one ?
Nobody said anything about forcing a company into releasing code or specs.
Of course you subscribe to the philosophy of voting with your wallet. You wouldn’t buy a piece of hardware that doesn’t work with the operating system you want to use. Likewise, I won’t buy a piece of hardware that doesn’t support Haiku, and hardware that is supported by Haiku often has either open source drivers or open specs.
Nobody said anything about forcing a company into releasing code or specs.
Of course you subscribe to the philosophy of voting with your wallet. You wouldn’t buy a piece of hardware that doesn’t work with the operating system you want to use. Likewise, I won’t buy a piece of hardware that doesn’t support Haiku, and hardware that is supported by Haiku often has either open source drivers or open specs.[/quote]
Perhaps “forcing” or “coercing” were not the best choice of words to express my point. Of course I agree that you should buy hardware that works with the software that you want to use. I use Linux exclusively both at home and in my business. I use hardware that works with Linux. When I started using BeOS years ago I bought hardware that worked with BeOS. If Haiku ever gets to the place where it is sufficient for me to use as my primary daily OS then I will buy hardware that works with Haiku.
The “philosophy” I was referring to was the “no specs = no business” and that we have to “make these companies understand” idea. This is kind of a generalization within the open source community that ALL companies should either a)open source their driver or b)release specs sufficient to allow others to write drivers for their hardware and if they don’t then they should be “sent a message”.
I do not advocate either open source or closed source per se, but rather, I believe that the technology community needs BOTH in order to thrive and flourish.
+1
Vote with your feet: these companies have to understand “no specs = no business”[/quote]
I personally do not subscribe to this philosophy. While I do love open source and appreciate the companies that do support it, I do not feel that any company should be “forced” or coerced into releasing code or specs. They are not (and should not be) under any obligation to cooperate with the open source community. I buy products because I like them not because of any particular business philosophy or practice. They have just as much right to remain closed as the open source community does to remain open.[/quote]
several manufacturers are turning away from the “PowerVR” GPU from Imagination Technologies.
for instance ? Intel ( Intel Is Planning To Drop PowerVR Graphics - Phoronix ) but also android phones manufacturers because they can’t provide open source drivers.
Imagination Technologies is not far from dead… Who will be the next one ?[/quote]
Yes, Intel is open source friendly and Imagination Technologies is not. Intel used Imagination Technologies because they were not able to manufacture their own to compare with what they could get from Imagine Technologies (even though a lot of the Imagination stuff sucks). Intel feels they can now create their own technology in house to at least equal or better what they were getting from their 3rd party relationship with Imagination Technologies. The fact that this benefits open source is a fantastic side effect, but I highly doubt that open source concerns were the sole reason behind the business decision.
As far as Android goes, I have heard or read nothing about that as yet so I’m not informed enough to develop and opinion on those.
By the way - even though Intel is open source friendly, I have several computers that are Intel hardware inside and out that won’t even boot Haiku. They are not new computers either, the newest one of those is a 3 year old HP laptop. The only computer I have that does run Haiku is a desktop pc with an AMD X4 955 processor. In fact all of the hardware in this computer works (including the onboard sound and network) except for the above mentioned video card which, while it would be nice to have full graphics support for it, does not concern me as I will just buy a supported video card if Haiku ever gets to the point where I would switch to it as my full time OS.
It seems Intel not only plan to include its technology in its chip. they also plan to integrate the ARM’s Mali GPU in their chips. So here, the problem is not the hardware capabilities.
I think open source drivers are important because Intel aims the phone market with their Linux-based Tizen OS.
Samsung, an ARM founders, used the PowerVR GPU (also known as SGX - see PowerVR - Wikipedia ) they switched to the Mali GPU for their new Exynos chips (and other manufacturers are considering to follow the the same way)
In 1997, the PowerVR chip already had a good performance per watt, it was an amazing technology. At the time, it provided a 16001200 rendering while its 3DFX competitor was limited to 640480. This GPU has never been popular. I believe they did really bad political choices.
I think that when you are a manufacturer, opening your hardware specifications (or your drivers sources) is a good way to improve the value of your products on the advanced users market.
A lot of people would vote with compatibility between OS’s by not only what is supported in Haiku but also in Linux and if they are just curious but their hardware is not supported then their interest wont develop to user. A lot of Linux people use Nvidia because the driver although closed source is good in comparison to ATI/AMD closed or open. More so open. That affects me even though I bought Beos 4.51 in 2000 before the company failure. I have followed and contributed to Haiku in a small way by bug reporting and a small but regular financial contribution. I also would like open source to triumph but there are difficulties and practical here and now considerations dominate.
If there could be some certainty for the future of open source for Haiku then compatibility with Linux for me would diminish. I would buy a ATI card now.
Bump: Imagination Tech Publishes Open-Source PowerVR Vulkan Driver For Mesa
Hope that helps/inspires.
I am working on Radeon cards 3D acceleration support and already make some things working, see my progress topic.
Support of Radeon from Southern Islands to Vega is planned. Currently only Southern Islands is functional, RX 500 series is planned to be implemented next.
Recent nVidia GPUs will be unlikely supported in near future because of lack of open documentation and source code.
Hopefully RDNA will also be supported, eventually. Got a Radeon RX 5700 XT in the desktop.