Beta testers?

[GehRehmee]

Any Parhelia beta testers have any experience with the card under alternative platforms that they'd like to comment on? I for one am very eager to see what my next linux box might look like hardware-wise.

[Greebe]

Oh would I like to tell you that story!

[GehRehmee]

At least we've got a thread for it. when it's available.

[Ant]

Last I heard was that the Linux driver had been in development for some time and was to be available for download when the Parhelia was out but non of the regular beta testers had been testing it yet.

[Wombat]

Mike, this is <I>my</I> non-existant story to tell!

[bobby2]

ooohhh - a little wet patch

one of my desires for sure is to know

[EvilTypeGuy]

Well one good thing is that Haig responded to one of my posts on the Matrox forum, my post:

"Is there any way for you to find out if Matrox is going to be open about their hardware information like past cards, so that us Linux folk can write our own drivers. That's something that would really help quite a bit in my opinion. While I don't totally agree with the philosophy a majority of Kernel developers and other users refuse to use NVidia's cards on the basis that their Linux drivers are binary only. I would be greatly disappointed if Matrox chose this route as well."

Haig's response:

"I have been told that we will follow the same principle as our G series of cards with respect to available info.

------------------
Haig
Matrox Graphics
Technical Support Manager"

http://forum.matrox.com/mgaforum/Forum8/HTML/001310.html

[GehRehmee]

As far as open source drivers go... is it possible at all to use G450's or G550's without binary-only drivers at all yet?

[Ant]

I've been using a G550 with Mandrake 8.2 without installing any of the Matrox drivers. I do have hardware 3D enabled but don't actually use it, apart from the OpenGL screensavers which tend to lcok up the system occasionally.

[GehRehmee]

Any dual-head or tv-out at that level yet?

Hmm... still no Parhelia-linux comments....

[vana]

If you can live with 'Driver "mga"' & 'Option "UseFBDev"' on first head, and 'Driver "fbdev"' on secondary head, and if you'll patch XFree sources to allow two framebuffers living on one PCI device, you can have both TVOut and Dualhead in X because of there are available patches to kernel framebuffer to support these features: dualhead is in stock kernel, tvout & DVI are available through additional patches.

Petr

[GehRehmee]

cool.

[bobby2]

only real sticking point for my purchase is XFree support. Lame yes, but Id rather hear from the BB than risk a few months of hassle.

Still, always better to ride the second wave ... less likely to flip out onto some bozo

[Wombat]

Well, what's to say, really?

[kewlcat]

Nothing to tell

Speaking for myself, Matrox has not contacted me about Linux beta testing since sometime in the middle of last year. I am therefore assuming that M is either testing in-house and finds that sufficient or that Linux support is not a top priority for them at present.

Most people who run games/3D on Linux get Nvidia cards anyway. Although the drivers are not open they are quite stable and frequently updated. As for Linux workstations, the G-series is quite well supported with the current drivers.

Supporting 3D driver development on Linux seems to be a lost cause at present for gfx companies, especially since Precision Insight/Va Linux went down the tubes. Those that do support development provide binary only drivers developed inhouse (Nvidia, PowerVR).