Proprietary Graphical Drivers

Is there any reason not to use proprietary graphical drivers, aside from the principle (not wanting to use proprietary software on principle alone, which might be the case for some)?
Are they less efficient than open-source drivers?
Do they collect data?

Other urls found in this thread:

wiki.freedesktop.org/xorg/RadeonFeature/#index12h2
jxself.org/linux-libre/
libreboot.org/faq/#intel
mesamatrix.net/
wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Amdgpu
wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Linux_Mint
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Proprietary drivers are better than the open source drivers because to make the open source drivers developers must do reverse engineering to figure things out. The downside to proprietary drivers is that they are closed source, so you have no way of knowing how bad the code is. So far there has been nothing to show that they collect any sort of data, you can monitor with wireshark to confirm.

No, thanks. Too much possibilities.

They are quite prone to fucking up sometimes, but if you're a retard who doesn't respect their personal liberty then using then will be fine

if (wireshark_is_running) { return;} else { send_data_to_nsa();}

Yes, they are frequently broken as fuck. People say the proprietary drivers are better only because they give better performance in games. But the reality is that the proprietary AMD and Nvidia drivers have tons of problems with screen tearing, crashing, etc. in basic desktop environments. Sometimes they work fine, but other times they're a nightmare. It's a crapshoot.

If you have an Nvidia card, the proprietary drivers are better only because Nouveau is a hacked-together hobby project. However, if you have an AMD card, the open source drivers are really the only acceptable option. The Radeon driver is fine for desktop use and light gaming, and the AMDGPU driver is starting to catch up to the proprietary drivers in gaming, but it's not finished yet.

This is only the case with Nvidia. Intel has official open source support, though it's a lot shoddier these days. AMD's open source drivers are made by AMD.

But that's wrong, you fucking retard.
wiki.freedesktop.org/xorg/RadeonFeature/#index12h2

For some time I regretted that I got notebook with AMD graphics, because the drivers weren't good performance-wise, but over time, the Radeon drivers got better, are well integrated into the ecosystem (no hacks like bumblebee required) and have prospect of long support, so now I'm actually kind of glad.

You're at the mercy of the developer.
Fixing incompatibilities/problems is up to them. Important fixes and improvements may be absent in drivers for older hardware, even moreso if it's EOL.

Also, they may cripple functionality to make you pay extra (see unlocking Tesla features for Nvidia consumer boards on proprietary Loonix drivers)

even still, if they were collecting data with the drivers, wouldn't they have to feature it in their privacy policy?

no their are not
AMD released the manual for 2d acceleration and not 3d acceleration.
The "open source drivers" that amd makes relies on a blob in the linux kernel without it you can't even control screen resolution.

In the kernel 4.6 you resolution fetures have bean moved in the kernel blob so if you have a deblobed version of the kernel you are basically fucked.

Try it
jxself.org/linux-libre/

Nvidia is worse they don't give anything, but the nouveau community is making great drivers so the only good option to have a GC working is to use a nouveau compatible GC and most of them are.

wireshark can't intercept something designed like that
just look at intel ME and how it works, there is no way of detecting something is completely separated by design
libreboot.org/faq/#intel

No it's not wrong you fucking mong. The OP linked a picture of an nvidia card, nvidia doesn't give developers full documentation to tell them how their cards work like amd. Before AMD handed out documentation, reverse engineering is how open source drivers were made for amd cards as well. Kill yourself immediately. You may be the dumbest person on this board

top kek m8


how is this a response to my post? I'm saying the open source drivers are the best bet for use with an AMD card... and you say they're blobbed. Okay, how does that change the fact that they are the most consistent drivers for AMD cards? And what is the alternative? No GPU, great.


I'm not even him, but you should kill yourself shitposter.

...

One can still monitor network traffic on other devices, such as the router.

Essentially what said.

Proprietary drivers are faster, which is good for performance-intensive application-specific tasks like games, 3D modelling, and GPGPU.

Open source drivers are less buggy, so they integrate better with a variety of OSs and programs, which is good for general DE use, multitasking, and more troublesome software.

Also, note that the underlying API for GPU acceleration in Linux (MESA) is woefully incomplete, with many features barely supported in the newest versions, so it's especially crucial to be up to date:
mesamatrix.net/

Nvidia with nouveau

...

Doesn't nouveau need a firmware too?

nouveau is an unusable nightmare.

yes good goyim buy a $600 graphics card and then run it at boot 50MHz clock

Depends on the card. Generally speaking, the older the card, the better Nouveau works.

Old Nvida, you mean. The newer cards (9xx series and up) have signed firmware just like AMD.

You do when they are literally the only cards that you can have 3D acceleration with, while using a deblobbed kernel.

From the 7xx series and down, you can run free firmware. From the 9xx and up, you can't.

You're so autistically obsessed with software that you completely fail to see the bigger picture. Software and hardware are interconnected and the driver issues are ultimately the result of closed source hardware. If you look at the big picture, AMD is better than nvidia no contest. You can conveniently ignore this and propagate the company that probably is most detrimental to open source from the big three, but it's hypocritical and dishonest to the ideals of open source.
inb4 appeal to "authority"

I had a GTS 450 and Nouveau still sucked shit on it.

The 7xx series don't even get driver optimizations anymore.

Mode Setting in my tty

I usually think that proprietary drivers work mostly well with programs beside gaming, like rendering in Blender using CUDA or video editing. I don't know if open-source drivers make a huge difference, and there's plenty of info that I'm missing. I'm wondering if open-source drivers are fast and stable for things other than gaming.

Yes, but that would be more difficult.

With the proprietary driver, yes.

Works pretty well with my 660ti. I can even run 0AD smoothly on high settings, and OpenMW runs well enough, as long as you don't switch on the new OSG shaders.

It's simple, with older Nvidia cards, you can have 3D working with 100% F/OSS. You can never have that with any AMD card (and you never will).

Hell, you can't even change your screen resolution with a blob-free kernel with any AMD GPU.

What drivers should I use for an HD5870 on linux mint?

Opensource works fine for both 3D and 2D, but gaymen like TF2 run at mediocre level. I will try propetriary drivers tonight and let you know.
t. 5670 owner archfag

Thanks dude. I tried proprietary on a fresh install of ubuntu and it fucked my shit up. Spent an hour trying to uninstall, then said fuck it and went mint with its recommended "xserver-xorg-video-ati".

Wayland

There is three, FGLRX the propietary one which is a pain in the ass to install if you have the wrong kernel or xorg version, ATI/Radeon which is the old open source one for older cards, and AMDGPU which is the new open source one by AMD for GCN cards that also has an optional proprietary component that lives in user space, so it won't be a pain in the ass like FGLRX.
I also believe the oldest GCN cards (1.0, 1.1) don't have full AMDGPU support yet.

I believe this may be the full list:
wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Amdgpu

ssh @tcpdump -w some-file -i igb1
woah difficult :^)

I installed fglrx succesfully following these instructions:

wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Linux_Mint

Do you know of a gpu benchmark I could run? I got 3000+ fps in fgl_glxgears if that's worth anything.

Tested with tesseract, furmark, and Timesplitters Future Perfect through Dolphin. Seems good.

That's probably what happened to me when I tried to install it on Ubuntu 16.04 since that uses xorg 1.18. It seems like I might be stuck with Mint 17.3 (xorg 1.17 and 3.19 kernel) until I upgrade cards.

Are you fucking serious? I have a Maxwell Nvidia card and nouveau is basically nonfunctional. With some other generations of cards it is functional for your desktop, but in NO WAY is noveau functional for gaming or anything advanced at all. You get lucky if it can run a web browser