[ydl-gen] No video hardware acceleration on PS3

[Brian Wood]

On Nov 15, 2006, at 4:26 AM, ugo wrote:

> You're so right Brian, somebody has to jump first... I wish I could  
> if I wasn't in Europe.
> And that's also why I'm not confiant in Sony (plus the rootkit  
> story): they said the ps3 release would be all over the world for  
> the same day. Marketing rules...
> Whatever.
>
> You say that Terrasoft is not to blame, and that's true for sure.  
> No operating system developer can be blamed for not making the work  
> of industrials who are the one who should give drivers for their  
> products. If it was the case all Linux distributions would be  
> greatly blamed for many driver problems and that would be more than  
> unfair: completly absurd.
>
> Tell me if I'm wrong:
> Who took the decision of this hypervisor filter and why ?
> Sony ? they are just building RSX but it is an NVidia product.
> NVidia ? for them that's certainly Sony trouble.
> I supose that if we try to find out who's behind this to ask an  
> help, we would lost a lot of time.
> The real trouble seems that NVidia driver's codes are not opened,  
> so it may be difficult for linux communities to work on it by their  
> own.
>

nVidia's Linux driver code has never been open, but has been "free"  
as in beer. I can certainly understand this even if I don't like it.  
Read the archives of the MythTV list for discussion of the issue ad- 
infinitum.

The open-source nVidia drivers are pretty dismal, but it's amazing to  
me they have done even as well as they have given the proprietary  
nature of the GPU. This is after many many years so I don't think we  
can expect much along those lines in the forseeable future.

nVidia is more than likely bound by some agreement with Sony, as you  
say, and while nVidia has been supportive of the Linux community the  
same can't be said for Sony. I'm frankly surprised they have been as  
helpful as they have been so far.

Sony wants to sell games to a mass market, and there are those who  
claim the PS3 is simply a trojan horse to get blu-ray devices into  
the public's hands.

Part of the allure of the PS3 running Linux for me is getting a  
really fast machine at price subsidized by Sony, who is hoping to  
make money selling me games, while I know that there is absolutely  
zero chance of them ever selling me any sort of game.

If we're ever to see accelerated video drivers they will be closed- 
source, like the present nVidia ones. The chances of us getting them  
increase with each machine running Linux though, and as I said  
somebody has to go out on the dance floor first.

I think I will purchase one, a lot can be done without fast video,  
and Terrasoft has a reputation for stable Linux distributions.

It should be more fun than any game Sony will ever come up with :-)